new flashlight cree xm-l
won a cree XM-L led flashlight on ebay for mere 11 bucks….waited for about a month for it to show up from china….sigh…but yesterday it got here
holy fucking crap this thing is awesome !
i got a P7 900 lumens flashlight(reviewed before), and this xml led is just a tad more powerful, but it has a lot more throw, (throw=ability to light up distant objects) (spread is what a household bulb does and lights up a room evenly)
P7 gets hot…real hot, and uses a bunch of power, after 15 minutes it burning hot, however the xml does not which is really cool, well it gets hot, just not as fast
these powerful leds have a tendency to spread a lot, and so not be the best for lighting up and object 50-100 yards away…xml fixes this
if your looking for a led for lamping or general use i would highly recommend the xml, its the best throw, stays cooler
the internal of the flashlight contains the reflector and circuitry…same as the r5, s2 and other leds, which means if you buy a cheap gun light with a xenon or something you can probably drop this sucker right in as a replacement and get upgraded from 20-40 lumens to a 1000 !
also if your looking for über leds keep an eye out for sst-50 and sst-90, last one is supposedly capable of 2500 lumen….from a single led…im gonna ask electrolumens if i can get my fire sword converted up to these…imagine…four sst-90 = 10.000 lumen, bet you could cook with that…its current 3000 lumen is not bad, but more is better
anyhow the xm-l led is highly recommended
All Replies
digging around has led me to two batteries i would really like to test
a redilast 3100mah (the 2900mah version got raving reviews) and AW 2900mah battery, but auch 20 bucks a piece….
these are supposed to be among the top end batteries….and possibly whats needed to get full power out of the fandy 3000 lumen flashlight
honestly i think the fandy flashlight should have come in a 3 or 4 cell configuration, 2 cells is really pushing the batteries hard
any particular test of ultrafire or tenergy anyone would like to see performed
i just tested the tenergy with a 5A discharge and that i can NOT do…it drops to 3V within second
which conerns me a bit as the fandyfire should be delivering about 3A pr led…that 9A at 3.7v=33watts…..it has two batteries so 7.4v so the flashlight needs about 4-4.5A….lets see if it will do 4
4A 910mah over 14 minutes not shabby compared to my findings with the ultrafire
wow that was disapointing
the ultrafire 2400 mah only got 1239mah out of it at 1A discharge plus the 79 from the 3A , thats 1318mah…in a 2400 mah battery very disappointing !
gonna check my other ultra fire battery and see if that behave the same….
wonder if they can do 2400 at all….maybe at a 0.01 amp discharge
all of a sudden the Tenergy looks way better even though it doessnt quite live up to its numbers either
EDIT
just tried my other Ultrafire battery…it only gave up 68 mah before it hit 3V….as soon as the 3A load was put on it it dropped voltage to below 3.4v
bad battery 🙄
after 3A which only yeilded 68 mah i continued with 1A…798Mah wow these batteries are crap
DO NOT BUY BUY ultrafire 2400MAH protected lipo batteries they are grey and suck if you need them for a high discharge application, like a XML led on high output which will pull between 2A and 3A
heres 1A discharge graph i didnt know they where so crappy
wow just tested the ulltrafire 2400 mah in a 3Amp discharge..
it went from 4.19v to 3v in under 2 minutes, and only put out 74mah much much less than i anticipated, thiese grey ultrafires can NOT handle high current draw like 3A the graph messed up….the logview is not the best program when it comes to exporting graphs and stuff
but i hooked up the battery and verified that i would not take and a slow charge to make sure it was full, then started the discharge at 3A voltage dropped from 4.2v to 3.5v and quickly declined to 3V and the chargers stopped to protect the battery
temperatures stayed around 100F but in less than 2 minutes it really didnt have the time to heat up…74MAH all of a sudden makes the tenergy batteries look at lot better even though they could only claim about 1000mah at 3A before low voltage cutoff
trying a 1A discharge right now, will see if it can take that, so far its been running only a few minutes and voltage has stabilized around 3.7v…lets hope the curve flattens out and it stays there for the next two and a half hours
ok so i got 1200 mah extra out of the battery (EDIT Tenergy) at 1A discharge
now to test the ultra fire 2.4Ah (2400mah) once the tenergy is charged and good to go
ok just finished a 3A discharge of the tenergy a disapointing 1038 mah before it hit 3V….once load was off it jumped back to 3.8v so im draining it at 1A
EDIT included temperature in graph it ended at 37C about 99F
in real life this would mean you get 1Ah or about 25 minutes on high in a flashlight drawing 3Amps…..you will then be able to continue with flashlight in a lower output mode….not sure how long…still discharging
charge just finished …charged at 1A, the charger as it near the end automatically drops the amps its stuffing into the cell to maximise MAH….it got 2298 mah into it
here the graph
why 4.19 volt and not 4.20….well you see rc lipo packs last longer when they are not fully charged everytime, stopping at 4.19 should give the batteires more cycles without sacrificing power very much….at least thats what the hardcore Rc guys have found out….for racing you dont care about cycles, you want as much as possible and then i charge my packs to 4.2
