MrBenchmark
Enlightened
Does anything like this ever happen to you? It's happened to me a couple of times now, both with my Lumens Factory P7M turbohead on my SF M3, and with my Jetbeam M1X.
I was walking out to my shed last night to get my 12' tall ladder. My hourse sits on 5 acres, and I have no lights on this whatsoever, so it's quite dark here. Anyway I take a flashlight with me (in this case the M1X) so that I'm not attacked by Ninja's while walking out there. Well, OK, we don't actually have any Ninja's out here, but we DO have skunks... (My policy is Mr. Skunk always gets the right of way!) Anyway, I'm walking along, and suddenly: my light goes out!
This isn't a big deal - I have another light on me, but it occurred to me that I'd been using the M1X well past the 50% brightness point, and the batteries (I'm using the extender with 2x 18650's) finally collapsed to the point that they couldn't power the LED any longer. (The light powered right back up once I changed the batteries.)
The thing is - 50% of an MCE is still bright as hell, and plenty to illuminate my yard quite effectively.
Anybody else find it hard to notice when these lights are really dimming? Older (luxeon I, III & V based) LEDs I have are dim enough that I guess once they start to fade, it's pretty noticeable. But both my P7M & M1X really seem able to surprise me by running out of juice quite suddenly. Or perhaps I'm just unobservant?
Am I correct in concluding that these things just provide way more than enough light for most purposes until they don't provide any light at all? Because that's how it seems to me. Or is this a property of the rechargeable Lithium ion cells? (My older lights always used primary CR123A's.)
I will say that I am utterly amazed by the output of these newer LEDs.
I was walking out to my shed last night to get my 12' tall ladder. My hourse sits on 5 acres, and I have no lights on this whatsoever, so it's quite dark here. Anyway I take a flashlight with me (in this case the M1X) so that I'm not attacked by Ninja's while walking out there. Well, OK, we don't actually have any Ninja's out here, but we DO have skunks... (My policy is Mr. Skunk always gets the right of way!) Anyway, I'm walking along, and suddenly: my light goes out!
This isn't a big deal - I have another light on me, but it occurred to me that I'd been using the M1X well past the 50% brightness point, and the batteries (I'm using the extender with 2x 18650's) finally collapsed to the point that they couldn't power the LED any longer. (The light powered right back up once I changed the batteries.)
The thing is - 50% of an MCE is still bright as hell, and plenty to illuminate my yard quite effectively.
Anybody else find it hard to notice when these lights are really dimming? Older (luxeon I, III & V based) LEDs I have are dim enough that I guess once they start to fade, it's pretty noticeable. But both my P7M & M1X really seem able to surprise me by running out of juice quite suddenly. Or perhaps I'm just unobservant?
Am I correct in concluding that these things just provide way more than enough light for most purposes until they don't provide any light at all? Because that's how it seems to me. Or is this a property of the rechargeable Lithium ion cells? (My older lights always used primary CR123A's.)
I will say that I am utterly amazed by the output of these newer LEDs.