ReyLight Pineapple Mini Orange Review

[TimMc]

I bought the aluminium ReyLight Pineapple Mini as soon as I saw it available in orange (perfect for my orange EDC).

The tailcap and driver have changed.

It has a Nichia 519A. And the 10440 cell has a 350mAh capacity instead of 320mAh.

Here's my review:

ReyLight Pineapple Mini Orange Review

The ReyLight Pineapple Mini is my favourite EDC torch. Today I am reviewing the aluminium version in orange.

timmcmahon.com.au

 

[iacchus]

My mini pineapple in Ti is one of the prettiest beams of any flashlight I own. Has absurdly nice tint. ~3900K and .0010 DUV. They are hard to beat for the price for sure.

Nice review!

 

[cave dave]

Great review. I ordered one as soon as I got the email, but haven't even got a tracking number.

I don't think the 50% and 100% being the same output is a bug unique to your light. It just seems to be a thing with all the single AA and AAA Reylights running on NiMh. I Have 2 Al LanApples a Ti Pineapple and a green Mini Pineapple and they all act that way on NiMh.(edit: comments in later post) Lots of other duel fuel lights also have weird levels on either the LiIon mode or the NiMh mode. I think its just hard to do a dual fuel driver in something so small. At least the Reylights do work well and have good level selection on both NiMh and LiIon.

Check out the weird too low modes on NiMh of the Acebeam H16, the turbo drops to under 30lm in less than a minute and the high is 16lm.

 

[TimMc]

Great review. I ordered one as soon as I got the email, but haven't even got a tracking number.

I don't think the 50% and 100% being the same output is a bug unique to your light. It just seems to be a thing with all the single AA and AAA Reylights running on NiMh. I Have 2 Al LanApples a Ti Pineapple and a green Mini Pineapple and they all act that way on NiMh. Lots of other duel fuel lights also have weird levels on either the LiIon mode or the NiMh mode. I think its just hard to do a dual fuel driver in something so small. At least the Reylights do work well and have good level selection on both NiMh and LiIon.

Check out the weird too low modes on NiMh of the Acebeam H16, the turbo drops to under 30lm in less than a minute and the high is 16lm.

Rey's on a break for Chinese New Year

 

[cave dave]

I edited the above comment, there is something weird going on with their not being a differnce between 50% and 100%.

I got to thinking maybe the difference you are not seeing between 50% and 100% was due to the battery. My experience with Eneloop Pro is that can develop high internal resistance. This may be affecting your results. I also looked up your older reviews of the purple LanApple and the green Mini Pineapple and see you were getting a difference in current and output for the 50% and 100% levels.

I went and played around with 3 of my Reylights and different batteries and below are my results. I switched from a white eneloop circa 2020 to a out of the package circa 2023 and freshly charged Fujitsu 1900mAh NiMh. I don't have any fancy testing equipment, which is why I rely on reviews like yours, but here is what my eyeballs saw.

• Grey Aluminum LanApple 1xAA Nichia 519a: On the older 2020 eneloop I could not tell the difference between 50% and 100%, but when I switched to the Fujitsu NiMh I could see that the 100% was slightly brighter than the 50% mode.
• Purple Aluminum LanApple 1xAA Nichia 519a: Even using the Fujitsu I could detect almost no difference between 50% and 100% mode. The 100% mode may have been slightly brighter but it was subtle enough I wasn't sure.
• Green AAA Pineapple mini 1xAAA: I had thought there wasn't a visible difference between 50% & 100% in past usage, but I had been using older partially discharged Eneloops. When I switched to a freshly charge 2023 Fujitsu I could definately see the differnce between 50% & 100%.

Conclusion: I'm not sure. It could be the batteries or it could be the light, or some combination of the way they interact together on a battery that maybe can't handle such a high drain.

 

[TimMc]

I edited the above comment, there is something weird going on with their not being a differnce between 50% and 100%.

I got to thinking maybe the difference you are not seeing between 50% and 100% was due to the battery. My experience with Eneloop Pro is that can develop high internal resistance. This may be affecting your results. I also looked up your older reviews of the purple LanApple and the green Mini Pineapple and see you were getting a difference in current and output for the 50% and 100% levels.

I went and played around with 3 of my Reylights and different batteries and below are my results. I switched from a white eneloop circa 2020 to a out of the package circa 2023 and freshly charged Fujitsu 1900mAh NiMh. I don't have any fancy testing equipment, which is why I rely on reviews like yours, but here is what my eyeballs saw.

