Different LEDs. XPE vs XRE.
My experience has been the ring version is a larger die image, but not as bright.
Some people will like the smaller, brighter die (slightly longer useful distance), While others like the bigger spot. Nice thing is the spend to find and see the differences is small.
Nice simple fix.
Exactly what I need to do for the opposite reason. OL put an XPG2 in my 3 mode and an o-ring should bring the beam into slightly better focus - which IMO is also brighter.
Outside, I don’t see the dots (not lines like older LEDs) and want every bit of brightness that can be squeezed out of it.
I have ordered many of the TomTop clones and all were good. Just received some from FastTech and they dont seem as bright to me though, other then that that nice also maybe even a little smoother filling. Have tried other places but they are usually not as nice.
SK68 for LIFE!!!
Yea I really need to step up to the XP-G2 Has anyone tried the R5 in a sipik/clone?
Ah, thanks. I was thinking the worker who puts the lenses on was on a break when mine came down the assembly line, but it didn’t make sense to me that it seems to work fine without it.
The die image is larger with my Sipiks (which has the ring), like you say. The Sipik (at least the one I tested—bought from Manafont) is a bit brighter than the BBQBuy,though.
I agree, part of the fun of getting these was to see what the differences are.
I have one from FP, one from DX and one from Tmart.
I think FP’s product is fake. It can not tailstand. DX one is red, tmart one is green and both can tailstand.
@ fyesilova : funny, my FT’s one tailstands better than my silver ebay one.
@ cat eyes : right yesterday i got a cheapo flashlight from ebay (something on the 3 usd range) wich is great as extension tube. Why? you get 2 different combinations for less than a extension tube:
-a) sk68+2 segments of crappy FL= sp68 with 3AA + a lanyard 
-b) sk68+1 segment= sp68 with 2AA PLUS a 1AA crappy FL + a lanyard
Someone (2-AA Sipik SK68 Mod) used a different model of the same brand for the extension tube, difference being side click and design more according to sk68’s. I didn’t check runtime improvement yet, but it does look like a tad brighter on 2AA.
Side comment: FT (single mode) was brighter than Easebon’s ebay one (3 mode), and better finished, but i stand with 3 mode ones. let’s hope FT sells them soon. I gave the single mode as a present with a 14500 lifepo and you should have seen the guy’s face when he tested at night from the balcony… just epic
The SK-68 is actually how I got back into flashlights, sometime in mid-2012. I saw a “3 watt” bike light at Walmart for about $30, wondered what was better/cheaper online, and soon found myself looking at the #1 most popular flashlight on Amazon — the Sipik SK-68 (called a “BBQbuy @ 7W” something something). I ordered two on Amazon from different vendors, then made a third order (for eight units) from the vendor with better quality. In three orders, I ended up with three different models and ten total torches.
The best ones I got were from BestDeal777 on Amazon, and I got eight of them which I have mostly given away as gifts. They were the only ones with an O-ring in the zoom mechanism (so it moves more smoothly), and they had slightly wider optics for a narrower zoomed beam. They were three-mode units with no mode memory (woot!), silver screws, and a generally incomplete set of O-rings. They’re branded as UltraFire and Cree Q5, but that doesn’t mean much. Some were able to tailstand, others were not. One had a stripped clip screw, and the exact level of zoom focus varied. A ceiling bounce test shows a similar amount of total light to what my H51w puts out on high, with Eneloops in both, so I think my SK-68s are getting about 140 to 180 lumens.
I’ve heard that other people ordering from the same vendor sometimes got relatively crappy units, so it’s basically just luck whether you get a good one there.
In any case, I EDC’d one on my purse’s clip ring for about half a year, used it as a bike handlebar light, and generally played with it a lot. The anodization didn’t stand up well to abrasion, so there’s a silver streak where my clip ring slides across. I still use it indoors when I want a smooth circle of light, or zoomed on occasion when I want to point at something or get a reference point for testing throw… but most of my EDC use is now covered by Zebralights, and I’ve upgraded to an EDC 18650 on my bike and XinTD C8 for throwy purposes. The Ultrafire 838 works better as a wide, smooth wall of light, even on 3xAAA instead of 1x18650, so the SK—68 is getting slowly reduced to a decoration.
