Not sure of its brand,as you can see, has CREE on the light, (lmao), seriously, not sure of the brand since its only labeled as a CRee XM L2…?
Am still trying to work it out with the vendor. He says he is going to send me out a new one with the correct xm L2 led… We will see.Thinking he’ll probably (unknowingly.?) send another light with a lattice bright. Told him I’ll explain to him how to check what led is in the light he is going to send me. He said he understands and will send out the right lite. Starting to understand this eBay flashlite vendor ’game…
Here is the pic of my CRee/lattice ‘bright zoomie’…
Pill looks ok to (me) someone that knows nothing about pills. What to look for in a good pill…?
Thanks for the advice on Mtn and the xp g2 with Qlite driver. Seems this lights pill has a 20mm lattice bright star and 20mm driver that draws 1.2amp on high on my fluke mmeter. Which Qlite driver should I get…? Just trying to learn here, why a xp g2 instead of a xml2 or xpl, isn’t the output of those better than the xp g2…?
I bought three of these fake Cree flashlights to use as starting points for my extreme tactical flashlights. When they arrived I removed the latticebright clones and driver boards. I replaced the LEDs with genuine Cree XM-L2s from The LED Store. These came pre-soldered to Luxdrive star bases. Each flashlight got its own color temperature. One warm white (T3 bin), one neutral white (T5 bin), and one cool white (T6 bin). The driver boards that I used provide a constant current of 3.04 Amps. Everything was going great until I ran into a BIG problem. I will be powering these flashlights each with a single 18650 Li-ion battery. The problem is that very few manufacturers produce a battery that is capable of providing a continuous 3 Amps. Some can for one or two minutes, but will get very HOT and the current will fall off quickly! What I discovered is that there are counterfit 18650 batteries out there. Like the fake cree flashlights claiming 3500 lumens (NOT), some of these batteries even boast up to 5800mah (joke). I tried several different batteries and I finally found one that I’m very happy with: The Panasonic NCR18650B (made in Japan). This battery is amazing and even after 15 minutes of continuous use, is still able to provide a full 3amps of current to my LEDs. I’m very happy with my extreme tactical flashlight. According to the specs found on the Cree website. Driving the Cree XM-L2 LED at 3 Amps will provide a little over 1000 lumens of light output!
Don’t believe everything you read when shopping for a tactical flashlight. As of July 4th 2016, the max lumens you will get from a flashlight with a single LED will be a little over a thousand. As you can see, actually getting this kind of performance often requires some extensive modification.
The LED's you bought are over priced for what you are getting. Richard at http://www.mtnelectronics.com/ (US), or Hank at http://intl-outdoor.com/ (China) would be way better sources. For less money you could have gotten a true copper DTP MCPCB/star (Noctigon) - worth about $2 more than the Luxdrive stars, and at 3A, probably got a 10% boost in output along with longer, higher output runtimes.
There's tons of lies, lies, lies out there. It pervades the LED flashlight advertising/sales biz now - no big online retailers can be trusted - Amazon is infested with it.
You also could have done a little better buying a SANYO GA 3500 mAh or LG MJ1 3500 mAh cell - bout the same cost and same capacity as the 3400B but less resistance, so they are able to keep a high current longer.
For the cheaper off-brand budget lights yes there are not many single-Led lights that are 1000 lumens or more. But with premium lights using premium LEDs such as XM-L2’s or XP-L emitters there are many well over 1000 lumens output. Also note that many of the larger single-LED premium lights that use emitters such as a MT-G2, XHP-70, etc are reaching 1500 ~ 2000 lumens all in stock factory form.
Hi, I'm new here and this thread is disturbing but very useful.
I bought what is supposed to be a Sipik SK68 from Gearbest with what they claim is a Cree Q5 (XR-E Q5) emitter. Inside is definitely not an XR-E but rather what seems to be a fake XP-E look-alike, based on what I have read and comparing photos. (Square insertion pads right on edge, no third wire.) Since I'm kind of inexperienced with the topic, could someone more qualified confirm my appraisal of the LED I received? (Damage to corners of PCB was already there - the workmanship of the assembly of the flashlight is pretty awful, but that's a different topic.)
See response 736 above and earlier discussion and pictures for identification.
You probably bought one of these (thirteen search results)? http://www.gearbest.com/sk68-\_gear/
And probably paid anywhere from $2.99 to $9.18 for what you got?
(the pricey one has a probably-junk charger bundled with it)
And with luck you used PayPal?
Nobody has sold a real SK68 for probably years, but every store is selling the clones/copies/imitations.
Pretty consistently they’ve had LatticeBright emitters the last few years, which early on were blue-purple-craplights but have gotten rather better since then.
If it’s a good enough cold white light and works properly, you probably bought a cheap lesson there and got value for it.
If you’re entirely new to all this, you could complain and they will likely offer you a partial refund, after the usual send-us-a-video and etc.
I buy these lights for around $2 (patience at eBay or AliExpress, they show up off and on), and replace the emitter and the driver, and maybe replace the pill, and ….
I wasn’t expecting anything amazing with the flashlight, but at the time I was not aware of the rampant fake emitter situation, and I naively assumed I would get a real Cree LED, but maybe one from an “off” batch. I bought the light with the idea of having something cheap in my car, along with an Energizer Ultimate Lithium primary installed.
The tint is a bit blue/purple but not altogether unbearable for an emergency car flashlight. I think I paid $3.77 each, and got two of them. Since I’m just beginning to consider modding etc., I figured I could try swapping in a (real) emitter on the second light. I will, of course, research that but any appropriate choice come to mind for a relatively easy and nice emitter swap?
Definitely not a Cree XR-E Q5 emitter. ( and i agree its a roughly handled copy of a old first generation XP-E. The original Sipiks and its clones are getting difficult to find with the XR-E these days, as most of the cheap ones we seem from many sellers now come with a crappy purple tint Latticebrignt led.
Howiezowie, if you wanna make a straightforwardly nice & simple mod to that flashlight, take a look at these bargainly priced emitters mounted on 16mm boards:
Cree XP-E HEW 226-Lumen 2900K LED Emitter on 16mm Aluminum Base If that max 226 lumens figure is right, that means this emitter is a Q3 bin which, for that (2850K according to official docs) tint, it should be either an 80CRI typical or an 80CRI minimum emitter. :THUMBS-UP:
The pictures they have definitely shows a ” XR-E” , so if they sent you one with a crappy LB XP-E clone its false advertising. The originals Sipiks i have that i bought 3 + years ago definitely has Cree XR-E emitters in them, and are far better built, brighter, & have a better tint than any of the knock-off clones we see now.
if its a “real” XP-E would be fine, but its difficult to find real Cree leds in anything these days in lights under 10 bucks, what we usually end up with is a horrible tint, inefficient latticebright copy.
