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Link: http://www.4sevens.com/product_info.php?cPath=297_332&products_id=1931 

This is not a cheap light. It cost me $49 and £12.44 ($19.85 charges).

Last week a card arrived through my letter box telling me to go to the Post Office and give them some money for import duty, VAT and clearance charges by the Post Office. This is what arrived in a nice cardboard box with some sort of rubbery coating. The box feels very nice. Pity about the pictures. The box is actually a matt black. None of these pictures match the light held against the screen for colour - the light is a darker blue and contains more cyan than any of these pictures.

Here's what's inside the nice packaging.

You get a single AAA body tube, a double AAA body tube, a click switch tailcap, a flat tailcap that makes the light a twist switch, 2 AAA alkalines, a black pocket clip, a chrome pocket clip, a spare O ring and a ring to allow attachment to a keyring which replaces the pocket clip.

The blue colour here is not correct - I had to use flash as what passes for daylight at this time of year is very dim. The ring thing on the left in the plastic bag is to allow a split ring to be attached for keyring use. Doubt I'll ever use it.

The idea is that you can mess around with the parts to build the light that suits you best. For me this is the Preon 2 (2xAAA) with the clicky switch. You only get one light head though I'm contemplating getting another to make 2 complete lights.

This is the head: The texture of the reflector appears rather strange till you get a mignigfying glass and look more closely. It is a heavy orange peel texture which cleans up the beam nicely. The reflector doesn't appear to be perfectly matched to the LED on my one as there is a dimmer centre to the hotspot (donut hole) when shining on a white wall. I didn't notice this till I went white wall hunting.

And here are the other bits to Lego together as suits you. 

To give some idea of the size of the thing, here it is beside a Trustfire AAA light which is another very nice light. The Preon 2 is on high as is the Trustfire though it is using a 14500 cell so is a lot brighter than it is with NiMH cells.

Here's another size comparison. According to the specs it is 5.05" long in this configuration. According to my trusty ruler it is 128mm long. The other items are a Trustfire XP-E F23, a Tank007 E07, an AA cell and a AAA cell.

The head end of the Preon is the closest to a colour match to the actual light under current lighting conditions here, in fact it is a pretty good match when the area is lit by daylight (such as it is) rather than the compact fluorescent that usually lights the room.

Light Output:

Throw at 1 metre

Preon 2 NiMH

Low                   22

Medium            251

High                 1308

Preon 1 NiMH

Low                   23

Medium            168

High                  605

Lightbox:

Preon 1 NiMH

Low                    22 Lux

Medium             145 Lux

High                   530 Lux

Preon 2 NiMH

Low                    23 Lux

Medium             236 Lux

High                 1215 Lux

Current:

Preon 2

Alkalines

Low                                      32mA

Medium                             296mA

High                                    930mA

NiMH                          

Low                                     34mA

Medium                             296mA

High                                   940mA

Preon 1

Alkaline

Low                                     79mA

Medium                             306mA

High                                    360mA

NiMH                          

Low                                     80mA

Medium                             288mA

High                                   360mA (THis doesn't seem right but I tried it several times)

Weight:

Preon 2

Without Cells                             20.1g (0.71oz)

With 2xAAA Duracells            42.6g (1.505oz)

With 2xAAA NiMH                  42.5g (1.5oz)

Preon 1

Without cell                               15.4g (0.545oz)

With AAA Duracell                  26.7g (0.935oz)

With AAA NiMH                      27.6g (0.97oz)

Review

Niiice. First AAA that’ll actually fit in coin pocket of my trousers (In Preon 1 configuration). Not cheap. Highly debatable whether it is worth 3x as much as the lovely Trustfire. But not sorry I bought it – it is less than an inch longer than an AAA cell in the Preon 1 configuration. The finish is hard anodised (HAIII) and seems tough enough though I'm not about to use it as a hammer. The manufacturer claims a "rubbery" feel to the coating which I'm not feeling. It has a satin finish and is quite grippy despite not having knurling on it. 

My camera won't show it as it's no good at close up stuff, let alone micro stuff but I can just see under a 30x magnifier that the surface is very finely grooved which is what presumably gives it its grippiness. It may even be micro knurled, I haven't a powerful enough magnifier to see this.

