An oldie but goodie?
I was sent a Sofirn IF23 to review, courtesy of the nice folx at Sofirn. I had no idea what to expect, because I don’t recall hearing of the IF23, thinking it an extension of the IF22A (which I love). When I first looked it up, it seemed so alien to me. Front spotlight, side COB light, and… color?? Okay, sign me up. 
I was more taken by surprise when I saw videos reviewing it were all from 5 months ago! Okay, am I that out of the loop? I guess so.
OVERVIEW
Anyhoo, I got it remarkably fast, saw the typische orange-on-black Sofirn box, opened it, and there it was! Yep, just like in the pix. The included cell was at 3.4V or 3.6V or so, something like that, so after initially playing with it aimlessly for a while, I put the cell to the test. A pair of test runs on my Ope and it clocked in at 4811 and 4813mAH at 1A, remarkably consistent. Oh, and did I mention that it takes a 5000mAH 21700? Yep, it’s a big donk, but even with the side-light attached, it doesn’t seem too unwieldy. Without the cell, the light is quite, well, light. The cell has a good heft to it.
PACKAGE CONTENTS
Anyway, the light comes in the usual clear plastic tray, along with a lanyard, 2-way clip, O-rings, charging cable, and manual.
[pic courtesy of Sofirn]
CHARGING
Some features of the light are the usb-c charging, which also doubles as a powerbank (c to shining c). I imagine that can come in quite handy, especially with a 21700 vs the usual 18650. There’s a pretty sturdy rubber flap covering the port, which is (thankfully) a bit difficult to pry on the little tab to open it, but at least it won’t just flap open at random. It also fits in pretty deeply (more like a rubber block than rubber flap) so looks to stay securely tucked in. Oh! And unlike some lights, the recessed opening is actually wide-enough to be able to use my hydra-cable and other usb-c cables, and not just the supplied ones.
APPEARANCE
Fit and finish is excellent, a nice matte black with only a hint of gloss. No sharp edges or corners anywhere with one exception, where the cutout for the lanyard is, on the magnetic tailcap. The groove plus knurled rim is where it feels a bit “edgy”.
And yeah, there’s a magnetic tailcap which sticks quite nicely to things, at all angles. Useful if used in a car, for example, as an emergency light, or for changing a tire, refilling washer fluid, etc.
CONSTRUCTION
The switch and sidelight are mounted on a separate insert bolted into the body. The switch has 4 screws around it, like the OG version of the beloved (to me, at least) SC31. But the “COB” panel takes up the remainder of that insert. I haven’t done so, but someone else commented that on unscrewing it, there’s a gasket around the insert to keep out water, so that’s definitely a good design.
Speaking of good design, the light itself is a unibody light just like the Nitecore EC4 series, so the whole body is a continuous chunk of metal, and there’s no head + body + tail. It’s just one long body with a cap to hold in the battery. The whole light itself is one giant heatsink! Noice! And that contributes to the smooth design, no radical cuts or grooves for heatsinking purposes.
THE MAIN BEAM
The business end of the light is an orange-peel reflector, and a XHP50B behind it. The big chip behind a (relatively) small reflector means a pretty big hotspot, so it’s quite floody. The beam itself is pretty decent, with a bit of a pronounced corona but no rings or other artifacts.
Tint is a bit greenish but on the warm side. The hotspot is fairly neutral, but corona is a bright lemon-yellow, and spill fades to blue per usual Cree emitters. So yeah, it’s a bit of a fried-egg beam, but for a peak of 4000 lemons at full-tilt, you may want to overlook that. In practice, shining around a dark basement and in the backyard, the corona can be noticeable as yellower than the hotspot, but you don’t really notice a bluer spill. The hotspot itself isn’t too bad, especially after using the light a bit and adapting to the overall tint.
I’m not sure if the big donk of an XHP50B would fit into a TIR lens, but if it would, the beam might mix much more thoroughly and be remarkably well-behaved. A “minus-green” filter would also be quite nice on it too, and really give a remarkable beam.
