That is geeky, but valuble......
Whats the "best flashlight" and why?
I like Streamlight.
Got A New Flashlight...
- Thread starter Warstud
- Start date
Whats the "best flashlight" and why?
I like Streamlight.
twouvakind
Site Donor 2025
Actually cheaper from Sofirn than Amazon right this moment.
Buying direct from their site, or their Aliexpress store is almost always cheaper than buying from Amazon, except when they run promos with a sale price on Amazon, combined with a discount code. Same also applies for Wurkkos. It does require some extra patience but transpacific logistics can now get shipments delivered in around a week.
The costs of being an Amazon seller, having to ship the product to a fulfillment warehouse, and the Amazon policy of having to accept easy returns from novices who don't know what they're buying (which turn into sunk costs) have to be accounted for.
Still rocking Fenix LD10 many many moons since I bought it, dropped on cement a few times, drove over it, still going strong. Spare charged Ladda battery in pocket JIC.
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- Mar 9, 2024
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These newish harbor freight lights are handy for working under the hood or under the car. Very flexible for different uses, magnets on adjustable leg are strong. Not bad for $5 with the recent 30% coupon- I won't cry when they get beat up or broken.
Tk35ue 2.0 great work flashlight for scrap yard but I mostly use it to find painted paint stirring sticks hidden in the woods.
The front of the bezel is steel which makes me happy, bezels get chewed up a lot.
The front of the bezel is steel which makes me happy, bezels get chewed up a lot.
Ha, yet another coke can light! Question:- Does this have "real" USB-C port i.e. can you charge from C-C cable from an authentic USB-C charger and does it support PD aka high voltage charging?
I am under impression that multi cell lights are safe as long as the cells are in parallel because cells are "forced to equalize" once inserted. If in series, then cells need to be matched.
You'll have to check the reviews for the light under consideration to verify; the better reviewers will note it. The makers can be cagey, or avoid having any stance on C2C support. Which is dumb, because the difference is literally down to some cheap resistors in the connector. But, in the initial rush to proclaim "USB-C charging!" in the sales copy, budget light makers didn't bother to implement it properly, and while that has changed, I don't know that it is a certainty for every light, especially an older model.
To my knowledge, there is no light that contains the logic to support PD. And in practical terms, it isn't really needed when the most common cell sizes aren't charged at more than 2A, and even that figure is too high for the more conservative users. The 15W that Type-C supports without invoking PD is sufficient for such needs.
And frankly, I'm not sure I'd want to feed higher power through the onboard charging circuit of a budget light, which are not known to be completely trustworthy, and far from the level of a BMS that you'd find in a more costly device.
Yes, they don't carry the same risk that cells in series do.
I owned one and then sent it back. It both recharges AND provides output as a power bank to charge other devices through the same port. It’s a really nice light.
I sent it back, however, because I specifically needed a power bank and that feature gave me the excuse to buy the light. The power bank output would stop when the batteries hit around 50% charge and I couldn’t figure out a way to change that. I couldn’t therefore get enough supply out of it for what I needed.
Talking about power banks, it looks like Alibaba only sends cells when they are either in a flashlight or shipped with a charger. I needed couple of 26650 and with that I had to purchase a charger which is a copy of Liitokala two bay charger (has microUSB input instead of USB-C for the real Liitokala) which claims to work as power bank. I was hoping to use this to measure output of a cell but it shuts down very quickly with the cells I have tried.
https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/LiitoKala-Lii-C2-Smart-Charger-suitable_1600831752747.html
https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/LiitoKala-Lii-C2-Smart-Charger-suitable_1600831752747.html
Shipping lithium batteries can be a fraught exercise, so some sellers won't bother with the potential hassle of selling and shipping them. There a lot of rules, and even with them in place, shipments that conform can be arbitrarily rejected.
Sellers that still make the effort to ship cells, do so inside lights, or other devices, to exploit the loopholes that do allow them to be shipped as part of assembled devices, but not as loose, bare cells. That's why they arrive with the "bonus" items.
And in doing so, it also tacitly reveals what those cheap zoomie flashlights, that the neophytes pay dumb sums to buy on Amazon, are really worth, if they can be used as sacrificial packaging vessels to sidestep the shipping regulations.
Potential shipping issues, plus the unknown risks of rewraps, encourages buying from domestic suppliers instead, like Illumn, Li-ion Wholesale, 18650batterystore, and Mountain Electronics.
