Category: Flashlights

When I first started learning about flashlights last year, I went to CandlePower Forums (CPF). It is a very active discussion area and there is a wealth of information there and members who know crazy amounts about flashlights. But they kind of look down their noses at people like me who buy cheap Chinese lights from DealExtreme, sometimes even showing outright hostility and intolerance towards even discussing cheap lights (for instance if you provide a link to a light you see at DealExtreme, the moderators will delete it). And if there is one thing I can’t tolerate, it is intolerance. So early this year one guy got fed up and started his own discussion forum dedicated to cheap lights, called Budget Light Forum (BLF). It has been nice to have a place like that and I have posted reviews of some of the different lights I have bought. There are people from all over the world on that forum.

Continue reading “Mr.Lite BLF AA-Y4E”

I’ve been trying out a lot of flashlights over the last year or so. The most expensive light I have is made by Fenix. It is pretty nice, but a little dated. Since I bought that light, I’ve learned a lot more. I like the Cree XP-G R4 LED with a neutral tint. I bought a couple of these LED’s and put them in flashlights and they are two of my favorites now. They aren’t cool blue like most LED lights, instead having a slightly yellowish tint.

Another nice feature is momentary On which you can get if you have a forward clicky. This allows you to halfway depress the switch and the light comes on. I only have one light like that, all the rest are reverse clickies where you have to fully depress the switch and then let go before the light comes on.

I’d also like different brightness levels: one bright for distance and one dimmer for close up. Usually you can change the modes by halfway depressing the switch, but it would be nice if there was a way to set whether the light would come on in High or Low and stay that way until you reset it. The Low is very tricky: outdoors you want 10 lumens, but indoors you might want 1 or less, especially if you are reading something. Therefore it would be good if the Low mode could be set by the user.

Continue reading “Preflash”

Reviewer’s Overall Rating: ***

Summary:

Battery:	1×18650
Switch:	Reverse clicky
Modes:	5 (H-M-L-S-SOS)
LED Type:	Cree MC-E M bin
Lens:	Glass
Tailstands:	No
Price Payed:	$20.00
From:	DealExtreme

Pros:

• Bright
• Cheap
• Mode memory works well
• Nice Low

Cons:

• Under-driven
• Dark donut hole in beam
• Current not well-regulated
• Whines on medium
• Host can’t handle heat

Continue reading “Ultrafire WF-501B with MC-E Drop-in”

Previously I wrote about building a P60 drop-in from some different component parts. The P60 format is designed for that kind of tinkering. But when I bought the LED for that drop-in, I also got a second one just like it and looked around for a home. I thought I could put it in the AKOray K-106 3-mode programmable light I got earlier and had already taken out its LED and installed a brighter Cree XP-G R5. But when I did that I found a hole in the “pill” that the LED is mounted to and the XP-G R4 is on a smaller chip that barely covers that hole. That makes it harder to glue the LED in place but also greatly diminishes how fast heat can be transferred to the pill and then to the body of the light. This is very bad because even though the LED is very efficient, it produces more heat than light and if that heat has nowhere to go, the LED will cook in place and burn out.

Continue reading “Flashlight Rebuild”

Last year the big American LED maker, Cree, introduced a new LED called the XP-G. It was similar to their earlier XP-E, but had a bigger light emitter. I got a light with this LED in it recently and liked it. Then on the flashlight bulletin board someone was talking about ordering some of these LED’s from a supplier in Australia. Cree will sell you LED’s, but only 1,000 at a time. There don’t seem to be many US suppliers, so this company, Cutter, is maybe the best bet. But they charge $12 minimum for shipping an order to the US. So a guy in Hawaii was trying to organize a US-based group buy to divide the shipping costs, even though he also had to charge us for shipping once the LED’s were in the US (he bought 10 LED’s total).

Continue reading “Building a New Light”