Wurkkos TS30S + monster LED SBT90.2 = $60 4750lm 1km SUPER-Thrower. Comparison w/ TS30S Pro + Nightwatch Valkyrie (world's brightest single LED light) & LATEST: Firefly T9R w/ FFL909MX. (Summary & measurements on P. 1)

I did some prelim “test” using ceiling bounce and like it a lot - thanks. FWIW the numbers vary a little bit but Samsung battery has about 10% higher lumen. For example Samsung 40T ~ 420 lm Wurkkos battery about ~380 lm. I have a few questions since you appear to have had a lot of experience:

1. I put my cell phone next to flashlight (more or less underneath hotspot). Does it matter much where you put phone?
2. Large room vs small room like a bathroom (boy my wife is gonna tell her siblings and they are going to laugh about this) - does it matter?
3. Floody light vs light with throw - any change or comment in the way you measure?
4. Do you try to put light closer to ceiling? Mine is about 5 ft from ceiling.
5. My numbers - are they about the same range as what you are getting?
Thanks again.

Code for TS30S on Amazon is 35lzu2w9 makes it $62 and it just went up to $96 for regular price for there. Plus it comes with the murder bezel and afaik wurkkos and Banggood no longer are including it. Code stops this week. (New member here btw, made a profile just to share). Cheers
*edit to say nice review too!

Wow bro…10% is pretty decent in terms of bypassing. Surprised that even with double springs it could get this.

Of coz, just gotta keep in mind that this would cause the kickdown to occur a little faster, but i think with a SBT 90.2 (5000+ lumens) in a 230 gram host still ought to be pretty ok / practical

Answer 1. Just test it out yourself, put it 3 inches away, 6 inches, 9 inches. It probably would vary just a little in most cases, not a big difference.
I know for my case here it wouldn’t matter much. But of course keep it at the same place for the same flashlight before/after mod.

2. Doesn’t really matter significantly…but do measure at just 1 location so that at least this is a constant.

3. There is a little variation unless if it really is a throwy light (eg your TS30S) vs a very floody light (eg X80-GT2), else not a big deal. The light sensor reads less if you hit it from the side, but it’s gonna be from quite an angle wrt the flashlight’s hotspot. Also think in terms of flash photography, if you angle it 45 deg, then of course the light is gonna be reflected away from the photographer, so it’s gonna be the same for an extremely floody light (Acebeam X80-GT2).
For these, really gotta put them into contraptions like pvc lumen tubes etc.

4. 5 feet is good, not much issue if it were 3 or 5 feet.

5. Yes, in range.

Regardless, it’s just something that you do it and be happy with it . Coz in real life, like what i have posted above before, things like whether or not our eyes are adapted to the dark and also how our pupils react to the hotspot/spill in different environments (target reflectiveness) would wash out any of these 10, 20% differences. That’s why experienced flashaholics would tell you all these small differences dont make a difference in reality. In fact we know that if we wanna upgrade, take for eg my 25k lumens OTF JKK76, it’s gonna be at least a MS12 mini, minimum. That’s if you really want to be a happy flashaholic. :smiley:
Or put it this way, i actually have 2pcs of JKK76 (1 is 6500k and the other 3000k), and also i can switch on 1pc and then the other in say setting 3, turbo etc. I’d say the above upgrade example of JKK76 -> MS12 mini is true, just on the lumens output aspect. Other than the turbo setting on the 2nd pc, all other settings don’t really make much of significant difference and that is only coz if i were in the know that i am using/controlling the 2nd pc.

Comparison of another great thrower Nitecore MH12S with Wurkkos TS30S. Nitecore has same smooth reflector type as Wurkkos and hence has a good, useful bright spill (brighter than the two TIR lights - Sofirn IF22a and Olight M2R Pro). It has very respectable 349 m throw and has one thing that Wurkkos TS30S can’t match: the small size. As mentioned neither flashlight is “better” than the other as they are different classes of light. Having said that, it’s interesting to see how the Wurkkos just obliterates MH12S when it comes to throw and brightness.

The Wurkkos sometimes feels like a car’s headlight beam the way it lights up the road (!). I have to admit I don’t feel like taking the Nitecore out with me as much as I used to. If you crave throw and brightness & don’t mind the larger size , the answer is clear.

Pictures taken in RAW format, fixed/same exposure and white balance.


@2100, thanks for the detailed and very helpful answer. Yeah learning something new to fool around with is lots of fun :innocent: and I’m experimenting with different ways as well. I have tried both living room and one of the bathrooms that has no windows (favored because I could test during the day, all day lol). Preliminary testing shows a fairly consistent 5-10% increased lumen when switched from Wurkkos 5000 mAh to Samsung 40T 4000 mAh (with ~25 A rating).

One thing I’ve noticed is it seems ceiling bounce “favors” spill over hotspot, meaning it doesn’t reflect hotspot’s brightness as much? My Convoy M21F has more spill but hotspot is not nearly as bright as M21E, but ceiling bounce shows equal number or slightly higher for M21F (test was done in the small bathroom with a mirror btw). I am sure this is nothing new for the veterans but for others who are trying this the first time like me, that observation emphasizes that the numbers are not for comparison between different lights. It’s more for mods/change done to the same light and for checking before/after result (as you’ve already pointed out).

@Shimshamtymamm thanks for the code, got me to finally pull the trigger on the TS30S! Been on the fence for quite a while, but this was enough to seal the deal for me.

Oh wow that’s a great deal and Amazon no less - just curious how you found out about the code, did you email Wurkkos and ask for one? The LED on this light alone is $30; surprised how Wurkkos could make a living with such big discount but it’s our gain :+1: .

