Latest review is up - not exactly your typical 21700-based light, but that is what the battery pack is built-on:
The light has monster output and throw, this class has certainly come a long way from my earlier reviewing days. Here’s a teaser high runtime graph (additional graphs showing a blow-up for more resolution in the first few mins are the review):
Quite a lengthy review this time, as I have a lot to say about heat and the thermal management - it’s an interesting light.
Great review.
I would buy this light in a minute however the proprietary battery makes it a pass.
Sadly it is unavoidable in such configuration, 4 cells in series definitely need some kind of BMS/protection to be safe. One of the reasons why all power tools, household appliances (vacuum cleaners and such), etc use proprietary packs.
It is a shame they are charging so much for it though, if the cost was closer to the cost of 4 cells this would be fine.
Wonder how hard would it be to repack this one/replace the cells…
Not hard if you have a spot welder as I do, so I’m fairly safe when if comes to battery packs. I purchased the DJI RSC2 gimbal with non removable battery pack, all reviews said to avoid it and buy the RS2 instead, but since I have a Spot Welder it’s not an issue for me.
The key is to charge only to 80% and discharge to 30%, then you get twice the battery life. I also always store it at 50% charge so that helps a lot too.
Yeah, assembling 4x21700 into a pack is not too difficult. A bunch of very cheap “spot welders” exist, they are horrible, but sufficient for the job.
What’s more interesting is - did they take any steps to prevent it? Some tool manufacturers do. For example if power is removed from electronics inside the pack said electronics might never function again.
Another important question is possibility of non-destructive disassembly/reassembly. Sometimes can be an issue too…
Thanks for the usual thorough and informative review. I’ve never had a light with a proprietary battery pack. I’m not fond of them. However I heard people say for this type of light is safer than having springs.
I do think I’m going to buy this. I’m getting a 15% discount. I don’t want to say where it’s from because there’s only five left!
So if I get the light with a discount and the 8 cell battery extension it would be $551!
Thanks again for the review. I know this was posted two years ago. I am late to the.party.
… here’s another reason and a good reason to take your suggestion and get the BP8 battery pack which I have done. These simple numbers are actual use not in a testing environment. So this morning I ran on turbo and high only. I did four turbo runs and left it on high output in between. At 17 minutes and 10 seconds the light stepped down from high. To say that this light eats the batteries is an understatement.
From a graph I’ve seen I could just about double that when I get the BP8 next week. I’ll get around 35 minutes run time if I did the same output combination… That is not normally how I run it. I throw in 900 lumens for several minutes but today I wanted to see how long it will last in the two highest outputs.
The light weighs approximately 2.75 lb with the original BP4 battery pack. That was from one of the reviews I saw. I was missing a piece of the puzzle but I estimated it to be 3.83 lb with the BP8 battery pack. Ace beam answered my email and said it is about 3.75 lb. So I wasn’t off by much.The Light will obviously be about a pound heavier but it will be more balanced.
