I can only speak for my self and my family. I am in my late 60’s and would consider myself an “enthusiast” My wife and grown children are not. When the Q8 (Narsil) came out I got a bunch of them as our power goes out frequently as we are in the countryside and they made great emergency lighting. My wife mastered the basic ramping function and battery check in just a few minutes. She claimed Three of these for her personal use and has never come back to me for help other than to charge the batteries. When the LT1 came out she got two of those she is responsible for. She uses ramping and tint ramping with no issues. She also uses an FW3a (anduril) nightly. These are her favorite user interfaces (because of the ramping function) even though I have given her plenty of other lights with more basic interfaces. Granted she uses only a limited set of the features available but has done so without issues since being introduced to these lights. My grown children who I have given lights with advanced UI’s to have also managed to use them without having to come back to me for help. I think based only on our experience that unless you are one of those cursed to compulsively randomly press buttons you will likely have very few problems
One button is way easier. But to not backlight it with a locator LED? That’s almost a Sofirn trademark, the backlit rubber cap.
Other than that, they get used at home every night for ambient lighting and we’ve had a week away in the campervan and used them every night in there without needing to charge. I really like being able to dim one side and run them on low overnight, it hardly dents the battery.
It’s possible request LT1S version with 2700K and 4000K led’s ?
or with 2700K and 5000K led’s ?
what would be the benefit of this? You can set it to 4000k or 5000k already.
Well 2700K and 4000K would hypothetically open up LED options to something like the 95+ CRI SST-20. I almost bought that Lumintop knockoff due to it’s use of the SST-20, which I greatly prefer over the LH351D.
EDIT: I just noticed this is the thread for the shorty (which doesn’t use the LH351D) and not the mini.
The LT1 can have SST-20’s swapped in, or 219B’s or 519A’s. Doing so involves soldering.
The LT1S MCPCB has a smaller solder footprint with no thermal pad. It would need a custom MCPCB to swap these XP-compatible emitters in. The LT1S uses a 1919 size chip scale package emitter. It’s likely that either the Nichia E17A or E21A will fit, although they are reported to be more difficult to reflow solder than most other emitters.
I couldn’t agree more. I camp a lot during the summer, and all the blinky’s were fun for about 15 minutes when I first got the lantern. It’s missing a red mode as to not attract bugs. Even the ramping is not necessary. A simple 5 or 6 brightness level the whole family can use is all I care about. I normally carry two or three of the 18650 Fenix lights, and at night, they are on red mode. It’s easy enough to flick one over to white light mode for a few minutes when you need to find something, or use a pocket flashlight.
This probably won’t go over well here, but the BLF/Sofirn lanterns are functionally worse actual camping lanterns than a 4 mode light with a plastic wand.
This one in particular looks like it would be a great backpacking lantern except for the UI. Dark-adjusted outdoor eyes sip artificial light, and I’ve regularly gone on multi-day trips without even going through one cell on my flashlight “lantern” that gets left on for hours at a time.
Maybe there will be a more outdoor-oriented version of this, because it looks like they did get a lot right here.
I also have some concerns that the red light max low mode runtime is 64 hours. I have a red AAA light with that runtime. A camping-oriented red light should be possible to turn way down.
The LT1s showed up yesterday from Amazon.
I must say it’s a winner.
Love the form factor. Easy interface.
Way more compact and lighter than the LT1. I can live without all the blinkies.
The ability to light half the LEDs for a more directional light is a brilliant idea.
I don’t see any PWM, but I will put it to the scope at some point.
The battery came at 3.47v. It tested 4987mAh on the first go round.
An 18650 flat top works just fine without any adapter.
Came with extra O rings. Threads well greased out of the box.
Moon mode seems way brighter than the claimed 1 Lumen.
The Red is way bright.
Wish moon was a lower level or perhaps just had a extra firefly mode.
And a timed go to sleep mode would be icing on the cake.
It’s a keeper. This would make a great gift for muggles or any enthusiast.
All the Best,
Jeff
The brightness of the red is a dealbreaker. Is there a simple way to mod red current down by probably 50-75% with a resistor swap?
Just a heads up that there’s a $15 off coupon on Amazon US for the LT1S, bringing the price down to $45. No code, just click checkbox on product page to apply.
Barry said he would send me a LT1S to review over a year ago, but i never received one or head back from Barry or Sofirn after again, thus one of the reasons i backed off from development of new future BLF lanterns. I assumed they got enough of the work i did on the original to begin developing their own variants.
That sucks. If sofirn is moving on, maybe someone else would be interested in the next BLF lantern?
no i meant i feel Sofirn has went on their own to develop other lanterns based on the BLF group’s work we did. I still work on lanterns, improving them, and building new design ideas.