While my SK-68s are significantly brighter on 14500 than with Eneloops, I’ve only tried it briefly because I don’t want to burn out the emitters. It’s over-spec for the Q5, and I’ve heard too many stories about people permanently dimming their lights that way.
Everyone I gifted a SK-68 to was very pleased with it. It’s very versatile, bright, and small for its price. I think it’d be a particularly useful light for a pizza driver trying to find street addresses at night. One friend now uses it while doing theater tech work, both to see things up close in the rafters, and to point things out across the auditorium. Another guy replaced his old 2-D-cell incandescent, which the SK-68 put to utter shame. The girls I gifted lights to mostly keep them in their purse for misc uses. As for me, I’ve trained my cat to recognize the SK-68 strobe, to help with getting the cat back inside at night.
The SK-68 was my “gateway drug” back into torches, and I’ve had a great time exploring all the new developments in LED tech since the last time I looked. 
@ Toykeeper: that’s really cool… somebody out of the FL world would think you’re talking about an old friend (well, actually, kind of, isn’t it?)
@ Cat eyes: try it out, if it doesn’t work, here you have the link of the one i bought: http://www.ebay.com/itm/160566096481?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&\_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649
So, you’ve probably seen lots of SK-68 beam shots… but here’s mine. It was the best pic I could get, considering that my camera only does 24-bit color. It’s really hard to capture both the brightest and dimmest parts in a single shot without deeper color, but I was able to get something fairly representative:
The dark area is the shadow of my camera.
I like that its beam shows the wires feeding the emitter.
(edit: wow, this was my 100th post already)
As a consultant, I have to say “it depends”.
Unfortunately I forgot to ask which brightness bin it is. It holds draw for a short test at ~1.65A on a fresh charged Trustfire 14500. I don’t have any IMRs or other 14500s to see if it would go up with a better battery. No testing with AA cells of any type.
I don’t have measurement gear, but the output table based on voltage calcs out to something like 25% to 100% increase in lumens, most likely something in the 50-75% range over the XRE that came out - more if it is an R5.
http://flashlightwiki.com/Cree
However, many of the extra lumens are spread over a larger area of the projected die. So brighter depends on whether you mean more total light in the target area, or more intensity at center. Yes for the former, less so for the latter.
With a somewhat depleted battery, OL didn’t think it increased by much. Side by side on a very close wall, my XPG2 seems to be a little brighter than my P60 XML’s hot spot running @ ~2.1A. Pretty good to me. Also, the die image is a little smaller (and brighter) than my P60 XML aspheric. Another good finding, to me.
With the 3 mode, I get a nice wider focused beam on high and the lower power is perhaps similar to the brightness of a 1.5v battery drawing similar ~2.x watts.
The zoomed out mode is also cleaner, though mine still has a halo ring at the outside edge (probably the bare alum outer ring under the lens which sits a little higher than the white plastic compression ring).
The bezel and lens off makes a great mule - easily lights up 30 foot width and 50 foot depth (standing at the entry to the biggest space I have at home). Looking at it from the receiving end from 20’ with no reflector or aspheric I’m still seeing spots as I type this.
I wanted the mod because the driver seemed to be about right for where I wanted to run my first XPG2. LED and star changed, not driver. Plus I already have a FTT XML light that I like waiting for XML2s or brighter. Lucky for me Old Lumens got the wrong LEDs in and had them available.
Heat has been a non issue, especially for my runs on high (only 5 - 10 minutes at a time). Probably because OL said he was able to add a little copper in the hollow pill and added paste to help with heat sinking.
Very happy with the change and this will be well enough left alone, if I’m not grabbing a different light for a specific task. I’m not planning to run AAs in it except as emergency backup. It might suck for 1.5v or it might be OK for someone else.
