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Thanks for the great review with heaps of pics. (which my own review often lacks.... doh..)

It looks very much like the Solarforce lights. hehe. Standard drop-in size also. Curious as to your verdict?

A bit too early to say. Since it is the most recent toy there is that and I like it. While I like the idea of 18650 sized lights, I always end up carrying CR123/AA/AAA lights so I'm in a bit of two minds. I'd say that it is my favourite of all the 18650 lights just now - it throws way farther than the MC-E dropin and indoors seems just about as bright. I certainly prefer it to the monomode dropin I got with the black 504B.

I'd be inclined to give it 4-5 stars but ask me agin in a month as the "new toy effect" may still be in play. This time of year we get a lot of darkness to play with so it will get used.

Lux at 1 metre:

High: 14940 - It's a thrower. It does have a very tight spot

Medium: 5500

Low: 2240

Will do total output and runtimes when the paint in the "lightbox" dries.

 Lightbox

High:            1361

Medium:        543     

Low:              200

Hi Don,

do you own a Solarforce? Can you try if the front bezelring threads fits in a Solarforce head? Which head fits perfectly on a Solarforce/Surefire body? 503 head or 504 head? (no gap?)

 Hi Don,

thanks for the offer but I live in Germany that would be too much hassle to ship flash light heads around in Europe. Maybe someone on CPF owns both  - UF and Solarforce/Surefire lights. The problem with CPF is that most guys on CPF don't do budget light reviews. You and Jayki seem to be the only ones doing several budget reviews. Keep up the good work. Btw my Solarforce L2R arrived from ITC shop (INTERNATIONAL TRADING COMPANY ) and I like it a lot.  My brightest light so far (2xAA/XR-E R2/3mode/hi-mid-low/no strobes!!!/good build quality) . Sadly they mixed up the colour so I received a black one instead of sand colour.

Hi V

Germany is in the EU so not a problem - won't cost much to post one - they don't weigh a lot after all. Email me at xxxxxx@xxxx (this is a throwaway account so not bothered about spam and this message will be deleted once i have a reply) with an address and I'll post a 504B to you for experimenting with - if that doesn't work i'll post you a 503B to test. It'll cost me a lot less than buying a Solarforce to try for myself and I'd like to know. Most of the mail I get on this account is spam anyway so exposing it won't matter much. the reply will NOT come from that address. In fact I'm happy to post both for you to experiment with. Just write up the results here.

Agreed about CPF - there is only one thread I bother to look at these days and that's Jay's. I am not going to spend hundreds of dollars on custom lights that don't do anything that a ten dollar light will usually do. I spend less than some of the custom lights cost on cars, so I'm not about to spend that much on a light.

 Hi Don,

the problem is that the German Post (www.dhl.de) wants 16 € (14.50 gbp)  for an insured/trackable parcel to UK. For that kind of money I would have to spend to send it back to you... I can buy the lights (504B is like 11€)... maybe I will ;-)  My neighbour ordered a UltraFire WF-501B 3.7V~4.2V CREE XPG R5 WC LED 5-mode Flashlight (1*18650)  +  charger + Trustfire batteries... I will take a look at that light first before I order another XR-E R2 light. I heard the "G" in XP-G stands for "green" (colour tint) ;-).

 uninsured/untrackable 8,60 € to UK.... German Post is just useless ... I want Hongkongpost ;-)

Must ... resist.... XPG-R5...  ;-)  (Typo on Kai ? There is no XPE R5)

Ultra Fire WF-504B CREE R5 5-mode Flashlight (1*18650) (Black) 

Ultra Fire WF-504B CREE R5 5-mode Flashlight (1*18650) (Natural Color)

BTW ITC-Shop is cool they sent me a second L2R Body for free (INTERNATIONAL TRADING COMPANY )

 Those should be a good deal given that an XP-G R5 dropin from KD cost me $17. It should have arrived by the time I get home (800km away at the moment) so will get tested ASAP. I'll probably be putting the R5 dropin in the black one of those I have. Doubt it will be as much of a thrower as the XP-E R2 dropin it has at the moment, but we'll see.

 Sadly,  the XP-G dropin that KD sent me mutated itself into a fairly bright 5-mode MC-E dropin between KD and here. The DX R5 ones look more tempting - I have a black 504 that needs something nicer than the single mode XP-E R2 that's in it just now. Temporarily it has KD's mistake dropin in it which is quite a bit brighter than the DX $23.49 item.