Turbo is reported to be 4000lm, and that seems about right, compared to 1000lm and 2000lm lights I have. It lights up an entire stairway like daylight, and lights up the entire yard pretty well, too. [Added, other reviews seem to agree that turbo does hit the high 3800s-3900s, but I don’t have instrumentation where I can measure that myself.]
THE SIDE-LIGHT
The “COB” side-panel isn’t. It’s 3 rows of discrete LEDs. The 2 outermost rows are white LEDs, while the inner (middle) row are RGB LEDs. A diffuser covering the panel does a good job avoiding “picket-fence” shadows from the individual emitters, and coverage is quite smooth.
THE MAIN/ONLY SWITCH
The switch itself is slightly raised and has a pretty definitive click, and doesn’t feel too rubbery. It has a LED indicator underneath for both charging and battery level. When charging, the indicator blinks red when charging, and green when finished. When the light is activated, the LED indicates battery status of green with the top-third of battery level, red for the middle third, and flashing red for the bottom-third (“feed me!!!”). That’s only 3 levels vs 4 in other lights (green, flashing green, red, flashing red), so it’s less “granular” and shows red for the majority of the light’s usage, especially if you let it run down a bit.
The light DOES work while charging, both spotlight and sidelight (white and RGB), but only at one level each. Ie, commands to increase/decrease the brightness have no effect on either. And there’s no lockout (more on that later) when charging, as any of the 3 modes turn right on without needing to unlock anything.
That’s it for the hardware, so now for the UI. Ohhhh, the UI…
THE USER INTERFACE (UI)
It’s a complicated light, so has a somewhat complicated UI. Lots of it seems intuitive, other parts not so much. An entire video can be made just on the UI, and I’m sure some have. But just a quick rundown should be sufficient.
Simply put, if the light’s locked, 2 clicks unlocks it and puts it into spotlight mode. Click off. If unlocked, click on, click off. Simple. But when off, 1/2/3 clicks turns on the spotlight, white sidelight, color sidelight, respectively.
When on, press’n’hold cycles through L/M/H brightness levels for the spotlight and white sidelight. 2click goes to turbo. Subsequent 2clicks cycles through turbo, strobe, SOS, beacon, then back again. 1click brings you back to the memorised level. 1click turns off.
For RGB light (3click), there are no brightness levels or turbo, but 2click goes to slow-blink. Turn off, turn on, it remembers that you were in slow-blink mode and goes back there. Press’n’hold cycles through a continuous spectrum, just release when you get to the color you like. So you can pick, say, red or amber in case of emergency on the road, and use the blink as a sort of warning. And stick it to the car with the magnetic tailcap! Noice!
Autolock Feature
Left off for more than a few minutes, the light auto-locks. With a readily-accessible button that can be quite easily pushed by accident, this feature goes from an annoyance to being quite handy. And all it takes is a 2click to unlock, so it’s not egregious. But if locked, a click gives 2 bright blinks. However, a press’n’hold when locked turns the light on moonlight. But here’s the kicker. It remembers whether you were using the spotlight or sidelight, and that turns on. So if you were using the sidelight last and it locks, press’n’hold turns on the sidelight in moonlight mode. Nifty!
There are options to turn autolock on/off, as well as to select ramping vs discrete levels, too. So if you want ramping, or don’t want autolock, you can click away to select those on/off as well.
I think I got a handle on autolock. 4 clicks when off and locked will turn off autolock. But a 4click to lock it at any time, turns autolock back on. So it’s pretty simple. In a pocket or bag, I’d definitely have autolock set, but on a table like I have it now, I have it turned off.
Anyway…
FINAL THOUGHTS
Yeah, it’s a bit of a learning-curve, but this is an incredibly handy light to have, so it’s worth it. 4000 lemons out the front, an incredibly useful floody sidelight, RGB options, powerbank functionality, a beefy 21700. Despite being pretty chunky, it’s almost the definition of a do-everything light.
I’m still scratching my head as to how I missed it all this time.
Okay, so where to get one?
amazon link:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BY24DG62/
sofirn link:
discount code: 10HEGPF8
Valid until March 10th.
Any issues, let me know and I can pass it on.