• Grey Aluminum LanApple 1xAA Nichia 519a: On the older 2020 eneloop I could not tell the difference between 50% and 100%, but when I switched to the Fujitsu NiMh I could see that the 100% was slightly brighter than the 50% mode.
• Purple Aluminum LanApple 1xAA Nichia 519a: Even using the Fujitsu I could detect almost no difference between 50% and 100% mode. The 100% mode may have been slightly brighter but it was subtle enough I wasn't sure.
• Green AAA Pineapple mini 1xAAA: I had thought there wasn't a visible difference between 50% & 100% in past usage, but I had been using older partially discharged Eneloops. When I switched to a freshly charge 2023 Fujitsu I could definately see the differnce between 50% & 100%.

Conclusion: I'm not sure. It could be the batteries or it could be the light, or some combination of the way they interact together on a battery that maybe can't handle such a high drain.

I'm using two eneloop pro AAA BK-4HCCE made in 2023. I have only been using these two batteries for runtime testing in the past 12 months. They haven't had much use.

Here are some results of my older Pineapple Mini Green:

Cell	Mode	Amps at start	Lumens @turn on	Lumens @30 sec	Lumens @10 min
Ni-MH	2%	0.06 A	8	8	8
Ni-MH	10%	0.17 A	18	20	18
Ni-MH	20%	0.24 A	29	29	28
Ni-MH	50%	0.64 A	71	72	37
Ni-MH	100%	2.62 A	126	98	20
10440	2%	0.13 A	25	25	24
10440	10%	0.35 A	67	63	59
10440	20%	0.42 A	90	86	76
10440	50%	0.78 A	189	176	94
10440	100%	1.52 A	394	331	97

There is a clear difference between Ni-MH 50% and 100% with my green Pineapple Mini.

And here are results for the Pineapple Mini Orange:

Cell	Mode	Amps at start	Lumens @turn on	Lumens @30 sec	Lumens @10 min
Ni-MH	2%	0.06 A	9	9	9
Ni-MH	10%	0.23 A	28	26	26
Ni-MH	20%	0.45 A	43	46	44
Ni-MH	50%	2.00 A	120	69	24
Ni-MH	100%	2.04 A	117	69	24
10440	2%	0.04 A	14	12	12
10440	10%	0.16 A	45	46	41
10440	20%	0.29 A	84	82	75
10440	50%	0.64 A	208	195	104
10440	100%	1.36 A	371	339	105

The difference between Ni-MH 50% and 100% is less clear for my orange Pineapple Mini.

I tested Ni-MH 50% about four times with two different eneloop pro AAA from the same batch in 2023. I stopped the first three attempts after 15 minutes when I realised that the runtime results looked similar to 100% (I can monitor the runtime results as they're being recorded automatically). I thought that I might have accidentally selected the wrong group or mode:

i. 1 blink: (ML)-2%-20%-100%

ii. 2nd blink: (ML)-10%-40%-100%

iii. 3rd blink: (ML)-2%-10%-50%

iv. 4th blink: (ML)-50%-100%-strobe-SOS

But after measuring the current of group 3, I was able to confirm that I was using the correct group for 50% because the current for the third output level (10%) was lower than the third output level from group 1 (20%).

It could the batteries. These eneloop pro AAA's from 2023 are probably the best AAA Ni-MH cells that I have at the moment.

 

[cave dave]

Yes, I see now how your current measurement are different between the lights, and the problem isn't that 100% is too low, the problem is 50% is too high. I have also wondered when using some of my ReyLights if I have selected the correct group. I like to use the 3rd group (2%-10%-50%), because in theory you can still double-click to turbo (100%). However I find the double click timing very unreliable and I mostly can't tell much difference between 50% and 100% unless the batteries are in great condition and fully topped off, and even then not much difference, and some lights of the same model are different than others. I see from your tables the driver itself might be to blame.

I still like the Reylights because they offer a real Moon and decent level spacing on either NiMh or LiIon.
Thanks for testing the 10% and 50% levels most other reviews have only tested the stock levels.

 

[TimMc]

It's worth noting that I enabled mode memory, selected 50% with one NiMH AAA and then swapped the battery before doing a runtime test.

 

[cave dave]

Have you tried the 2nd blink mode? I wonder if the 10% is different than the 3rd blink 10% and what the 40% mode is like. Right now it looks like the brightest regulated (sustained brightness) mode using NiMh is the 20% mode (about 45lm)

 

[TimMc]

Have you tried the 2nd blink mode? I wonder if the 10% is different than the 3rd blink 10% and what the 40% mode is like. Right now it looks like the brightest regulated (sustained brightness) mode using NiMh is the 20% mode (about 45lm)

I've used the 2nd blink mode but I haven't measured it.