I just received my Sipik 98 clone from FastTech. Here’s my take. It arrived quickly. The build quality is good. The zoom slide is smooth enough to operate with one hand, but not loose enough to slip on its own. The flood is wide and has no hot spot. The beam shot about twice as wide and a bit brighter on flood than either of my Sipik 68 clones. There is no outside halo ring like on both of my 68s. The extreme edge of the flood has a yellowish tint. It tail stands. On flood aimed at the ceiling, it’s almost as much light as a 60w light bulb… probably more like a 40w bulb. So far, I’m really liking this flashlight, however…
On zoom, the rectangle is fuzzy and about twice the area as my Sipik 68 clones. It is also noticeably less bright. I can shine my 68 clone on throw mode inside the beam of the 98 on throw mode and the 68 rectangle is clearly visible and about twice as bright.
On high, the 98 heats up after a minute. After 15 minutes, it is hot, but not so hot as to be uncomfortable to hold. On low, it doesn’t heat up at all.
I have two disappointments with this light. The first, as I just described, is that the throw is not as small or as bright as my Sipik 68 clones. (When I adjust the 68 to be as wide at the 98 on its tightest beam, their beams are about the same brightness. The 68 might be a tad brighter.) My second disappointment is that the low mode is more like a medium. I’d prefer a much lower low mode.
Thanks for the feedback there. I’ll say two things, first you cannot expect the throw to be as small as the sk68 as it has a larger lens. Second I’m glad the low is like a medium as that’s the one I’ll be using most of the time with this light.
Can anyone recommend a zoomie that is as wide on flood as the Sipik 98, but as narrow and bright on spot as the Sipik 68? The spot on my Sipik 98 clone is about twice as big and not nearly as bright. I’d be okay with it being twice as big if it were just as bright. Fasttech has several other zoomies with various designs. Will any of them (or from any other vendor) do what I want?
FYI, I use the zoom to spot coyotes or deer at night, so the lack of distance I get with the 98 is disappointing compared to the 68. The 68 is a little too narrow on flood and lacks the run time I would prefer.
You might check the draw on your 98 to see how much power is being used to give you the run time. Mine is somewhat low on draw, even when using an IMR and this may somewhat be by (bad?) design. For a driver change I would also move the LED over to a copper pad since there is likely nothing under the PCB to wick away heat.
Another way to tighten and brighten the spot might be to de-dome the LED, but you will lose lumens in flood mode.
I have a SZOMB ZY-603 with XML that has about an 80% tighter spot, with flood about 90% of my SK98. It is noticeably brighter. Stock to stock it is also a good bit brighter, but I still think would like to see it with a driver change. I think it would also be a better platform for more power than the SK98. It is as much bigger than the 98 as the 98 is to the 68.
Have you ever tried de-doming a zoomie? I did it to one of my SK68’s and it’s a mess. Way dimmer in flood mode, and in zoom mode it’s just a bunch of rings, to clear hotspot
Because of that I always tell people not to de-dome your zoomies unless you really want to mess with the lens focus.
I’ve got a de-domed XRE P60 I put into a 501/2 behind an aspheric but why does that matter when we can all read through the board and see that I’ve posted that before?
As I said above less lumens = dimmer (outside of die image). Others have reported mixed good and not so good results - which is why I also said “might”.
Maybe you had a bad de-dome if you’re getting rings off a die image - or maybe they could be cleaned up with blacking out parts of your light that the led shines on and fixing your focus.
These are suggestions if somebody will want to experiment for themselves since just a few experiences good and bad aren’t very reliable.
But the forumula for less lumens and more lux has been fairly repeatable for “perfect” de-domes with XML dies.
I bought the Ultrafire version, then modded it with a Nanjq 3.04 amp Driver with the High, medium, low, Moonlight modes, put a copper base under the star, and a de-domed XM-L U2 in it. Its a beast single-18650 zoomie light now.
One of my XML FTTs has a polished & beveled bezel between 5 and 10mm deep on the inner side - I believe it is causing a lot to most of it’s ring problem. The light is copper HA so I’m not wanting to go with black. It might be OK below the bevel and around the lens.
Rings aren’t much of an issue for me on flood or outside and I mostly use the XML lights outside. And almost never on spot indoors, except for comparing lights to each other.
I modded my SH98 from FT, built a TexasPyro 20mm Nanjg OSHPark driver w/ 8*7135 chips, I now have a SH98 that has 4 modes, turbo w/ 2 min timeout, high, med, low and no stupid flashies or PWM that bothers my eyes (I could solder down pin 2 and get a moonlight mode, but low is good enough
I also epoxied the star down to the pill, and put some NOALOX on the pill threads to help pull the heat away from the star
I recently ordered Fasttech just because it has glass lens and hallow pill (call me crazy :bigsmile: ) but since I count on Chinese lottery I ordered 23mm glass aspheric just in case if my Chinese lottery luck let me down (and… it let me down, plastic and scrached ). Also, discussion thread “lens material” says that description is 100% true :Sp . Flashlight itself was dreadful. Lots of dings and even a deformation in the battery tube. Driver changed modes when I zoomed in and out (still mystery to me). Zooming mechanism was also horrid ( crunch, creaking and very hard to operate). However, I’ve buy it just for using the host for my next moding project so I didn’t bother much for all these quality issues.
). Also, discussion thread “lens material” says that description is 100% true :Sp . Flashlight itself was dreadful. Lots of dings and even a deformation in the battery tube. Driver changed modes when I zoomed in and out (still mystery to me). Zooming mechanism was also horrid ( crunch, creaking and very hard to operate). However, I’ve buy it just for using the host for my next moding project so I didn’t bother much for all these quality issues.