Plus i was planing to slice the dome any ways which would ruin the beam pattern lol.
I have a XHP50.2 thrower with an SMO reflector that is about 50mm this setup in a smaller light and it out throws my L6/S70 plus the beam pattern looks okay.
The black bezel was chosen about 2 months ago.
It is a nice looking light, though. The battery tube looks great, the tail cap doesn’t look too “bulgy”. Nice fins for heat dissipation. I think it’s the same semi-gloss black that they use on the new C8F 21700.
Really curious how this turns out. Was hoping for a budget friendlier alternative to Acebeam K65.
Maybe they are having difficulty making a smooth finish with this big reflector? The OP reflector they show has some very heavy stippling, kind of dull looking?
It dosen’t need to be that heavy of an OP finish, does it….how about just a lite touch of OP? OP Break Up finish and make it shiny, looks like the flip side of aluminum foil, the dull side?
i prefer smo and without batteries. they are easy to source for me anyway.
What diameter of driver will they use? Fet or buck? Sorry if this was mentioned somewhere, couldn’t find it.
I hope they will try smooth again. I prefer smooth as stock and no batteries. If no smooth that is a no go for me.
I don’t think the driver diameter has been discussed. The driver itself uses a FET.
Sofirn is the company that makes the Thorfire S70 which is why we see so many similarities. I imagine they will both use similar driver sizes of between 28mm and 30mm. I will post it if I get an exact size.
550m throw calculates to 76 kcd.
The idea of this big light with 9 cm reflector (it was 9cm right?) was to get a thrower with as close as possible performance as the GT70, but a bit more manageable in size. With the same XHP70.2 set at loads of output that calculates at at least 300 kcd for a similar performance as the GT70, taking the smaller reflector into account.
With 75 kcd instead this is a whopping 4 times less than that. Their own Sofirn Q8 does 106 kcd with 5000 lumen, is much smaller and has more battery capacity. Why carry the huge SP70 then?
Better batteries, SMO reflector, this light needs every bit to perform at the top end to justify its size.
Why dont they try a kind of “very light” OP reflector then, if SMO is a problem? Again, something like the K65 has.
Risking to open up old wounds, I would like to add that a buck driver like in the Convoy L6 would be far more promising than using an FET like in the BLF GT70. Especially with this host size and less mass for heat dissipation a more regulated output of a bit less than what FET/DD can provide would be far better. What good is a flashlight that becomes hot within 2-3 minutes at direct drive and need to step down significantly afterwards? Personally, I like to have the flashlight maintain its maximum output until cells are depleted.
Concerning using an SMO instead of OP reflector: +1 
sorry but only 550m throw isnt really special…. and different reflector now ? meh… i think i will stick to the l6 for now and pass on this light perhaps later one i might get one depending how final will perform.
and how can batteries be a problem? cant they just use the keeppower 6000mah? those should have enough amps or?
I view it like that:
Let’s assume that makers consider a driver design, including mode selection.
They can set any mode (regardless if it’s the lowest or the highest) at some very wide range, from very low to very high.
The points at the low end of spectrum will have their runtime at max limited by battery capacity: runtime = battery_capacity/power_consumption
At the high end light is thermally limited. Runtime ~= thermal_capacity/power_consumption
I write ~= to denote “is close to” because really it’s not an equality, but with heavily overpowered lights that’s close.
You’d like to set the max to before thermals enter the game.
I’d like to set the middle to before thermals enter the game and max to as high as feasible. Such light can do everything a weaker one can, but can also do more……at least if we consider only the “what’s the max” question.
In practice MAX is a special mode that often has a shortcut making it easily accessible. Max-thermally-stable doesn’t have such shortcut (maybe it should). Also a buck driver would be somewhat mode efficient. Anyway, I don’t see a point of reducing max for the sake of reducing max.
I agree that 550m of throw is a bit underwhelming. Not sure if the amperage or the reflector is the main factor in that number? But if the smooth reflector significantly improves the throw, then that would seem to be the best option, given that this is a dedicated thrower where beam pattern shouldn’t matter much.
Yes, I’d probably be interested in a combo.
The HEAD diameter is 90mm (15mm bigger than the L6 and S70), so the reflector should be about 77mm.
The idea of this light is an updated version of the L6 and S70. For example, having the newer XHP70.2 emitter and a high powered driver. Two of the most common mods people do with the L6/S70, but in a factory package which means no mod skills are needed and it’s cheaper. Sofirn is succeeding in this regard.
I personally was hoping for a SMO reflector because I prefer it on my modded L6. Said light does 830 meters, so I was really hoping to get 900 to 1000 meters from this bigger reflector. Even 800 meters would be good for a completely factory light.
This is like asking “How hard can it be for BMW to sell me a Mercedes?”
It can be hard. The price might be higher, you may not get a warranty, etc…
Things would be easier if there where a 3rd party selling the lights or if they didn’t already carry their own brand of batteries.
Tracy said her boss made some calls to try and source some different batteries from companies I recommended (such as the Shockli 5500mah and KeepPower 6000mah), but there were “a lot of worries involved with selling batteries from another factory” so I did not ask for details.
I guess everyone has their opinion on driver type and you can’t please everyone.
Plus I like FET. I can set my own brightness thanks to ramping and can have the maximum sustainable output if I want. As the batteries drain, I can bump up the output slightly to keep it constant.
I’m sure you could swap in a buck driver if you want. Same as you would an L6 or S70. Lexel offers them here using NarsilM.
THIS
I see, you are right, a 77mm reflector is quite a bit less. In my calculation comparing it to the GT70 that would get me to 220 kcd (sorry, I’m not so good in the “throw distance” unit), while your ideal 900 meter would be 200 kcd. We are not so far apart then 
Let’s hope that Sofirn sees this as important too.
76 kcd/550m is very close to stock L6 (from Matt at Adventure Sport Flashlights vdo) with L6 only +/-3500lm and 15cm smaller reflector but SP70 with +5000lm so I think something must be wrong here.