i also do not discharge my packs below 3.4v thats because of two things…going any lower will only give me 100-150 mah out of 5000, we are talking about a few more seconds of driving…and going lower is hard on the batteries…..3V is the norm…2.75 is absolute minimum before chemical reaction severely fucks up a pack….but stopping at 3.4v the cells are less stressed towards the end and prolongs the batties life…..now in flashlight theres no fancy electronics…and batteries dont cost 30+ bucks for just one pack…..so i dont take as much care
but i dont want to reprogram the charger every time i switch between different lipo’s….so take it as it is….i have done my research on rc batteries, and theres practicably no reason to put 4.2v into a pack when 4.19 makes them last so much longer
1A discharge done
note end voltage is 3v an not 2.75 which is where the protection kicks in, also my charger is programmed to quit at 4.19v not 4.2 theres abou 100 mah lost tight there
ok so i got 2158 mah out of it at 1A before it reached 3V….once load wa off it went back tp 3.5vso i set discharge to ½A, and got 189mah more out of it
so 2600-2158-189-100=153 mah which there would be if i let it go to 2.75v …so rating is ok
as you can see as soon as theres a load the voltage drops, in this case it drops from 4.19 to 3.8 just about instantly and then flattens out
gonna repeat test at 3A and record graph as well, thought i could remember the details but no…will hook up temp prope as well
at 1A the battery did only get a few degrees over ambient…so no problem there….right now waiting for a nice slow charge…and will repeat 3A
Cyg,
My TENERGY batteries must not have the button top. They work fine in 501-B & 502-B Torchs just not in the 2 battery 1600 lm Zoom Torchs. It’s been over two weeks since I ordered some magnets for then from DX. They said one item is back ordered but hadn’t sent either of the other two items until I inquired after a week.
these are the ones i bought http://www.ebay.com/itm/Tenergy-18650-3-7V-2600mAh-Rechargeable-Battery-w-PCB-/290489435781?pt=US_Batteries&hash=item43a2850685
but these with button top are probably more suited for flashlights, but also considerably more expensive
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Tenergy-Li-Ion-18650-3-7V-2600mAh-Battery-w-PCB-Button-Top-/290613269587?pt=US_Batteries&hash=item43a9e69453#ht_2405wt_1396
i use the ternegy 2600mah light blue with green bottom…lipo with protection are a bit longer…most of the time this is not a problem though, thats why there are spings in the flashlights, mine are 18.36 or 0.723″, and 2.626″ long (66.7mm), they fit all flashlights i got…whats your batteries dimensions ?
yeah those unprotected batteries are uhmm well dangerous, i think they are made to go into deviced that host a low voltage cutoff, and they can sometimes offer more capacity as they can contain more “stuff” in the same dimension….but as i have mentioned i think these batteries are too dangerous in devices that does not feature a low voltage cutoff (lvc) in my rc cars the motor controller has lvc circuit, so the batteries does not have to.
and sorry for the late reply….kids and so on
Cyg,
Just so much new information to store my 400 MB brain that I’m still a little confused.
The Torchs I bought on eBay came with the blue “UltraFire TR 18650 2400mAh 3.7V” with label stating, “!WARNING The voltage of full charge and cut-off discharge is 4.2V and 2.75V”. At first I took that to mean they were protected at those voltage limits. Then NOT finding any mention of Protected or PCB, I figure they just make more sales this way with dangerous non-protected batteries. They must have learned from the worlds’ drug companies that only the bottom line matters.
So, I followed your good advice and ordered Tenergy 18650s with PCB. Couldn’t tell but figured if I needed the rare earth magnets you mentioned, I have some already, right… Mine are way to thick. So back to ordering… I measured the Tenergy battery and figure the 1mm x 8mm are maybe the best fit ❓
What do you use ❓
Another thing I don’t understand, are Li-ion with PCB the same as or equal to Lipo 18650s ❓ I re-read the whole topic and still missed something.
Thanks for such an interesting topic.
Edmund
theres some narrow reflectors out there for the xml which will make it more concentrated / thrower
my R5 is a fraction brighter in the center than my xml….but the xml just has so much more spill AND the same throw as the R5
a guy can go crazy looking at all these crazy cool led flashlights that are just so cool
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oldgoat,
Could you get a couple camera shots of your omg flashlight as compared to a CREE XM-L LED flashlidht? The omg website only compared the hopped up version to the standard stock XP-C.
All,
In a few days I’ll do an update of my experience with several CREE XM-L Torchs and different 18650 batteries. Maybe including the NEW 1300 lumen ZOOM model.
I agree with oldgoat that the torch with 2 x 18650 batteries is too heavy on my Condor. I have preferred the 1300 lm 502-B Torchs to the 1000 lm 501 model and have bought several more before they recently posted a ZOOM 1300 lm Torch. One is on its way as we speak.