I do not know about that one in particular, but I think two of mine have XP-G in them (I recall them being XP-G, but there’s a chance it’s XP-E, can’t remember for 100% sure and can’t get to them right now).
Edit: They are XP-E.
For flood purposes, an XM-L zoomie is going to be far better than a SK-68… and there are lots to choose from. The Ultrafire 838 is particularly wide and floody though. For zoom purposes, an XP-G is going to need bigger optics than a XR-E or XP-E in order to get the same spot size. I forget if it was this thread or elsewhere, but someone was complaining that their XP-G SK-68 was disappointing.
Maybe instead you should try putting an XP-G into a SK-98, which has bigger optics and is designed for XM-L + 18650 use. Or even better, since those tend to cook themselves and are still pretty wide when zoomed and are too short for modern batteries, the UF 838 I mentioned could be a good host for an XP-G mod.
The UF 838 is wonderful light. If you like zoomies and dont mind a bigger light then its great. Also like the SK68 it takes alkalines and lithiums. Wish I would have bought 10 of them on the wallbuys sale when they were $6. Definitely one of the top on my zoomie list along with the SK68 and the Small Sun ZY-C10. The UF 838 and the SK98 are super flooders but there is a lottery on them, you might get a hollow pill or might not.
TBH, I can’t recall which had more throw. I will have to check. I believe the XP-E had a bit better flood. There is a thread somewhere that has my lumen measurements; almost the same I think. The BBQBuy ones had less rings around the flood and zoom images.
Edit: changed to XP-E, now that I double-checked them. And the BBQBuy XP-E ones I have give a better throw than the UF XR-E ones.
There is also no such thing as an 800 lumen XP-G, or a 1600 lumen XM-L, or a 400 lumen XR-E, or a bunch of other claims commonly made by many of the torch vendors out there… it’s very common practice to flat-out lie about the specs.
The usual formula is to take the maximum rated emitter specs, approximately double it, and claim that the torch gets that many OTF (out-the-front) lumens. This number has very little correlation to the torch’s actual output.
Honest budget torch vendors are the exception, not the norm.
I got two “BBQbuy” batches from BestDeal777 on Amazon, and they had different optics. The second batch has a smaller spot and better throw, along with generally nicer quality overall. I’m not totally sure if they’re XR-E or XP-E, but the aspheric lens is slightly bigger on one batch and I think that accounts for the difference. (the lens bezel is thinner to allow room for bigger optics)
I bet it’d be even smaller/brighter if I used my UF-838’s lens on it though. I’ve used extra lenses on occasion to focus non-zoomie lights, but only for my own amusement and to see a larger projection of the emitter. Like, my XP-G2 is much easier to see that way.
If I can get the pieces to stay put on their own, I may try to get a picture of what that looks like.
I tried it, and I got pics. I can say that the XP-G2 w/ UF-838 lens makes a smaller and brighter spot than the SK-68 w/ XR-E or XP-E (not sure which I have), at least when the SK-68 is using a NiMH battery.
This was my kludged-together setup:
Here is what its new beam pattern looks like: (the darkened curve crossing the frame is a hair stuck inside my camera)
… and the hotspot up close with a shorter exposure. It’s really hard to focus it cleanly though, and the spot pattern looks darker in person.
Now, comparison shots… these were automatic everything on a snapshot camera, so I apologize for the poor quality:
SK-68 on Energizer “recharge” NiMH batteries vs XP-G2 at 1.4A Li-Ion:
SK-68 on Sanyo 840mAh Li-Ion batteries vs XP-G2 at 1.4A Li-Ion:
So, the SK-68 on Li-Ion seems nearly as bright in this test, but on NiMH it’s significantly dimmer.
I have several original single-mode Sipik SK68’s, and still my favourite EDC lights.
But i have been looking to find a 3-mode or 5-mode Driver to swap into them. ( preferably without the flashy, Stroby, Seizure-inducing blinky modes. :~ ) Anyone know of a good place to get the 15 mm ( 0.59 inch) drivers ?
Sorry for taking so long to reply.
The clickie is OK. No problems and the sofr touch to change modes works fine.