brted,Reviews(3),Post(1),12/18/2009 |
|
|
Disappointed
|
Strengths:Looks good; the silver exterior color is nice with no blemishes. The power button functions well. The two tail cap o-rings seem watertight and seemed to have been lubricated. There is a big o-ring for the head, and another on top of the lens. I dunked the light in a jar of water for about 5 minutes (head down and head up) and it stayed lit with no apparent leakage. The LED appears to be a Cree XP-E as advertised. The low is very nice, about 10 lumens. The beam tint is cool white, but not all that blue. The beam pattern is good with no rings. Has a mild anti-roll shape near the head. The pill was easy to remove by sticking a tiny phillips head screwdriver in one of the two holes and pushing to unscrew it out of place. The reflector is metal with OP and the lens is glass. Slow strobe is about 72 blinks per minute. Runtime on a 2000 mah Rayovac NiMH AA cell was about an hour before the light was significantly dimmer. The light got warm, not hot.
Weaknesses:Maximum output is more like 120-150 lumens on a AA NiMH, nowhere close to the advertised 250 lumens. There was a piece of glue or dirt on the LED dome so I had to take the pill out to get to it and clean the dome off. Sometimes the light won't come on. It also makes a high-pitched noise (sometimes not that noticeable, sometimes very noticeable) going on and off with the beam in the different flashy modes. When putting the light down to tailstand, it changed modes by itself, not because the switch protrudes a tiny bit, but any time you audibly knock the metal (not hard), it changes modes. The problem with the modes is the light always comes on in the next mode from the last time. With a sequence of High-Medium-Low-Strobe-Beacon-SOS, if it was in Low last time, it will come in Strobe next time. If it couldn't have memory, the next best thing would have been to come on in High every time. As a final test, I inserted a 14500 lithium ion battery and the light died.
Summary:No proper mode memory and no ability to use lithium-ion batteries make this light a lot less useful for me, so I am disappointed, even though Kai's data didn't promise anything. Other sites sell S10's advertising memory and the ability to use lithium-ion batteries. The mode switching when the light gets knocked isn't acceptable either.
|