Quick teardown: Cree XML-L2 5 - 7.4V LED White Bike Headlight Flashlight with USB Charger

http://www.gearbest.com/led-flashlights/pp_69439.html
Paid 8.67$ on black friday sales, it is now even 0.11$ cheaper.


Usual packaging on cheaper items.


Impossible to center the led with the centering ring on the reflector, or is that just insulation, because the hole is round and not square to fit the led.


Did the bad fairy do that? It is hollow too.


Mine had also a piece of mounting plastic missing, broken off.


And of course, chipped lens.


Notice the o-ring, it’s this ment to be a joke? :smiley:


At least the lens o-ring is of proper size.


The pill is sitting loosely, being pressed down by the reflector. Very bad!


Plugged into a 1.8A rated adapter, pulling 1.94A on high, i guess it goes even higher, but i don’t have a more powerful DC source with an USB plug, might make one so i can connect a 18650 directly onto it.

Horrible pwm on low mode.

Strobe aint no better, but why need strobe on a bikelight anyway???


Driver on the bottom side. 2xR250 there, just waiting to be replaced >)


Help me here, i’m no driver expert :slight_smile:

UI:
HI
LOW
STROBE
OFF

And that’s about it for now, maybe i’ll get on it one day, to make it useful :slight_smile:

Hollow pill?

nice!

I was being unrealistically optimistic, ordering one of these things a few weeks ago.

Well, I’ll watch here and hope you say more.

Aside — where I live, at least for city commuting, I’ve noticed that most cyclists have been using a strobe at night.
There’s enough streetlighting to fill in, and a moving blinking blue-white light gets noticed and recognized as a bicycle nowadays.

That’s why I bought one of these, to see if its strobe would work along with the flashlights I’ve been clamping on handlebars for continuous light.

Yikes. POS.

For sub $9 what do you expect…if it makes light at all it’s a deal

A little bit of tweaking/modding and it probably could be a pretty good rig, has a solid pill so that is a plus

The mounting tab snapped off is a no go though

Definitely save your money for something better though

Hi WH, can you recommend any usb powered bicycle lights? The Amps is not a limiting factor (my packs can handle 20W devices), nor is waterproofing when using this spare light. I’ve got a couple high end battery packs laying around that I hope I can use adapter wires to some yindings or Xt40s. I think this light should do great at 2+ amps on high, if the build quality is present. I think the ones on amazon are all Xm-L T6 versions of these. Gearbest and DX sells both Xm-L2 T6 and XM-L2 U2 usb lights. No idea if they’re listed correctly.

unfortunately I don’t follow bike lights all that much…someone here will chime in soon and direct you to a good light

Please gently bend the inductor (toroid / coil) out of the way and post a clear photo.

As far as drawing more current from a stronger USB power supply… personally I doubt it. I suspect that it might draw a little less from a stronger USB power supply, one where the voltage doesn’t dip so low under load.

Thanks for posting this teardown. This looks pretty solid, but I’m not sure I’m a big fan of the USB connector for this purpose.

Would you be willing to post some dimensions? Driver diameter, toroid diameter, reflector diameter/height. No big deal, but as long as you’re in there… :wink:

One suggestion — trim your original photos and repost them to the site and link the trimmed copies.
(usually you just mark a rectangle on the image and “save selection” or something like that, in a tool like Graphic Converter)
(also prevents people from copying your fingerprints, which might be useful for security at some point)