Received my Rovyvon E10 Max.
Overall, I’m a bit disappointed. For the price, this light should have been better. In many ways, it’s quite a nice light, but there are some key things they got wrong which turn what should have been a slam-dunk into a miss.
What I like:
- Build Quality. Fit and finish are excellent. The light looks awesome.
- Ergonomic Shape. However, note that it is not quite as flat as it looks. There is a hump under the clip that makes the light fatter. This hump contains the driver.
- Able to use two AA-sized cells, including 14500 or 1.5v AA. The instructions say it is safe to use two cells with different chemistries and/or charge levels at the same time. The light will also run with just 1 cell installed.
- Main button (central wheel) is in a depression and is quite stiff. No chance that it will accidentally activate in a pocket. Well done.
- Display is very well done. I like how it displays battery life remaining in percentage. It’s also nice how it displays the current lumen level based on voltage (and probably temperature). It doesn’t just display the lumen level of whatever mode you started at.
- Main beam is decent and throwy. It appears to use 2 cool-white SFT25R in smooth reflectors.
- Probably more waterproof than most other flat flashlights. The light has lots of rubber gaskets.
- Side rubber grips are very comfortable and grippy.
What I don’t like:
- Electronic Lockout feature is too slow. The manual says to hold the left button down for 5 seconds to activate electronic lockout. When I first tried this I thought it didn’t work. However, the problem was I just hadn’t held it long enough. 5 seconds is an eternity for a lockout. Way too slow. Rovyvon should have made the lockout shortcut 4-clicks instead. Or maybe make the shortcut be hold 1.5 seconds to lock and triple-click to unlock.
- Side buttons are protruding and relatively soft-touch. I found it impossible to carry this light clipped to the outside of my sweatpants or inside the front pocket without either of those buttons accidentally depressing and either the side light or laser turning on spontaneously without using lockout. In just my first hour carrying this light, the laser turned on accidentally twice. This could be mitigated with a less cumbersome electronic lockout. This is the single-biggest problem with the light as it almost renders it unsuitable for EDC-carry. It takes so much longer to deploy this light and turn it on than any of my other lights.
- 2-way clip lacks a feed ramp under the main clip so requires an awkward 2-handed maneuver to clip to anything. It also makes the light feel much bulkier than it should. A 1-way bezel-down clip would be preferred.
- Rotating ring to change brightness of main LED requires 8 swipes of the ring to cover the light’s full range. It really should go from min to max in just 1 or 2 swipes.
- No shortcut to turbo apart from Momentary. If you want to get the full 1600 lumens turbo from off you have 3 options: (1) Hold the ring down for momentary turbo. This works, but the ring has a lot of resistance and isn’t comfortable to hold down like this so is good for brief momentary use only, or (2) Double-click the ring, then swipe up 8 times, or (3) Double-click ring and then click the ring 4 more times. Except for the first clicks, you have to pause after each of the remaining clicks to avoid going into strobe. Neither of these options is satisfactory.
I’m a sucker for flat flashlights, and the Rovyvon E10 Max looked intriguing, with its ergonomic shape, display, triple buttons and replaceable batteries. Unfortunately, the execution just doesn’t hit the mark.
The biggest problem is the super-slow to engage electronic lockout combined with the 2 protruding easy-to-press-accidentally side-switches. If those switches were at least recessed into the light, then this might be much less of an issue. As-is, the light is so cumbersome to lock and unlock I can’t recommend this light for EDC use, especially at this price.
It’s too bad, because it is very clear that a LOT of effort was put into designing this light. And it would have been so much better with just a few changes to the firmware and a 1-way clip.
Modding Potential:
The light is screwed together with tiny torx screws. It is possible to disassemble and I assume an emitter swap might be possible. I haven’t fully disassembled mine yet. Beneath the back plate under the clip is the driver attached to the rest of the light with 5 wires and a ribbon cable.
When my order of high-CRI SFT25R arrives I might try disassembling it further to see if I can do an emitter swap and possibly do something to make the side buttons sit lower in the body.
The tailcap contains 2 magnets which are not glued in and are removable. You will need the correct tiny torx screwdriver to remove the backplate of the tailcap to gain access to them.
The clip is relatively easy to mod into a 1-way clip. Unscrew and remove the clip. Use a Dremel sawing disk to remove the backbend. Smooth the corners and round the cut edge. Then use a vise to bend a new feed ramp at the tip. Reinstall, taking care not to over-tighten the retaining screws.