The “murder bezel” LOL. You’re right my AliExpress version does NOT have the murder bezel and darn it now I want one! :smiling_imp: :confounded:

BTW if anyone is new to this hobby and just bought this light, temperature calibration and increasing max thermal limit to 50-55 C are ABSOLUTE must. Easy enough to do with Anduril 1, just ask this forum for help if necessary.

No problem man! I love saving money on lights too so I get it. Funny thing, I actually wanted the MDK bezel mainly for display/uniqueness. Was just about to pull the trigger on the wurkkos site just because I wanted to get one before gone and found this. Score.

You will never know my secretssssss……

Facebook group named wurkkos flashlight deals lol. They put them up there really quick. They posted it there a day or so before here.

Please enjoy your time here, Shimshamtymamm!

@raccoon city - LOL :smiling_imp:

Noticed after this that Wurkkos has these codes posted here in a thread of theirs as well [Wurkkos Amazon US] 30% off for HD15 /TS21/WK30/TS30S weekly deal

Gotta say, that WK30 is also looking mighty tempting

Comparing mods in same light is definitely 100% doable with just the ceiling bounce method. Battery, bypass, driver wire upgrade, different drivers, AR lens, temperature of the host/battery esp for those using in winter months, all these comparisons.

For ceiling bounce, all these are very rough ballpark figures if you are talking about comparing different lights, but it’d work ok. We just make do with this quick and dirty method as it’s the easiest and most accessible to most, then we accept the drawback in accuracy. For better comparison between lights, best to build a lumen tube or box.

Just that i am plain lazy, and also i am not bothered between the difference between a 20000 lumen light and 25000 lumen light. :smiley: So if the meter reads 2000 lux for light A and 2500 lux for light B, i just accept that it is reasonably true and it’s 20k lumens vs 25k lumens for them, and not think about spill angles affecting it. Coz ultimately if we’d also throw in other factors like heat sag, battery sag, and as you’d know all the pocket rockets we use can easily drop 30% in output from initial 0.5s to 30th second without us noticing that visually, it’s really a very complex matter.

In fact, i can only see the difference between my Sofirn Q8 Pro and JKK76 with a ceiling bounce with lights held 2 feet away from the ceiling (so the spill also do get bounced), on the meter the Q8 Pro is like 14k lumens and JKK76 25k in a relative comparative sense. I don’t really see the difference between my Amutorch DM70 vs my JKK76s, measuring 2000 and 2600 respectively on the meter in ceiling bounce, and esp since the DM70 sags slower and less than the JKK76.

So, have fun bro……maybe you’d hammer together a pvc lumen tube or something if you are really after the absolute accuracy when comparing lights.

Thanks for the welcome RC. :slight_smile:
P.S. your hot

Olight M2R Pro Warrior is another well known and very popular EDC. It remains one of my favorite walk lights because of its warm tone (CCT 4900k) and it doesn’t blind people walking in opposite direction. The optic is very well chosen by Olight: hotspot of Olight is wide (important to me for a walk light) and spill is dimmer than my lights with smooth reflectors, but not too bad. Just because I find it interesting, I reposted IF22a’s beamshot here so we could compare how the two TIR optics result in such different beamshots, and hence different purposes for the 2 lights. IF22a being an all-out thrower, Olight a more balanced all-purpose light.

Based on results against other lights so far, it’s obvious comparison with Wurkkos TS30S will be like bringing a knife to a gun fight. What the Olight does have is a nice warm tone, very rare for the throwy light (Another thrower with a warm tone? Convoy’s great M21F and M21E with Getian GT-FC40 4500k). Other than the warm color, it’s no fight at all as Wurkkos overwhelms Olight wrt brightness and throw.

Speaking of warm tone, while it doesn’t show here, the SBT90.2 LED beam color is warmer than Sofirn IF22a and Nitecore MH12S, both @ 6500k which is a very harsh blue, too harsh for my taste. The SBT90.2’s warmer tone is a pleasant surprise, very obvious with back to back comparison, and I love it. SBT90.2 is not as warm as Olight, and no Nichia when it comes to CRI, but heading in the right direction. I believe the CCT was measured to be around 5100k-5600k by djozz in this post here but not sure if it’s the same LED as what Wurkkos uses.



It’s because of this post I ordered this light. $55 damn!

Yeah, I wish I were that hot.

I'm actually just an average looking dude, but I do appreciate attractive women.

Who doesn’t? LOL

Got my TS30S this afternoon. Initial impressions are positive but I still have to wait quite a while for dark, and the little bit of playing I’ve done has been with a Convoy LiitoKala lii-50e cell. Seems to fall nicely between my Catapult V6 SST-70 and Convoy 4x18a SBT-90.2 as one would expect.

This bad boy heats up fast on turbo, so while I was/am considering picking up a few 40T’s on sale, I’m not sure how beneficial that really will be. The thermal calibration was off from the factory as expected, and the cell showed up with a lower than anticipated voltage of under 3.5v.

My hand-o-mometer indicates that the hottest part of this light is around the button, which makes sense considering that would be closest to where the LED is mounted. This is positive in that it seems to imply a good thermal path from LED to the body of the flashlight, but also seems to lead to significant heating of the battery tube where the light is held.

Edit: While I don’t intend to use the MDK bezel, the stock bezel seems to be on there extremely tightly. When I attempted to remove it, the light unscrewed from the pill section instead.

Nice write up, like the part about the hand-o-mometer.