flashlight

Thanks for posting this review. I have this light too. My own impressions:

• My emitter is nice and neutral and I thought it was 4000K rather than 5000. Anyway, no tint issues on mine.

• Tailcap milling is weird, like it was intended to accomodate a tail switch but they went with a side switch. Result is that the light won't tail stand with the lanyard installed, a minor nit. The camera-style lanyard also broke fairly soon, so I used some nylon cord that has been holding up ok.

• Side switch is annoying, hard to find in the dark, and activates accidentally in pocket way too easily. After draining the battery that way a few times, I set a 7 minute timeout (so the light automatically enters lockout mode after 7 minutes off) and that helps, but it means turning on the locked-out light has an annooying added step.

• After a few charge cycles with the included 14500, I tried to use an AA but the light wouldn't turn on. That was with alkaline, L91, and Eneloop batteries. Sofirn rep gave me a runaround by email and eventually said only 14500 was supposed to work. I have been wanting to contact Barry about it but first wanted to ask gchart if it is a driver issue.

• It is silly that they don't sell a flash adapter but I think some are available from gchart, so I need to contact him.

I don't worry too much about regulation or efficiency which I see as concerns of yesteryear. Now that we use rechargeable batteries almost exclusively, the cost of operation is near zero. So if the light has enough runtime to not need frequent recharging in real-world use, then its efficiency is good enough.

I do like the small size of the light and I'd consider it good value if it worked properly despite the poorly designed side switch. I don't mind that my unit has an issue, but the CS response about it was a joke (they wanted me to send photos of the batteries I used, etc). I haven't given up on Sofirn but wish they would be more clueful about this stuff.