So I really wanted to get one of those Boruit "D10" headlamps, the single-emitter ones with xm-l2 clones in them. Well, the wait time was too much for me after waiting for 2 months just to get an emitter and driver from Aliexpress. Soooo, what's a guy to do? What else? Go buy it locally and pay twice as much as if you bought it from China! 1-day shipping with Amazon Prime. Ordered Wednesday, arrived Thursday afternoon. What does $23.00 get you?
Nice box! Made for the US market? I am not sure what that means since they're all made in China (probably in the same factory), but there are two different models shown on the box, and Slonik sells three on the Amazon store. One with 2 LED's like the Boruit D25, and an adjustable beam one like the D20, and this one.
In the box is nice!
A nice die cut foam packing holds the headlamp body, the head strap, which is thick and seems sturdy, a short micro USB charging cable, a "Roofer" branded 2200 mah li-ion battery, and two hardhat keepers for securing the headband to the sides of a hardhat. This is a nice touch since it doesn't have a third strap in the middle to keep it from sliding down your face.
The manual was very simple, but complete and extremely readable. Probably one of the better Chinese-English manuals I've experienced lately.
1st page (outside-back)
On the other side of the manual is the operating instructions and UI features. More on that later.
The light itself seems very well made. I'd say a huge step above the cheapest domestic offerings and the plastic fantastic ones you get in the big box stores. The body is made of aluminum of some kind. It seems very sturdy and weighs probably 60 grams without the battery. I don't have a scale to measure it so it's subjective. The box says 4.9 ounces with the battery (roughly 139 grams).
The headband is nice and thick. The holder is also sturdy and has a spring-loaded plastic tab on the back that interfaces with ridges on the body of the headlamp for traction to help hold it in place when positioning it at an angle. The holder keeps the light secure and I don't foresee it falling out. The light swivels 180 degrees. Works great!
The physical size is slightly longer than the 18650 battery. Next to a Sofirn SP10S.
Anodizing is well done, I'd say a semi-gloss type II. The machining is okay as well. No major blemishes or anything. The fit and finish are perfectly fine for the price (even if I paid twice as much as on Aliexpress).
There are o rings on every sealing surface. I have no doubts of the IPX-6 rating.
The threads are nice albeit shallow and square cut, but dry! Some silicone grease would be helpful here (I added some SuperLube later). The switch side has a sleeve that unscrews to expose the micro USB charging port and LED charging indicator. Unlike the cheaper Boriut and clones, the opening for the indicator has a plastic diffuser to keep dust out of the driver. Nice!
The battery spring is very thick and coated with gold. Or is it phosphor bronze? Sort of looks that way.
Looking inside the battery tube. You can see the wires going from the driver to the LED. The inside of the body is also anodized. The driver has a plastic insulator disk (maybe doing double-duty as a retainer?) that you can see the positive contact spring poking through.
The included 18650 battery is an unknown brand "Roofer" INR 18650-2200A. The wrap was damaged, but nothing major. I ran it in my Zanflare and it came out as around 68 miliohms IR and capacity test showed over 2200mah at 500mah discharge rate.
Here's the interesting bit. Slonik says the LED is a Cree XP-G2, good for 500 lumens. It's sitting behind a light OP aluminum reflector. No XM-L2 (or clone)? I can't figure out why they went with the smaller die LED, because for a headlamp, you want flood, not so much a tight hot spot, which this does.They don't list the color temperature, but I tested it and it's CW 6000k or so just like the rest of them. The manual says "keeps natural color of illuminated objects," but from my testing, it's not high CRI. I'll test it alongside by SP10S with the 90 cri LH351D later.
It has a momentary switch that actually has a really nice feel to it. Doesn't feel cheap or flimsy. The UI is intuitive and easy to use, but kind of wonky. The manual says the first mode is low, but it isn't. I'd says it's easily 200 lumens. I compared it to another light I have that's 200 lumens and it seems more like medium.
The modes go like this: Click once to turn on and goes to "low" (really medium). Click again for high/turbo which is 500 lumens. It seems like more than 500lm! Click again to turn off. To access the 5 stepped brightness levels, click on, then click and hold and it will ramp through the modes. First is "low" then it ramps down to low, then really low (not really moonlight though) then back to high/turbo, then back to "low" (medium), and so on.There's no mode memory.
If I had to estimate brightness of the steps, low is 200lm, the next step is 150lm, the next step is 100lm, and the lowest is 50lm, then it goes to high/turbo 500lm. The spacing is nice enough, but I think I'd get annoyed since the lowest mode is a little too bright for close in work. Those numbers were on a Sanyo 18650GA cell. I ran it on the fully charged included cell and it seemed just as bright.
I ran it on the highest mode for over 5 minutes and checked the heat. Unlike the reports around the cheaper D10 clones, this one did heat up. I measured it at a max of 41 C (about 104 F), but it never got any warmer. That was on a Sanyo 18650GA cell though. Beam is as you'd expect from an XP-G2 CW emitter driven at around 2.5A (if I had to guess). Even with the OP reflector, intense hotpot and usable spill, but a little odd for a headlamp of this type. It's begging for a 5000k LH351D or SST40! Which brings me to the next part of why flashlight folks like these.
One of the allures of the D10-type headlamps is the ability to mod them. I figured this one was no different, but let's see. The manual says not to take it apart, but for me that's like asking a bear not to poop in the woods. The bezel comes off easy-no glue whatsoever. It is o ring sealed. Under the reflector is a 20mm MCPCB, looks to be aluminum (fine for this), and it stuck in place with nasty thermal adhesive, probably silastic or some other thermal silicone. Wires look to be 26 gauge and possibly silicone insulated. It would be easy to swap the emitter, which I will be doing. I have a 5000k SST40 ready for it. I may even do a XHP50.2 3V. Or maybe a LH351D? Let me know if you'd like to see that!
I didn't try for the driver yet though since it seems to drive the LED harder than the other D10 clones. I'll probably swap it too eventually.
So what do I think of the Slonik, aka Boruit, fka D10? I like it a lot! Is it worth $23 of my hard-earned dollars? I'll be blunt and say it depends. For $23 I can get a Sofirn SP40 (from China), or nearly two Boriut D10's from China. Sure, if I wasn't impatient and sick of ultra-long shipping times (by the way, waiting for things to ship from China isn't as fun as watching paint dry, and nowhere near as exciting as waiting for water to boil or watching grass grow). What you do get is a high performance, small, light, easy to use, and well-made headlamp that's 100x's better than the Duracell or Energizer or other big box brands. Plus, for those so inclined, it's modable!