We are excited to hear your thoughts on the User Interface (UI) of the Sofirn SC28 flashlight!
Since its release, there has been a debate on the UI, and we have gathered feedback from our users. Now, we would like to hear from you! Whether you are a flash lover, a newbie, or even a Sofirn fan, we welcome your ideas and suggestions.
The SC28 is now designed with 3 programs. It aims to meet most people’s daily lighting needs: multiple brightness levels, fast Strobe activation, and less heat generation.
Do you like the current design?
Or do you prefer to have a UI with fewer programs(1 or 2)?
Please share your ideas and the specific operation design for it below. Let’s work together to make the SC28 even better!
Had the Sofirn SC28 for a few days. Sofirn sent me the flashlight.
Just my thoughts, head to tail.
Bezel rounded edges, slightly chamfered, offers protection to the lens. My sample did come with a manufacture dent to a portion of the bezel edge. I imagine this happened prior to anodization.
Lens is glass.
Reflector is unique.
Beam pattern is flood. It is smooth, even, artifact free, no rings while white wall hunting.
Tent is not warm, not cool somewhere in the middle subject to my eyes only. I see no defiant blue or green.
Head is relatively simple in uniform.
Battery level indicator lights upon activation. I appreciate the programmed function. My rule of thumb is when the indication light is flashing red. It needs charged.
The onboard USB-C charging port is a big miss in my opinion. My three year old daughter literally had the rubber boot, torn off within an hour of taking the flashlight out of the shipping package. To which the circuit board can directly and easily be seen. Lots of room for sand and lint to get in there which this flashlight will be exposed to. Not to mention water as I frequently work in rain at night. I would much prefer a magnetic charging port as, those are sealed, or no on board charging at all. A simple, standalone charger purchased with the light would be better in my opinion.
Body of the flashlight has deep almost 3D grooves offers great gripping of the flashlight, this is the best attribute of the flashlight in my opinion. The machining is satisfactory.
Pocket clip is one way and strong. Resting against the prior mentioned grooves of the flashlight body, provides good purchase in a pocket.
Tail cap also has machine grooves to aid in purchase while screwing and unscrewing from the flashlight, however maybe un-necessary. The tail cap has protruding lanyard holes that offer protection to avoid accidental activation, also allowing easy hand manipulation. Again there is a dent from the manufacture, prior to anodization. Side-note, the flashlight does tail stand on a flat surface. This is important to me.
Rear tail switch is my preferred way to manipulate a flashlight. In my opinion, the rubber boot is too large for the switch underneath. There is a lot of side to side gap between the two resulting in an undesired feel.
UI - a very slight delicate forward motion of the tail cap put the light in momentary. It’s very sensitive and delicate. To cycle through modes, is cumbersome in my opinion. As the flashlight can also be cycled by fully, pressing and releasing in rapid succession. After turning on the flashlight, every time, the flashlight will blink. A signal that the light can be switched from group to group if desired. This is not good in my opinion. I do not want the light to flicker when I turn it on to see better in the dark.
Groups - group one, its good.
group two, dont like it.
group three, its what I use the most, all I need and my kids dont drain the battery. I really like moon and low mode.
I would be fine with group one only and no need for a flicker of light every time the light is turned on. The flash light does have memory. No strobe needed for me.
Size - 21700 in my pocket, the overall form and size is great.
Anodization is matte and grippy.
Id love to see an evolution of the SE 28.
I did purchase another one through Amazon with my own money.
Thanks for your time.
superemt.
A forward clicky light needs any means to arrest the highest mode. Also, the switch needs to be completely exposed. Have a look at Armyteks tactical lights for reference.
" After turning on the flashlight, every time, the flashlight will blink. A signal that the light can be switched from group to group if desired. This is not good in my opinion. I do not want the light to flicker when I turn it on to see better in the dark." It seems like a good point that we have not noticed before. We will take it into consideration in our future designs.
Well, when I look back to the time I design the UI. I wanted it to meet many peopel’s needs.
Program1 Moonlight-Low-Medium-High-Turbo is for people who all the brightness for daily use.
Program2: Turbo-Strobe-Medium is for people who use it for tactical, hunting or something like that.
Program3: Moonlight-Low-Medium is for old people or kids and people don’t like hot flashlights. I think it safe to use.
The key is how to switch between the 3 programs.
I know streamlight uses TEN-tap to switch between grograms.
TEN-TAP Programming – Choice of three user selectable programs: 1) high/strobe/low 2) high only 3) low/medium/high.
Maybe I should learn from it by using 8-TAP programming?
Put it this way: A forward clicky allows for momentary light. This is only useful if the light doesn’t switch modes at the same time. Hence, a FC has an advantage over a RC only if the light either has only one mode or there’s another switch of some kind.
Okay, I’m not familiar with the '28 at all, so had to goggle it on the Sofirn site.
I like the edc/kiddy modes, but I’d never even bother with the tacticool mode.
I understand it’s momentary / forward-clicky? Nice! But people have to learn how to switch modes properly.
My Acebeam Pokomon (2AA) is FC and only 2 modes, low/high, and always reverts to low after a while. I’m okay with this (kinda nice, as no blinding surprises at night), but have to remember if I want high, to give it a pre-bap before clicking it, else it’s 3 annoying clicks to on/off/on.
Momentary is a huge plus for any light, in my book. But it really needs 2 switches, whether tail for on/off and side for modes, else 2 in the tail like the Nitecore Tiny Monstors (eg, TM05) or the Lumintop ED20-T, etc.
Oh, and I have no idea what the “flicker” issue is, but it sounds kinda bad, no?
By “exposed”, you mean none of those God-awful “thumb-guards”? If so, yeah, fully agree, and I’ve bitched about those damned things since The Creation.
I like fully proud switches like Solarforces, and I imagine that’s what the Armyteks have?
Anyway, either a full ring around the switch, or fully exposed. NOT those damned things that cut into your thumb if you’re holding it at even slightly the wrong angle.
I like the idea of multiple “programs”. Your “Program1” and “Program3” options sound logical, but I would prefer to see a ‘tactical’ program2 of turbo or high only, with Strobe as an option. Strobe should be constant frequency and hidden (ie triple tap from program2 only). As others have mentioned, the programming mechanism (flash after 5 seconds) needs to be revised to something less innocuous.
I do not own the light yet but I want to when the UI is finalized.
My 2 cents:
I would rather switch programs with xx amount of clicks instead of “click wait for flash tap”. I will only change programs very rarely, so it should be hidden deep.
The programs can cycle per 8 clicks.
or could be 8 taps, hold on last tap and click after:
1 flash: program 1
2 flashes: program 2
3 flashes program 3
Confirm with a small strobe or few flashes
Default program 1 should be (general use):
Cycle modes L - M - H - T with hold before on, with mode memory
last mode memory with single momentary hold while off.
momentary turbo: fast consecutive single TAP on / off and hold second TAP momentary for turbo
I don’t feel the need for strobe here, it is already difficult here, but could be 3 TAP hold last TAP for momentary strobe
program 2 (tactical) and program 3 (easy) are fine for me.
Designing a single switch light isn’t as easy as it sounds, you will probably get a lot of different opinion on it.
I wish you a lot of luck with it Barry, Hopefully you can figure it out!