I'm beginning to think that the WF-504B, Uniquefire R5, Uniquefire L2 may have part interchangeability with the Solarforce and therefore Surefire. The R5 is a Seraph clone and it is certainly Surefire compatible so it is possible. If I'd not forgotten my eBay password, (The machine I use for that is currently unbootable) I'd already have ordered one of those Solarforce L2M bodies old4570 was talking about in another thread.

L2 body $15USD  http://cgi.ebay.com/Solarforce-BLK-L2-DIY18650-CR123-T-Head-Flashlight-Body_W0QQitemZ280428665328QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUS_Flashlights?hash=item414ad9d9f0#ht_3721wt_1028

L2M , $16USD http://cgi.ebay.com/Solarforce-L2M-BK-Flashlight-body-4-Surefire-3P-6P-9P_W0QQitemZ270490322718QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUS_Flashlights?hash=item3efa7ac71e#ht_2744wt_939

Just the host body ... 

Thanks for the links.

Now waiting for eBay to send me email with a password reset. The L2M sounds more interesting to me. I already have two WF-504B's and one Uniquefire L2 which appears to be identical to the WF-504B. Postman has just brought me an XP-G R5 dropin from DX http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.32954 which says up to 18V so quite a few extensions could get used for silly runtime - 4 18650s in line is probably a bit unwieldy but it should run more or less forever if it doesn't cook itself.

DX dropin (18650@4.16V)0

11,300 throw at 1m

Lightbox: 1250

Current: (18650@4.16V)

High: 1035mA

Med:  146mA

Low:  47mA

Runtimes on med/low should be impressive.

Compatibility riddle Surefire/Solarforce/Ultrafire/Uniquefire is solved!

http://www2.dealextreme.com/forums/Default.dx/sku.32749~threadid.529084

together with Don's find

http://www.jayki.com/blog_board/6578

Useful to know. So the next time I feel like going bankrupt, I can buy a heap of Surefire parts and screw them on. Still, think I'll be sticking to my Chinese"fire" lights though I am about to light a coal fire.:)

What? You are not screwing a 1 fantastillion Dollar  Surefire switch with IR remote control and rocket launcher on your 10 Dollar chinese cheapo? ;-)

But replacing a defective UF switch with a Solarforce switch could make sense in some cases.

Or just ripping out the actual switch, jumping up and down on it and soldering in one that works. I remember really impressing the neighbour's grandson when he saw me just do that to an immobiliser switch from my car which had just tried to kill me by cutting out the engine at speed on a busy road. I really enjoyed removing that.

The switch from my Spear clone is getting that treatment soon.

DX have lots of switches in various sizes at about $2 for 5. Failing that, there's always duct tape and stripped and braided together Cat-5 cable which I own quite a lot of - even a small wiring job can consume a kilometre of the stuff. Kind of fancy the idea of doing that to a Surefire M6 and seeing how long the pics stayed on CPF.:)

You will get quartered for this sacrilege on CPF and you will have to learn all binning of every emitter ever produced by heart. Don't do that, you will be missed.

Until 1948 the penalty for espionage in Scotland was hanging, drawing, having your entrails burned in front of you before quartering. Strangely enough, no spies ever got arrested in Scotland.  Mysteriously, they found themselves arrested in England.

For really getting them going on CPF, you really have to have some ludicrously expensive light modified with duct tape. And painted with a stick.

How about sticking one of those 100+ LED showerheads to a Spy007. With duct tape. And yellow string. 

Runtime should be an interesting number of seconds - about 9 I'd guess.

Or better....  make a "Will it blend?" video with the most expensive light and sell the remains on CPFMP...

At last! Found the tape measure. From the point where the light is held to the apple tree on the left is 15m 50cm or a hair short of 51 feet.

Can you run single mode version of wf-504 with 2*16340/cr123 ?

DX says it does - not sure if I can find the dropin that came with it to check. The only single mode R2 I can find works just fine with 2 RCR123. Usually the single mode drivers are more tolerant than the multimode ones.

They also say "4.2V max", last time I killed my uniquefire r5 with 2*16340....  Funny thing DX says HS-802 works with 2*16340 while it does not, however driver and led are still alive.... I hate their descriptions.

So it does - didn't look closely enough. I know that the "Super Bright R2" dropin that I found in the parts box did withstand 8.4V for half an hour. I cannot say for certain that this is the one that came from the WF-504B though.