Don't think I'll be dropping it too often though, it cost too much for that. Having just tested, it is slippery with wet hands. So I put it in the sink to see what would happen. After a brief test there was no evidence of water penetration at all. Having looked at the specification, it claims IPX-8 protection which means it is "Protected against water submersion - The equipment is suitable for continual submersion in water under conditions which are identified by the manufacturer." Without any farther information I'd not be wanting to test it as a dive light but it won't be harmed by being dropped in a puddle, or even a pond. If it were likely to get submerged, I'd expect the twisty tailcap to be more reliable than the clicky and I'd not go much deeper than 5 feet without checking with the manufacturer first.

Here it is working in my sink.

If the light has been off for more than a couple of seconds it comes on in low. If anyone gets dazzled by the low, they have far better night vision than I do. The switch is a "reverse clicky", that is; the light does not switch on until the switch has latched. So not a lot of use for Morse signalling as that works far better with momentary on than momentary off. If you really do need it to do flashing things you need to cycle twice through the three non-flashing modes quickly. then you get a very annoying strobe, then SOS then two beacon modes, high and low where it'll flash 5 times then a flash every 10 seconds. After that you're back to the non flashing stuff. You won't see the flashing modes unless you really want to. Some might just find them useful, doubt that I will. On the low beacon setting it claims a runtime of 40 hours.

Som e have complained of inductor whine in low and medium. I can't hear it at all even with the light inserted in my ear. However, I do have rather bad tinnitus so the whine might be there. It certainly isn't a problem for me. Remember what granny told you and never insert anything smaller than your elbow in your ear... On high it gets rather uncomfortable when inserted in your ear - quite a lot of heat seems to be going out the front of it rather than heating up the LED and body. This is a good thing - but it isn't recommended for heating up your ear canal.

Light Output

The low is very low – personally I feel it is probably too low to be useful. Others may differ. However there are now coloured spots in front of my eyes from looking at the LED on low.

On the other hand, battery life on low will be a significant percentage of eternity. 4Sevens’ spec says 2.2 lumens for 23 hours on alkalines – a bit less on NiMH. On Medium I got 3hr 56 min on NiMH – spec says 22 lumens for 6 hours, on High I got 58min 30s where the spec for alkalines says 160 lumens for 48 minutes showing that NiMH perform better than alkalines under heavy load. Life is too short to do my own runtime on low. In the Preon 1 configuration the spec for alkalines gives:

High:             70 lumens for 48 minutes

Medium:        8.5 lumens for 6 hours

Low:               1.8 lumens for 23 hours

I have no idea where that spike came from. I was asleep at the time.

 I have no intention of doing runtimes on low. They are going to be more than 18 hours each - maybe 24. My personal preference would be for higher medium and low in the Preon 2 configuration because if I want little light for a long time it is most likely to be for reading with and a headlamp is much more useful for this as it leaves your hands free.

And here are the beamshots. The test range is rather more reflective than usual thanks to the snow and ice and it was -8 Centigrade outside when these were taken which is my excuse anyway. As you can see, the low is very low and not useful at 15 metres. One day I will accurately measure the distance to that apple tree...

Control shot:

Preon 1 Low:

Preon 1 Medium:

Preon 1 High:

Preon 2 Low:

Preon 2 Medium:

Preon 2 High:

And since the low was so low, I needed an aiming light to set up the camera. So I dragged out the ROP High that lives by the back door - it is something over 1000 lumens, the Preon 2 on high is 160 lumens.

Yes, that is the "annoy the neighbours" light.

Conclusion ★★★★★

This cost me $69 by the time it got here so it's far from a cheap light kit. It is excellent though and will see a lot of use. It'd get 6 stars if it were under $35 but it is $49 shipped which is a lot. Some might knock another star off for the price, I'm still in two minds about that. But to offset this, it has a TEN YEAR warranty! I didn't know this till I went looking just now (http://www.4sevens.com/information.php?info_id=5) 4Sevens should make more of this - while they've a reputation for excellent customer service (not that I've ever had to use it), this is superb. I'm now tempted to give it six stars despite the cost.

It is not a thrower, nor was it intended to be but it is the most efficient and brightest single die Cree LED currently available - the XP-G R5. I have no reason to doubt the manufacturer's rating though on NiMH it drops quite rapidly by about 25% so I'd guess the normal output on high for most of the hour would be about 120 lumens - either that or it gives over 200 lumens at switch on which is also possible. That is a lot of light for such a small device.  Especially one that never gets too hot to hold.