Thanks to Barry and the nice folks at Sofirn, I was given a SF16-UV to review, and I gotta say I’m impressed.
[photo: Sofirn/77Outdoor, with permission]
I’ve had good and not-so-good UV lights over the years, and I gotta say, the SF16-UV is among the best. I’ve had 395nm lights that didn’t really need any filtering because they’d “bleed” visible light well into the purple, which would be hard to see in the first place, so they worked well for years. When 365nm emitters came out, visible bleed was well into the visible spectrum, usually an eerie ghostly-green or pale blue light which would be like shining a regular light on low, and be very distracting. So with 365nm emitters, having a ZWB2 filter was a must.
My go-to UV lights were my '501 in a purple host with 395nm emitter and no filter, later upgraded to a filter as well, a Convoy S2±UV 365nm with filter also transplanted to a purple host, my Lumintop Tool-AA-UV with filter, the OG Wurkkos WK30 with 395nm, plus a handful of keychain UV lights (Thrunite, Oilight, etc.), so it’s safe to say I know and like my UV lights. That said, the SF16-UV is an excellent addition to all of these, and has some important advantages over the others.
In no particular order, it’s quite throwy. I use my other lights for checking bananas for bad spots to going over hotel-rooms for “deposits”, and low-brightness in UV lights for close-up viewing is usually fine, and wider-angle brighter and floodier lights are great for checking large areas quickly. But what if you want to check things at a distance? Like when I’d go beachcombing at night looking for fluorescent rocks and minerals? It may be great to light up whole swaths of beach around you, but it can be time-consuming. With a throwier light, you can sweep larger areas at a distance and see what “flashes” at you. Then you can zoom in on the area for a closer look.
And one nicety is having 3 brightness levels. With the exception of my WK30, all my lights are single-brightness, just off and on. If I’m checking bananas, though, I don’t need to get a sunburn doing so, so it would be nice to throttle down to a lower brightness.
So now on to the light itself… It comes in a generic Sofirn box with the usual extras such as O-rings and lanyard, a preinstalled clip, and included 18650 cell. As usual, the included 3000mAH Sofirn cells are good quality and always clock in right around the rated capacity. I never feel compelled to stick in a “better” cell.
The light itself has excellent fit and finish. Hard anodisation is a nice semigloss black tending towards matte. It’s nice and grippy without feeling like sandpaper or feeling “chalky”. There isn’t much knurling but a sort of ribbing on the battery-tube to give it nice grip. Some nice deep cooling fins on the head probably help with heat dissipation, but the SST-08-UV emitter shouldn’t be so high-strung as to need it much, but better safe than sorry. There isn’t a sharp edge or corner to be found, so machining is definitely good.
[photo: Sofirn/77Outdoor, with permission]
There’s a clip, and everyone knows I hate clips, but this is a gloss-black one-way clip that seems to have a pretty good feel and doesn’t look like an “afterthought” clip. It’s not a deep-carry clip, though. It’s good and springy and should clip to jeans pockets well enough.
There’s no sideswitch or indicator that goes-with, but there is a type C usb charging port, and indicating LED status-light immediately underneath it. Charging is the usual blink-red-while-charging then going-green-when-done. Once you turn on the light or change modes, that indicator displays the battery level. Solid green is topped off at the top-quarter of charge, then blinking green for the next quarter, then solid red for third quarter or “recharge me soon!”, then finally blinking red for the bottom quarter or “recharge me right now!!!”. Simple and useful.
[photo: Sofirn/77Outdoor, with permission]
As for modes, there are three: low, medium, high. The tailswitch is a reverse-clicky, so click on/off, and momentary-off to “blink” and change modes once on. And that’s it. Turn on and cycle through the modes as you see fit. Nothing else. You’d have a hard time even trying to hurt yourself. Out of habit, I always switch down or “reset” to low and then only step up if I need more brightness.
And the come-with ZWB2 filter makes all the difference. There’s virtually zero bleed into the visible with the filter, so no distracting visible light screwing up what you’re looking for: fluorescence. I can sweep the walls and find “patch paint” on things like moldings that emit mild fluorescence vs wall-paint, and it pops out of nowhere. I can see where loose paper blew into the yard because it lights up under UV like it’s on fire. And I don’t have to be right next to it to see, as the throwiness of the SF16 lets me light it up at a distance.
And what’s nice is the convenience of being able to charge it via any usb port, including a powerbank or computer.
This is a really nicely thought-out UV light that should be an addition to everyone’s “UV toolkit”.
It’s available at the Sofirn site and at Amazon at Amazon.com . The latter is 9% off and has an additional 15%-off clicky, so get while the getting’s good.
