[Review] Lumintop Thor 3 LEP Light (1.562 Million Candela)

Lumintop has a new addition to their Thor line of LEP flashlights with the Thor 3. The Thor 3 is the largest of the 3, and is powered by a 21700 battery, or optional 18650 with the included adapter. It’s a beast in terms of performance so I have to thank Lumintop for sending it to me to try and show you what it can do.

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Pick up the Thor 3 Ragnarok from Lumintop at (Non Affilate) https://lumintoplighting.com/products/lumintop-thor3-ragnarok-400-lumens-2500-meters-21700-lep-flashlight-183

Packaging & Accessories
Packaging is like may other recent Lumintop lights, a cardboard box with a basic slip cover and an outline drawing of the light. Inside the light is nicely protected in foam. You don’t get much in terms of accessories here for the price but you do get the light itself, a lanyard ring, 18650 adapter tube, and in my case an unlabeled 21700 battery. I believe you will get a battery with a branded lanyard if you choose that option.


Construction
The light is made from aluminum, and anodized in a mat black. Fit and finish here is great. The rear button is a reverse clicky, and stands proud with the Lumintop bunny showing some small red LED’s underneath to help you locate the light in the dark. The tail also has 6 glow tubes in it. These do glow in the dark but it’s not the best glow material I have seen.


The body tube tapers slightly as you go towards the head. It has a deep large diamond pattern milled into it that’s elegant yet gripy but the edges are a little sharp. I am glad they decided to do something different than the traditional knurling that we saw on the prototype version of this light. Internally there are small springs at both ends.



The head has large fins with milling for style primarily since this light doesn’t get hot. Branding is very minimal, it actually doesn’t say Thor 3 anywhere on it, only a largeish Lumintop logo and serial number. No laser warning is atypical too. The front bezel unscrews if you want to see inside. There is a thick glass lens thats spaced a bit away from the front convex lens that helps shape the beam here. There is what looks like glow material between the two on the edges, similar to what the Thor 2 had, expect here it doesn’t glow.

*Size & Weight
*I measured the length at 164mm, the largest diameter in the head at 59.9mm, and the smallest on the body at 25.46mm. Weight with the battery and ring was 344g. The light is IPX8 water rated.



Retention Options
The only included retention option with this light is the removable silver lanyard ring. There is a little more tolerance here then I would hope for, as it rattles around and rotates a bit too easily for my liking. The light feels good in the hand.

Emitter & Beam
Instead of a LED the Thor 3 uses a Laser Excited Phosphor (LEP) module. The Thor 3 is using the second generation of module where the laser sits behind a phosphor layer which has a silicone piece on top that focuses the light into a narrower beam. Lenses are then used to direct the light out of the front of the light into the beam we see. The benefit is this style of module is smaller typically but the lens assembly can be larger. The beam here over a long distance is very even, in some of my other LEP lights mainly the Jetbeam and Astrolux you can see a narrowing point (Focal Plain), but the Thor 3 seems more even like you see out of a traditional LED light. At short distances (2Ft) the beam has a hole in it, that in this case is blue/black, with a bright donut of light on the light. At 4+ feet this normalizes and just becomes a very intense beam with a few rings of intensity. The longer the distance the less this happens. Tint wise this is on the cooler side 6000-7000k I would guess. I have equipment on the way to give you a better answer to this question in my future reviews.




! https://i.imgur.com/CrsBhNP.jpg!

Runtime & Heat
I ran my runtime tests with the included unlabeled button top protected battery that Lumintop sent with the light. I put it in my Vapcell S4 Plus charger to run an analysis cycle on it and came in with a capacity of 4987mAh. The Thor 3 claims to run for 5 minutes on high before step down and that’s exactly what my tests showed. Stepdown is about 37% of relative output for 5 hours at which point the light blinks once and goes to an ultra low mode for another 40 minutes. During this time the highest temp it saw was 31.5C, so not even warm.

In low mode only the light runs for what looks more like an unregulated 9 hours, Output slowly declines but is above 50% relative output for the entire time. Impressive runtimes when your use to LED’s that typically run hot and for not as long.


UI
The UI on the Thor 3 is super simple. It has 2 steady mode and a strobe. The light turns on officially in low at the start, and you can half press the rear button to turn to high. Double half press quickly to go to the fast strobe. The light does have memory for the two low and high modes. It’s as simple as that.

Final Thoughts
The Thor 3 is my best performing LEP thrower light, and it’s also one of the largest single cell LEP lights I have. In terms of performance it’s a beast. 1,562,500 CD is nothing to sneeze at. It’s amazing to think that you can get this much throwing performance out of a single cell light you can hold in one hand, and get that for 5 minutes before step down. You just can’t do that with current LED technology.

I like the look here physically with the body milling and tail being my favorite parts. You get grip without the same or similar knurling that nearly every other flashlight has. Performance is good here too, it can sustain the high output for the better part of 5 minutes before step down. That equates to throwing performance of 2500 meters, well over 1 mile of performance. Pretty impressive for handheld.

I still maintain I don’t have a ton of practical uses for LEP’s in my daily life other then to amaze people and have an awesome handheld spotlight to quiet the neighbors dog 3 houses down. :slight_smile: If you have land or just want a fun but somewhat impractical spotlight, this is a great option to pick.

2 Thanks

Great review! I just ordered one from Neal’s Gadgets Father’s Day sale. I just could not refuse it at that price. This will be my first LEP.

Just ordered one. Looking forward to it…my first LEP.

I wish I knew where to find more of the glow rods for the tail cap, as I don’t really like the R-G-B thing they have going on. All blue or all green would be an improvement IMO, and I’d be happy to shell out a few more bucks to make it so. That’s just a nitpick, though.

Thanks for the review. Considering buying this but have a very important question. Can you turn the light off and then back on again and reactivate high output?

Or is 5 minutes all it’s going to give you on Max output? Thanks

I would also like to understand more about this ^^

So once you’ve used up that 5 min and it drops down, does that mean that the cell has depleted capacity enough to not be able enter turbo again until re-charging?

Edit: In reference to Cochise334ever’s question right above

I don’t remember exactly but I assume it’s a timer to protect the laser diode from heat. Most of these laser diodes are designed around a duty cycle.

Uh-oh, I dont know what that means about being designed around a duty cycle. Is it unsafe for me to be using these without that knowledge?

Would it be unsafe in any way to reactivate turbo again after the 5min? Not immediately, but even after a few minutes? or even hours?

Im not sure if this is the same thing? Am I going down a wrong path here trying to understand? Because this is WAY over my head.


Im not sure if those pics are going to work or not…

Am I way off base here?
Im way beyond confused here…

Edit: Although Im asking here on liquidretro’s review, I’m looking for anyone who can help me.