Do you know what changes they’re making?
Flashaholics is mainly one guy, Antony. I’ve known him several years, he’s ok. He found a Nitecore EX10 piston drive brand new but in a damaged box and sent to to me for free a few weeks ago 
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A better way to stop the clip rattling about.
Got my SK03 today. I got the aluminum version with sidelights and regular 2-way clip.
My impression: Pretty positive. Not bad at all for a light from a relatively new manufacturer.
Pros:
- Great build quality
- Sidelights are very clever. E-trits are nice. Very similar to many lights’ aux leds, but visible from more angles.
- Nice size - Very small.
- 2-way clip slides fairly easily onto pants.
- Tailcap button action feels nice.
- The grey and black version looks awesome.
- Relatively easy to emitter swap
Cons:
- Large Protruding button may be prone to accidental pocket activation.
- Electronic lockout requires too many clicks. I think instead of having it use 8 clicks, they should have made lockout 3 clicks and then moved strobe mode to 4 clicks.
- Manual lockout only works on aluminum version.
- Parasitic drain with manual lockout as it only disables the switch.
- No shortcut to moonlight unless you pre-set front or side lights to low.
- Cool white emitter
- Very floody - this can be good or bad depending on preference.
- 2-way clip works well, but does stick out.
- Due to some rough edges below the tail, cigar grip isn’t very comfortable.
Modding:
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I immediately emitter swapped mine.
- To get to the star, it is necessary to remove the tiny threaded bezel ring on the inside of the bezel. Fortunately it protrudes slightly and is not glued, so removing it is fairly easy:
- I stuck the front of the light into the glue side of some fresh “3M Safety-Walk” tape and turned.
- If you don’t have that kind of tape you can probably unscrew it by pressing the bezel firmly into any rubbery surface and turning (such as the bottom of a shoe, mousepad, or jar opener pad).
- Once the bezel ring is removed, I stuck some more grip tape to the middle of the optic and pulled it and the o-ring from the light.
- The star fits a 3535 led. Not sure what the stock LED is. LH351D cool white maybe.
- The star is held in with 2 tiny Phillips screws. It is helpful to have a set of miniature screwdriver bits for this mod.
- There is a plastic isolation ring around the LED. Mine seemed to be glued on.
- I couldn’t pry it up and remove it. I ended up just doing the reflow with it on. It popped right off once the star got hot enough to melt the solder under the star.
- This isolation ring isn’t actually an isolation ring. After I put my new LED on I discovered that this ring isn’t actually tall enough to touch the botton of the optic. The ring does nothing. The optic sits on a shelf on the inside of the bezel. If you leave the ring in after reflowing it will rattle around the LED and reduce your light output.
- The ring is actually a glow ring that provides a glow under the optic after you use the light on higher modes. It’s purely optional, but if you want to use it after modding, you might need to glue it to the star.
- I initially tried a 4500K Nichia 519a, but the beam pattern was too floody for my taste. I ended up going with a dedomed 5700K Nichia 519a. Much better.
- To get to the star, it is necessary to remove the tiny threaded bezel ring on the inside of the bezel. Fortunately it protrudes slightly and is not glued, so removing it is fairly easy:
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Clip Replacement - I don’t wear caps so don’t need 2-way clips. I don’t like them since the backbend gets caught on things and tends to make lights feel much more bulky.
- I considered sawing off the backbend of the clip using a Dremel. I’ve done this with other lights with good result.
- However, before I did this I checked my clip box to see if I had anything on hand that would work. I found an old Zebralight headlamp clip that works pretty well. It’s black and the light feels much sleeker without the backbend.
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Other possible mods:
- It might be possible to find a ring that could be glued to the back of the tail to surround the edges of the button. Doing so would greatly reduce the risk of accidental activation in pocket or when clipping the light to pants.
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Good point. I just looked into that. In California, this would not be legal to carry since it’s basically a box cutter hidden in a flashlight clip.
Guess I won’t get the pro version as I’d have to either remove or saw off the knife blade if I wanted to legally carry it in my pocket.
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TBH I’m not sure how useful the armature would actually be, especially minus the knife, and it does add significantly to the cost.
My day to day knife needs are easily covered by a Swiss army knife, they’re legal to carry in the UK and they generally have a positive public image.
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