4

On my 18650s, on turbo on a fully-charged cell (even the cell that came with the light), the output would turn blue and dim down to maybe 100 lumens in less than 5 seconds. After further testing I determined that this only happened with some cells. Some older higher resistance ICR cells did not have this problem. I emitter swapped mine to XPL HI and the problem went away. Now it works on any cell with zero tint shift.

Bottom line: yes, the emitter they chose just doesn’t tolerate the current. They should have used a different emitter.

That said, apart from this easily fixed LED issue, I quite like the light. It’s extremely short for a light with a tailcap button and has an unusual tail-cap mounted driver. The UI is ok, but could be better. I don’t like the long-press for off in illumination mode.

This light would be a “must buy” winner if Folomov made a couple simple changes:

  • change the emitter to something that can take the current. XPL or XPL HI work fine.
  • change the UI in non-tactical mode to something like Olight with single-click on-off and shortcuts to moon and max.

Overall I’m impressed with Folomov’s efforts. They’re a relatively new manufacturer, but they’ve come out with a number of innovative original designs recently. The 18650s is an excellent improvement over some of their prior lights, but isn’t quite where it needs to be yet.