when buying those cheepy $5 lights it seems you get to play the a dice roll, you may get one that is only 200 lumens and doesnt hold its brightness or you may get one that actually is a decent 800 lumens and lasts 5 years, so are there any specific sellers that tend to give out a relatively constant supply of good cheap lights? as good as $5 ones can get obviously.
this is for a friend who may need a bunch of them for workers or to sit around the facility, not for heavy use, but will put out plenty of light and will last a year.
i bought one of those “1200 Lumens CREE LED Flashlight Torch Lamp” lights form Ebay for $ 3.71, but it don’t have a cree emitter, it has some generic unknown LED with roughly 90 lumens on high.
The last two links are just a couple of the many Sipik SK68 clones out there, and is nowhere close to 1000 lumens, they can be anywhere between 150 to 300 lumens average.
Either way the last two are the better deals for sub-5 dollar lights.
If you want a decent light you have to pay for it.
Now do you want AA lights or lithium ones?
For AA it will actually cost more, its not a popular category for very bright lights, for lithium i would suggest a Convoy M1, the best rounded light you will find, it will cost $15 plus $10 for two good (not cheap knockoff) batteries and $15-20 for a decent charger.
With what do you plan to power these?
If you plan to not get them back, and a small amount of light is enough a 3$ Zoomy with a AA lithium primary is a good way.
On alkaline a these light perform considerable worse and to manage 18650 seems to be not planned…
The linked sk68 clones are nice but I like these smaller ones more.
10 pieces cost with BLF coupon 29.81$ At banggood…
If you want 18650/26650 and cheap the f13 from gearbest might be a good alternative it costs around 10$ with coupon and is way better than the 3.70$ light.
I bought one of those zoom type lights on Amazon for like $3 or so thinking that it would be a gamble and that if it was junk, big deal, it ain’t much money and worth a shot. It’s not a bad little light at all. I like it. I think it’s a great light for a tackle box, glove box, kitchen drawer and so forth. It takes AA batteries and works fine still. I like it.
Yea I have a couple for random situations … Not my go to light but good for extra people or to sit in places you might need quick decent light … Like the backyard … Car Ect .
Mine pull around 1.5A on a fresh Duracell AA.
Alkalines sometimes leak if treated not so well and high current and high temperature seems to be big factors to accelerate this.
I would say if fastech still delivers the cheap nice batts, put a lithium primary in to get best performance and leakage safety. I guess the most people don’t use flashlights for longer time anyway so the first cell will probably last forever.
If you can’t source the NICE go with alkalines, these lights are designed for them.
All I gave away had either a NICE AA or a ikea Ladda in them and I don’t use primary cells anyway, so I have no personal experience.
Despite you can use alkalines, I have searched out some things to make clear why a lot of people her don’t use primaries anymore:
Here is a picture from a Duracell AA datasheet, to estimate how AAs behave under load:
So under these circumcpstancescircumstances capacity is lower than 1Ah, the lithium batts have a lot more energy in them.
Here is a nice comparison from HKJ: http://lygte-info.dk/info/ComparisonOfAABatteryChemistry%20UK.html
I think there’s ‘sticker shock’ for most people looking at the price for the Energizer lithium primaries.
I haven’t tried the Chinese ones lately; four or five years ago they weren’t impressive.
Has anyone reviewed the ones Fasttech has? I hear they’re fine, and the price is good.
For non-flashoholics, getting them set up with lithium primaries is a key to happiness, especially now that LEDs will stay cheerfully bright and reassuring for weeks, maybe months, all the while alkalines can be corroding away inside the flashlight.
alright thought so, ill probably just pick up a cheap but decent 18650 for it, it wont be used that much and its more of a light to keep as an extra backup or such, my new BLF Special Edition X6 or my 2 super monster lights you made me will be my primaries anyway lol
