Now that I think about it, we still haven’t seen what the internal heat sink looks like either.
First batch was a disaster. There was a total recall as well. In terms of specs nothing changed. This is the difference between first and second (or starting from second) batch.
So do we know if the second batch has this green stripes at the battery connection? Because mine doesn’t.
That is tricky. A lot of these little non-spec related changes could happen without us knowing. The green stripes, or lack of them could indicate a specific batch.
But googling results in this find. Lightmalls sells the separate battery pack. This was not offered in the beginning, it was only mentioned that Imalent would some day offer a this. The picture shows no stripe whatsoever. So at this point it seems more likely that having no stripes means you have a newer batch.
Thanks for all the answers, I’ll let you know when I get a reply from Gearbest and Imalent! Good to know there’s a battery pack as well.
Edit: There is also this https://www.ledsupermall.com/imalent-dx80-battery-pack.html
Cheers. Maybe Banggood or Gearbest will offer this battery pack as well. You should then (hopefully) be able to purchase one for a lot less using a discount code.
Wow, I was expecting them to sell just the blue battery pack that you could plug in and slide into the factory battery housing. You’ve got $40 worth of batteries plus the protection circuit all wrapped together. I was expecting $60 to maybe $80. Now I see that they are basically selling the entire bottom half of the flashlight for $120. Your basically buying a lot of components that you don’t need.
I guess it’s good that you can buy this battery pack instead of having to buy a whole new light. I’m kind of cheap though, so I might try to just replace the internal batteries for $40. LOL
If you look at something like the Imalent DT70, it costs like MSRP $280. Actual price is about $160 (with discount code), which is about 60% of MSRP. So my guess is that if Banggood or Gearbest start selling the battery pack alone, then you should be able to get one for about $60 or $70, assuming that Lightmalls’ price is close to MSRP.
I guess it’s easier to take a spare with you with the housing included.
Is it possible that the remaining four LEDs make up for the lost lumens? It seems to be the same brightness when I compare the different levels to the Convoy L6 for example. Also just the intensity seems to be more or less the same. Or is it just not that big of a jump from 16000 to 32000?
It just seems like the 5000 level is definitely brighter than Convoys brightest.
I think it is possible. Whether you have a complete emitter unlit, or a partial emitter unlit, the driver tries to push the same amount of current to the leds. This means the functioning emitters, or functioning partial emitters will just get more current. Output is not linear though, so it should be a bit less than what it should be. But visually the difference should be small.
I’m not saying this is exactly what is happening, but it is possible.
If the driver is still pushing more current to the working leds, could this be why some have said they had a electronic burnout on them and smoke? So looking forward to my DX80 now 
My DX80 has the 4 green stripes on the battery pack. Other than the bad original charger (which was replaced) I have had no issues
In my post I kept total current constant (only local current increased). I have absolutely insufficient knowledge of driver design to account for the fried driver problem of earlier DX80 samples as a result of mechanical lock out.
Well, after all this, I'm hoping I'm one of the lucky ones when my dx80 arrives in a few weeks. I think I'm going to do what someone else suggested and not run turbo for more than 30 seconds if even that.
Imalent said the batteries are unprotected individually but the pack is protected as a whole with one circuit. So, lets say one battery in the pack is becoming faulty, how would anyone know how to find out that it does not get dangerously low voltage on that one battery? If we run a DMM on the pack, we would only know total voltage and not be able to single out a faulty battery wouldn't we as if the readout shows low voltage, we could assume all batteries are low and need charging as a whole or am I wrong with my thinking there?
I’m not too familiar with battery charging either, but the DX80 could have balanced charging, where each cell is monitored individually. This is also done in a laptop for example.
But I don’t think I’ve ever read about a flashlight with a built in balanced charger; they’re always unbalanced. I can imagine with brand new 30Q cells I wouldn’t worry the first dozen or so charge cycles, but after a couple of hundred charge cycles after a few years… Yeah what if one of the cells deviate from the pack? I dunno…
Since the batteries are 4S2P I don’t think there is any way they can monitor or charge them individually. They could only monitor each parallel group of 4 cells.
The manufacturer makes sure they start off with eight identical brand new batteries when they put them together. Very much like a drill battery pack.
If one cell starts to go bad:
In use, one group of 4 might not have its normal capacity, but the other group of 4 will output higher current to compensate. You should notice that the batteries don’t hold a charge as long as they used to. Just like a drill pack or laptop pack. So no real danger here. Just reduced performance.
In charging, things could get more serious. The one bad cell might not take a full charge anymore or get to 4.2 volts so the pack will still be charged to 16.8 volts, but it might be 3 cells getting 4.3v and 1 cell only going to 3.9v. The cells being over charged probably won’t explode or anthing, but they will probably start loosing capacity due to the over voltage.
It’s possible the protection circuit might monitor charge times between the 2 groups of 4 and make sure one group does not take excessively longer to charge up than the other. It might be able to limit the overcharging of one group by turning off the charging current 10 or 20 minutes after the 1st group is fully charged.
It really is hard to say because we know so little about this light.
It would probably have to be a FET driver since the boost and buck drivers Lexel builds can’t handle the high current needed for this light.
Most protected 18650 can’t do more than 10A. We’d probably need to use Imalents own protected 18650 which is a 30Q and can do 15A. We’d also need battery carriers to hold them. A lot of design work for sure.
So it may be a good idea to always charge it outside just in case. I can't always do that though as temps here can get really low in Winter. I wonder if Imalent would elaborate more on the tech side of things? What would it hurt if I sent them an email asking. Worst they could say is no it's a secret.
Yeah it’s a black box. I certainly prefer seeing the 8 pink 30Q cells that I can charge in something like the Gyrfalcon All-88, so I can monitor each discharged cell’s voltage (and justify buying the Gyrfalcon).
You know, I've not be around long in this forum, but I do have three L6's and now soon two Q8's. It seems everything BLF does to get something off the ground is well thought thru and well engineered. If something like this every materialized, I'm sure everyone will know one way or the other, the best of intentions would have been done to make it as solid and reliable as possible. Every time some one sees my L6 it's always oohs and aahs, so I'm a fan.