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The light was provided for review by tinydeal.com, the link to the light is here
This is an interesting light at first glance, it has a soft switch on the handle instead of a tail cap switch which makes it easier to use, it has a tight hotspot, and takes two 18650 batteries in parallel for longer battery life. It also has a larger reflector then a C8, so it should have further throw. It is foybezelled which adds a nice touch and a few less lumens lost OTF. However it has a plastic lens which will scratch easier and is not AR coated, but hopefully its a common size lens so you can replace the lens with AR coated glass.
This light has no mode memory, it always starts on high, with the modes being High, Low, Strobe, Off.
I had to use aluminum foil to get contact on the positive terminals so you may need button top cells, my cells have indented tops from being used in 105C lights so perhaps new batteries would work fine (i’m on the fence there, i think you may need to use foil/solder/add springs to make it work). I didn’t test if it has polarity protection (don’t want to ruin a battery) but the holder will only go in one way so i can confirm it has a kind of polarity protection as long as you put the battery in the holder correctly you can’t put the holder in the light in reverse. This light does not have a low voltage warning.
It should be able to take much larger cells if you can fabricate some adapters, you should have no problems adapting it to 26650, 4AA or even 32650. It is about 42mm wide and i was able to fit 7AA batteries in the tube (making a holder for those would be an interesting challenge)
The anodizing is not bad but not great, its not thin per se but not as thick as some of my better lights. Also the handle on top feels kind of flimsy, the metal part is fine, but the plastic is not screwed on tight and has some play, i easily stripped one of the screws removing it. The light came with dry threads which happens on about 50% of lights that i get, some lubricant took care of that.
DO NOT USE THE BUILT IN CHARGER. I tried it and it charged my battery to 4.42V in 1 hour, the adapter that came with the light says 5V and 1A output and i assume its directly connecting itself to the battery. I suppose one could use a charger and solder some wires, but then your batteries would be unbalanced and its a lot more headache then removing the batteries and using your own proven charger.
I measured a parasitic draw of 0.001mA according to the 2mA setting on my multimeter, and after several days the level of charge on the batteries has not dropped at all.
The pill is screwed in but with all the wiring going into the handle you can’t unscrew it. The heatsinking is not great but its metal to metal so it should be adequate, i left the light running for 40 minutes and the body did not get noticeably warm, but the drive current is only 1A so thats not surprising. That suggests about 250 OTF not the 800 claimed.
My impression is that this light is not very water resistant, it may do alright in the rain but i don’t think you could submerge it, the handle and head would let water in. The handle might still let rainwater in unfortunately.
The star had thermal grease under a visible corner but nowhere else, clearly meant to make it look like it was fully greased. Also the black ring holding the LED will eat some lumens, but i think you could replace it and the LED with an XM-L if you really wanted to but if you want throw you should use XP-G compatible chips (i think XM-L would have to be ringless if you decide to go that route)
Drive currents - batteries charged to 4.11V
1 battery - my 1 battery test was on an older battery so may have high internal resistance, sanyo laptop pull purple ring
0.8A high
0.21A med
0.4A strobe (probably an average, its a fast strobe and i’m using a multimeter not an oscilloscope)
2 batteries - under 50 cycle UR18650FM
1.02A high
0.41A med
0.51A strobe
Final thoughts:
I think the only redeeming feature of this light is its ability to be modified for any battery use if you can create suitable holders, it has a very tight hotspot (though i wish i had a C8 XP-G to compare with), however the heat sinking is only adequate (comparing to the EA4/EA8 reviews) but not great and the lens is plastic and not coated, which is not a big deal but if this size of lens is available and not expensive it would be a cheap upgrade.
Technical pictures
indented positive terminals as noted above
The lens is plastic and does not have AR coating
Subtract 3mm form both sides (6mm total) to get reflactor diameter
Subtract 1.5mm (lens) to get depth, noting that the bottom has a flat spot next to the LED (see next photo)
The driver is huge!
The star fits perfectly in its “groove”, it must be custom made for this light or the pill custom made to hold it, but i don’t see why you can’t replace it with a noctigon/sinkpad, the reflector/ring will hold it in place
On the left it looks like the anodizing is worn away or never stuck, the mark on the right is an area of flatter anodizing (no texture) that i didn’t notice until i saw it in this picture
Machine marks that are anodized over
