The light is now longer at 172mm to improve focus I think. The long press for on/off is about 1 second so it doesn’t really bother me too much. The strobe is quite slow at around 4hz and is more like turning a light on and off quickly than an actual strobe. Now onto the performance. It completely destroys my FT03 SST40 in terms of beam distance. Don’t have my FT03S anymore so I cant compare it but I’m sure it’ll beat it as it’s about twice as intense. Haven’t measured it properly but at 4m it was around 700kcd which doesn’t seem right. I did compare it with my FT03 at a longer distance and it was 3.4 times as intense so that should make it 850kcd and with a fully charged cell (shockli 5500) it would be 10% more but the output drops to 90% pretty quick and barely changes down to 4v. Haven’t really checked beyond that. While it isn’t regulated the current draw is low so you should be able to use it for 20 mins with barely any drop in output. I noticed that the corona around the beam wasn’t in the middle so I unscrewed the bezel a bit which made it much more even. Unscrewing the head (not bezel) also changes The focus. It becomes a bit more intense to the eye at shorter distances but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll be better at longer distances. The quality of the light itself seems pretty good especially for being the cheapest LEP available. The beam quality…well it’s green but you don’t really notice it at distances. I did notice that green objects like trees get lit much better. Maybe cause eyes are more sensitive to that colour and beam is also greenish…I guess.
Original shorter first batch (Skylumen)
It certainly looks like it, but the throw is different (higher on SL). Did Vinh mod this to make it throw more? or maybe the NG claims are underrated? I do not own an LEP, but my buddy has the Acebeam W30 (amazing light i can’t find for sale anywhere) and he uses it on the Ferry (boat) he works on and says it seems to out throw the claimed throw based on known points of land markers (said he has to use binoculars to see what he’s lighting up sometimes). He never measured it with a lumen tube, but maybe these things can throw further than the claimed numbers?
Our own forum member ChibiM reviewed it and posted it in another thread from the looks of it Neals claims are underrated as ChibiM got just shy of 1M cd, my guess is SL is overrated too but hard to say since I assume different setups were used to test cd produced. Would be nice to have ratings with the same LEP on different sensors just to see the variation difference between devices.
Compromises should be expected but that’s just my opinion, for around HALF the price of the current cheapest LEP it also triples the CD of the Weltool W3 pro.
Lets not forget its also a sideswitch…. the “long press” for activation is a small price to pay for lightsaber ergonomics.
The Acebeam W30 is in a class of its own in size and throw for LEPs. Acebeam seems to have either discontinued or only sells to approved “applicants” who work in a field that really requires it (i.e. search and rescue, not lightsaber dreamers like me). They do sell the little brother W10 that is comparable to the unbranded LEP. There is no mod from SkyLumen, but Vinh did say there is a few percent variance in output, which would explain the different readings for him, ChibiM, Neal, and published specs.
The w30 was amazing! im bummed i cant buy it… Thanks for the info! i have n idea how lep works. ive read the info about it 10 times but it just doesnt click not that it matters, one day ill buy one. or maybe that awesome HID (?) light neal has thats 10,000 lumens…
Scroll down on the home page and click collections, then scroll down and click nealsgadget light. It gives a dropdown with several options, one of which is w 30. I dont know why its hidden like that, or if he really has them. You could probably email him. He’s been pretty responsive with me.
I own 9 LEP flashilghts, and here are the comparisons. All of them are reviewed at 1lumen.com if you want more details. Mine are measured with a professional Hagner Lux Meter (Laboratory quality).
These runtime are calculated with a different lux meter (Extech SDL400), but using the original measurements of the Hagner
CibiM, thank you these are awesome graphs. I have two questions, because i have never been smart enough to understand graphs - it looks like the unbranded LEP is on both graphs with different candela #’s?
Also, It looks like (essentially) Jetbeam M1X is making 1.3m candela and is equal to or better than the W30and same as the weltool w4? Good to know, i don’t have to try and find a W30 now. awesome.
Yes, correct. The smaller LEPs are much less intense, so I put them in a different graph to have a fairer and clearer comparison. The unbranded LEP falls in between the 2 sizes. It outperforms all the smaller ones, but doesn't reach the intensity the larger ones reach.
The measured candelas are the same in both graphs. The Jetbeam is making 2.3 Mcd, and outperforms the W30 by almost 1 Million candela. The W4 is almost doing 2.2 Mcd, also outperforming the W30 by a lot.
