Ebay HID 35w/28w/20w Flashlight

IlluminatedOne

Newly Enlightened
Joined
Nov 14, 2008
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UK
Ebay HID 35w/28w/20w Flashlight

Some pics from ebay
QT0501002101_04.jpg

QT0501002101_09.jpg

QT0501002101_08.jpg


No beamshot's at the moment but i will get around to it eventually :).

Just got one of these a few days ago from ebay seems like a fairly well built light only paid £26 with Free P+P so not expensive really for a HID although they are usually around £50 in the UK.
Nicely sized light though could do with a lanyard to secure it better i feel like it would be easy to drop as its fairly thick handled.
I also think with any of the ebay lights its best to buy on real reviews rather than what it is meant to be rated as i noticed some great ebay marketing lies like a 1600lumen single XML zoom light :).
That's why I thought about doing this as if you go in with your eyes open to the truth you wont be so disappointed when you realise that most over rate a lot.
I think from what i have read of all these ebay HID lights all the way up to the 85w one they are usually rated at input watts rather than to the bulb so you cant really trust the specs given.

For £26 it was very good value, seems well built and overall pretty good for the lower end of the HID market.
I also have another on the way which has the larger head but same light I think it may be a later model.

Being curious about its actual Lumen output, i did a little testing with my DX Lux Meter this is what i found.

61752.25lux@1m (taken at 3.55M, may do a 10m test in the future)
That's after focusing it it was around 40000lux@1m as it came out of the box which looked like a tight spot but i then twisted the head until by eye it looked like the brightest spot as you will have two hotspots on the arc at either end you can focus either so you may feel its focused tightly but try to look a both ends as there was a big difference for me.

I also did a ceiling bounce test
1600lumens OTF

Using my Quark on high which is meant to be 85 OTF Lumens, although i do wonder if because the quark is not very throwy compared to the HID's that the ceiling bounce figures for the HID may be actually higher but do not know as i don't have a integrating sphere :).
In the woods it seems more than 1600OTF but it is hard to judge that by eye.

The colour rendition is fantastic compared to my various LED lights although you forget how well the colours pop out when you have not been using hid incan for a while as most of my incan and HIDs are big thor spots so not really EDC :).

I was also interested in how much power was actually being used by the ballast so hooked it up to a 10amp PSU and it seems that its well regulated as the output did not change much from 11.1v to 14v a slight increase but not much difference compared to off the battery.
It was drawing around 3.2amps at 11.1v so looks like 35w input and at a guess of the ballast efficiency at 75% would but high mode at around 26w to the bulb.

I would like to open up the ballast at some point to see if it can be modified to give a real to the bulb 35w/28w/20w for each mode as that would be quite useful, took the screws out of the ballast to see if it would come apart easily but looked glued in and i did not try to pull it apart too hard as i wanted to play with the light before i opened it up, but may get around to that later.
As it stands the difference in the modes is tiny i noticed 8-10lux between modes.
There is also the fact that the bulbs look like the standard automotive 35w bulbs so probably getting under-driven a fair amount and i would guess on low the lumen/watt is much lower than when on high due to the nature of HID lights getting much more efficient at higher wattages.
I think at a genuine 35w the bulb it would make a great light.

It would also be nice to get a 4300k bulb and ballast for this as that should give a boost the lumens also plus nicer on the eye as its 6000k at the moment.

But overall happy with the light as I said before I have another coming with the larger head, which i think that DX SST-90 7.5cm reflector should fit in so will be interesting to see how that one compares.
 
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