Starfish Z3
C8 OP reflector, 21700 battery, side switch. Totally my taste. The design caught my eye . Ordered it with LHP73B in what looks like 5000K. It also came with the battery which looks like Samsung 50S.
The body is built like a tank to be bonest, pretty robust with good machining. Not flawless, not perfect, but really good. Anodizing is great, came in titanium blue, which is a first one for me but I really like it. There are some post machining, pre anodizing marks on the body probably caused by the transport in-between but one needs to look for them in order to find them.
It hosts a 25mm driver which looks like to be a fet driver with 2 fets. I don’t know the actual architecture of the driver, these are just my observations. Mcpcb is also a 25mm non standard one with dtp.
Bezel and button are made of stainless steel.
UI is the one thing I don’t like about this light so the driver might get replaced with something else eventually.
There are 4 modes, a moonlight and the turbo. Yeah, there’s also a blinky. Moonlight is 1H from off. Also from off 1C gets you the last level used and every next C cycles through the 4 modes low to high. 2C gets you the turbo, 3C the strobe and 1H from on turns the light off. Mode spacing is pretty nice and from the highest level to turbo there’s some wow factor involved. This thing gets bright on what might be a direct drive. The moonlight is also a bit too bright but considering there’s a 73B dropping some light, how low can you go?
In the comparison beamshots there’s an L21A with XH-P70.3HI 4000K 90CRI and SMO reflector used, with 6V8A driver and EVE 50PL.
Once in a while I see a Starfish flashlight pop up on Aliexpress and they always intrigue me, but most of the time they are just a (tiny) bit to expensive for me (on AE), to buy them basicly as a “host”.
Man, that black switch and black switch retaining ring look so nice on this color body! Was it difficult to get the pressfit(?) stainless switch ring out? Did the black switch retaining ring need some modification to fit?
It appears they used quite a decent wire gauge for the driver wires to the LED; looks (at least) like 18AWG I think?!?
The original retaining ring isn’t pressed in, it’s screwed in just like the black one. The only problem with the original is it has zero notches for the pliers to grab onto. It was a royal pain in the ass to get it out. The black button and ring are from Hank and they are almost a direct fit. This one kind of works, the silver one wouldn’t tho. Hank buttons are much shorter than the original ones so one would need to swap the switch for a taller one to preload the button otherwise it can happen that the button slips out below the retaining ring.
It basicly costs me double that on Aliexpress, with an additional small shipping fee. (And with less LED options.)
27 bucks makes it much more interesting and also justifies doing some modding on it. (Although that 25mm driver makes it a bit harder to find an interesting replacement driver.)
Just after typing the above, I remembered that Wurkkos sells the TS30S Pro driver and I just checked and it is a 25mm driver and with an electronic side switch. It is “only a FET driver”, but it does gives the Anduril 2 Ui.
This is the direct link (and price) for the TS30S Pro driver:Accessories service
I fully believe that it was!
Good luck with that!
Just out of curiosity, because I noticed the Convoy C8+ in the first picture; is the head diameter the same and does the Z3 maaaaybe has the same thread as the C8+? It’s probably a long shot, but if the bezels are interchangeable; Simon now also sells a SS black bezel for the C8+: black stainless Steel bezel for C8 C8+ M21A, sawtooth shape - Convoy flashlight.
The C8+ thread fits but the bezel is about 2mm too long so I’d need a spacer on the outside of the glass. Even the outside diameter is the same so the black Convoy bezel would fit if the thread was shortened. Also the reflector seems to be the same as in C8.
I’m not sure if the USB-C port lines up with that of the Z3, but the price of the Wurkkos is still acceptable and it at least gives you a different option in terms of UI.
I haven’t taken out a TS30S Pro driver, so I don’t know how the other side of the driver looks like.
I’m looking forward to read what the results are!
I don’t know what AWG thickness the TS30S Pro driver wires are, so it might be worth swapping in some thicker wires if they turn out to be too thin.
Retaining ring has a shelf on the bottom side, 1.5mm deep where the 22mm would fit in. The retaining ring itself has a width of 2mm. If I turn it upside down to fit the driver, all I need is another retaining ring again mounted upside down to lock the driver down.
This would raise the driver by 0.5mm. INML 22mm driver would fit and since it has a directly hooked positive wire, the spring will compensate for the difference.
I couldn’t find a picture of the driver outside of the light but i’ll show a TS11 driver as it appears to be similar in design (photo courtesy of @James_C iirc):
