Home

I've given it four stars. BUT read the review. I'd guess Jayki would give it far less and a bit of me agrees. However, this light for some reason is the one I reach for. 

I like stainless steel lights. I really, really like this one though after reading this review you may wonder why... It has been my EDC for the last couple of months since I got it. DX do it for $26 http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.26992

It is nice and straightforward - a nice bright high and a nice low that still gives a fair amount of light and probably a 3 hour runtime on low.

Here it is:

It is beautifully made. In normal handling you won't even notice the joints where the tailcap and head unscrew. It has a nice heft and a pocket clip. It is my EDC and has spent the last six months clipped inside my trouser pocket almost every day. This is the first time I've used a pocket clip on a light and I really like it. I prefer CR123 lights for sticking in a pocket as they are quite a bit shorter than AA/14500 lights. Normally it gets fed Trustfire protected CR123's but more on that later.

Here it is dismantled for refuelling:

Apologies for the not so great pictures.

The tailcap has a very odd gold-coloured split ring through it for some arcane reason. Judging by the engraving on the clip Ultrafire are a bit proud of this one.

It is nicely put together and came lubed with much heftier than usual O rings - it even has a GITD green O ring to hold the front glass in. Here's the main tube partly unscrewed to show the O ring goodness:

The crud is because I pulled it out of my pocket to do this review.

Here's a rather poor pic of the LED which is some sort of Osram - I'm no LED expert:

The LED seems a fair bit smaller than an XP-E and I suspect the rather nice smooth metal reflector is really intended for an XP-E not this LED as the beam is more than a bit ringy.

Here's a beamshot on high:

Actually, the rings are worse than that and it is a bit on the green side but neither are noticeable. The test ceiling is about 8 feet above and the light has a fairly wide beam as many lights don't fill the picture the way this one does.

It has a nice heft, weighing in at 112g with a grey Trustfire protected RCR123:

For comparison, on the same scales my iPhone weighs in at 138g so this is pretty heavy as lights go. It tailstands nicely and makes a very bright candle with the reflector end removed. However, on high you are going to be lucky to get 20 minutes out of an RCR123 - I've seen it drawing 2.54A but that may be a meter error - the blasted thing now seems not to want to measure current and it most certainly has never had anything close to its 20A rating into it. After all, it is only one day old and is going back tomorrow. Pity, my first logging meter.

My well battered Fluke says it is pulling 2.3A at switch on then bouncing about a bit with no observable change in brightness till it settles down to about 2.2A. This is borderline dangerous current to pull from a poor little CR123 and the Trustfire's protection circuit kicks in after 2-3 minutes on high. I thought it was thermal protection for the LED until recently when i remembered I was using protected cells and measured the current.

It does get warm-hot but is not the hand burner that the more efficient Ultrafire C3 Q5 stainless steel is - the battery doesn't run long enough on high to get it really hot. Given a higher capacity cell it probably would be another hand burner. Low is 260mA and will run for 2-3 hours and shouldn't ever trip the protection circuit. I'd be interested to see if it got any brighter on IMR cells - they almost certainly would turn it into a serious hand burner. It has a slightly unusual metal switch cover instead of the usual rubber boot. Like I said, I like it a lot and carry it almost every day. But after writing this I really, really wonder why.

Probably because I rarely need to use it for more than a minute at a time and if I need lots more light I will probably have more powerful things in my bag or in the car.

Believe it or not, I'd give this at least 4.5 stars with the strong caveat that this is for MY usage. Yours probably will vary. Whatever you think of it as a light, it is a really nice lump of sculpted metal and this HAS influenced my rating. With a saner drive current to the LED (manufacturer says 1A) and a drastically reduced current draw from the cell it's be a more practical but probably more mundane device. I'd like to see it with an XP-G LED in it - driven at an amp one might forgive the flaws for the ferocious brightness. Now who wants to sell me an XP-G R5?

Sorted out the meter issues. Here's a graph of current draw. This was a cheapo unprotected RCR123 which hade already seen 2-3 minutes on high since it got pulled off the charger - at the end of this graph it was down to just about 3.6V giving a run time of nearer ten minutes than 20. I really would recommend using protected cells in this device. It doesn't (over these runtimes) get too hot to hold but the cell gets hotter than I am happy with.

Edited 1st Nov to add current draw