I might have not been clear enough. I was talking about outperforming it throw-wise. My personal preference is more of a throwy beam, I’d say L6 is as wide as I want to go.
I just hope that Sofirn measurements were very conservative and we gonna get substantially better throw.
Do we know what the price is about to look like?
price is gonna be lower then l6 i think, or thats the idea atleast.
I’m on the fence, but I’ll keep my name on the list for now. The biggest thing for me is getting a prototype in the hands of someone that can:
I have no need for floddy 2x 26650 light… but I dont want to give up on the throw possibilities yet.
Did Sofirn promise an SMO reflector? I don’t think they did. (I could be wrong, though) and I am wrong 
I think it was understood that BLF wanted a SMO reflector, but that was all.
People would get a finished light. It will just be a textured reflector with a nice beam.
Swapping a reflector is the most easiest thing to do. It’s as easy as swapping batteries, literally.
They are going to various manufacturers looking for 7070 centering rings that they can buy to try out. If they can find one already produced in bulk that gives a nicer beam then they can use those and the whole situation might be changed. So we need to be patient and not get worked up so early. 
I pointed them towards Kaidomain which carries 3 different heights, 0.8mm, 1mm and 1.4mm as well as Convoy. If you know of any others let me know and I will relay it to Sofirn.
The L6 has a throw between 450 meters and 480 meters and about 3100 lumen. So even with the OP reflector and weak batteries we have exceeded that throw distance (550m). I should ask what the throw is with the better batteries and the OP reflector. I would guess maybe 600 meters seeing as how the SMO did 750m.
Anyway, the SP70 comes out ahead in the UI with ramping and being able to turn on/off from the side switch. Plus better thermal handling, etc…
So it is up to you. You can mod an L6 like I did, buying a new led, new driver and SMO reflector then spend hours installing everything yourself and spend over $100. The SP70 has most of that done for a fraction of the price.
Keep in mind I’m a big fan of the L6 and I’ve used mine for work nightly for the last 2+ years. I hope we don’t hurt it’s sales much and instead encourages Simon to update it.
Sofirn does not want to mention the price yet as it’s a bit early, but it should be less than the stock L6. Even if you buy the SMO reflector seperately, it should be very similar or maybe still less than the group but price they are targeting.
It probably won’t beat the price of the stock S70S, but that light has been sold for crazy low prices lately. I bought one, but had to immediately swap the driver as I didn’t like the factory driver at all. I also did a custom lighted switch. I’ll do a writeup with pictures on that later.
Anyway, it’s your choice. Buy an L6, buy an SP70, buy neither, buy both. It’s all good. :+1:
We are not doing a group buy list yet. Hopefully we will soon, though.
I don’t know if they will do a normal Group Buy because you have to have somebody willing to do all of the work associated with that. They may just make a list of buyers and sell it directly from they’re AliExpress store or maybe even from Amazon like they did with their Q8 and C8F 21700. We will find out eventually.
They did say the SMO reflectors would be available at the same time as the lights, so they can be bought and shipped together - assuming they don’t find a good centering ring. If they do find a good ring, then the lights will come with the SMO installed. We will have to wait and see.
Jason looks at the specs in the very first thread it says SMO reflector that’s a guarantee lol.
I have no issue with them making and selling a SMO edition for us that’s fine but making us buy an extra reflector is not fair! As for price i guess its going to be at least 50-55 USD you can get a Convoy L6 for less than this price with coupons. Then add an in another 10 USD for the SMO if they decide to do there own thing and only sell the OP reflector edition. For a while Gearbest had the L6 for like 46 USD when i was sharing the codes.
To be honest i am not even angry i am just disappointed with there decision to go against us!
Wow, I have not looked at post #1 in forever. Lol
Maybe it should read:
** UPDATE 08/14/2018 **
1. size: 9cm big head, aluminum bezel
2. Smooth reflector (dependant on getting a nice looking beam), AR coated lens…
Nothing is set in stone. Let’s see if they can buy some different centering rings.
I mean this light is still a good deal no doubt even if you get a cheap L6 say you can get one for 45 USD then add like 15USD for the driver and 10USD for the SMO plus 100 bucks for my labor that is 175 USD 
Yea the very first comment the one buyers will read when looking at this thread says SMO reflector and no quotation or exclusions next to it. Needs a few of these lol
Yea I’m just being salty I’m still keen.
Let’s see how this all shakes out. Sofirn has been one of the more responsive companies that listens and solicits feedback from us at BLF. Their prices are more than fair too.
Thank you for laying it out for me. If it is, maybe not the biggest one, an update to L6 performance-wise then it is still worth going for it for all the other things you mentioned. I’ll be honest with you and say that I don’t have a need for 2x26650 flashlight at all But it doesn’t hurt to have one by the door as self defence tool or take it for walks with the dog for the same reason (not like I’m tall and bald and got psychotic dog so I’m prob not the first one to be mugged)
Like you see I don’t need but will most likely get one, especially that I do rate Sofirn customer service and how responsive they are (unlike e.g. Lumintop ;P).
At the end of the day I don’t even have anything against modding the flashlight, I’m a newbie and have to practice Just wouldn’t like flooder with monstrous ref!
I was messing with my Thorfire S70S (made by Sofirn) and saw that the centering ring is 0.8mm thick. I took a sticker about 0.09mm thick and added layers to the ring and cut off the excess around the edges. I tried 0.98mm, 1.15mm and 1.4mm. It was pretty easy.
I was trying to see if I could get rid of the donut hole pattern from the old xhp70 emitter. No luck on that.
This gave me an idea, though. What if Sofirn uses their existing centering ring, but simply machine the base of the reflector taller or shorter to get a perfect height?
Assuming they have not already bought a bunch of reflectors yet (or made it themselves, I don’t know) then this should be an easy fix. They said they can make one off centering rings for prototypes so they should be able to see what the correct height is.
I’ll run this by Tracy and see what she thinks.
I wrote them yesterday a message that they should try to shim the ring with electrical tape layers
They can quickly make small sample rings (probably with their own 3D printer), but that is not practical for making hundreds in bulk.
Something like this comes pretty close. It has a 1/4 hole, which is about 6.35mm. We need 7mm, so you’d need to run a thin knife around the inside to trim it flush.
It would be nice to find some with a slightly bigger inner hole.
We may not even need to shim anything.
We need more than 7mm. 7mm is the side of the led. The surrounding ring that can fit more like 9-10mm. I didn’t measured or calculated.
That’s right, the diagonal. I cut some from an old sticker. No big deal.
Yep…. :+1: …. 9.8995 mm to be exact.
I melted a stock Jaxman Z1 black centering ring with an xhp50.2 so be mindful of that when you test with random shims
All centering rings should be white, I have never had an issue with white but black almost always melts or smokes at high power.
No need to get disappointed bro. There are several ways to do this. 1. we make two version lights, which is the original plan actually, one is Sofirn SP70, the other is Sofirn SP70 - BLF Version (you say whatever the change you want, but hopefully the group buy interests is >200 orders). 2. we make one light and two reflectors, the disadvantage is you guys need to purchase one more reflector which is a waste.
What I think a good process is we make Sofirn SP70 asap, some of you will get sample to test, and start the Group buy of Sofirn SP70 - BLF Version, talk about what need to change (it has to be small changes), finally we make exactly the BLF Version for you. It takes longer time but it won’t disappoint you easily. 