Found this one on fasttech and ordered one yesterday. Any ideas how this might perform? Not sure what to expect with regard to the low price. Maybe a project for driver change? (Would be my first real mod). Don’t have any XP-L lights yet, so this one is just for fun.
Got another question too;
What do you call those (old type) lights that were almost the size of a car headlight? You know those fat lights with a big, often shallow reflector, and a handle?
Dreaming about modding/building one of those, only with high output leds.
Usage would be searching for bodies in the water by the beach. (The rare but occational not-so-fun part of my job).
The performance of your flashlight will be much less than is possible with it, but 1500 lumens should be possible. For a better performance you can already get quite a boost with bypassing some springs and soldering in thicker ledwires.
Those plastic halogen spotlights with lead-acid batteries have the wrong shape reflector for leds: leds are unidirectional and require a deeper reflector (to get enough light in the hotspot) that does not need the part behind the focus point:
Soldering in thicker wires should be fairly simple i guess. But I haven’t gotten my mind around this spring bypass thing. I’ve seen it referenced in many threads, but never really understood what is being done, or seen explainatory pictures.
Almost all springs are made of steel. Steel has an only average electric conductivity and add to the resistance in the flashlight, lowering the available voltage for the led. Bypassing it with a copper wire will lower the resistance of the spring 10 times. My current favorite way is like this (with 18AWG silicone wire), but there's versions with the wire inside the spring as well, if around it is not enough space :
I'm looking forward to your review of that light! :D
A properly driven King is a great light, but a lot of the clones have poor heatsinking, so we won't know about yours until you get it. I'm still on the quest for a host to build a triple UV light, and this might be good contender.
go to reply # 22 in that topic mentioned above: Bestfire soup can, I gave in.. (edit: fake XP-L's, see from post #22 on) There you can see what a genuine CREE XP-L looks like compared to the unknown LEDs that have been showing up in some recent SkyRay style lights.
(The Cree XP-L dome extends to the very edge of the chip die with the sides of the done actually flattened at the sides. Also the XP-L dome has a pattern texture and not perfectly smooth like the unknown LEDs are.
Ok, finally had the time to test the flashlight. After reading the BLF thread linked to earlier, I had lowered my expectations.
Firstly, I (too) can confirm that the emitters look nothing like an XP-L emitter.
Secondly, I have to report that the impression is pretty undewhelming. Even considering the low price paid and despite that I had already lowered my expectations.
As a host the light seems, well, ok i guess. It’s got three modes; low medium and high. Always starts at high, then cycles through low-med-high.
I powered it up with 4 new and freshly charged Keeppower 18650’s and compared to a few other lights that I own and am familiar with: A Trustfire TR-3T6, an Olight Warrior M21X, and a Nitecore MH20.
The following pictures were taken with the same (manual) settings on a Nikon D5100 camera. All lights had fully charged batteries of decent quality and had the same distance to the wall I used as a target. Should be directly comparable.
The “triple XP-L” was also tested with 4*Xtar 3100 18650’s with the exact same result.
The so called triple XP-L from fasttech:
The TR-3T6:
The M21X:
The MH20:
As the pictures show, not exactly very impressive. Not even for fake emitters I think…
Will of course not recommend this light to anyone. Lots of cheaper lights give a lot more light than this. Pretty much useless. Will consult Fasttech about this, see what happens.
A more thorough review will not happen from my part, as I feel that this light just isn’t Worth the effort.
Depending on the construction, and if there is any heat sinking under the emitters, you could drop some XM-L2s or XP-Ls in there, then replace the driver and turn that into a light that's actually good.
I'm still trying to find one of these to use for host duty for a triple UV build myself...
