Why the dislike for LED LENSER?

[Jash]

I've had two Led Lensers. After the flood/throw novelty wore off I gave both of them away, nuff said.

 

[TadpolePilot]

Zoom feature is on a $17.00 light out of China that is powered by AAA, 18650 and the best for me 26650.

 

[baterija]

Nicely summarised Fireclaw! Ya, admit that the zoom is kinda cool, its like having an inbuilt diffuser. You would think they would license it out to make some extra cash, but maybe they asking too much?

Given the long list of other weaknesses, I'm actually not surprised they don't license it. It's their sole competitive advantage. It's might be ugly for them when the patent protection expires.

 

[Fireclaw18]

On my cheap budget zoom lights like the Sipik 68 or Romisen RC29 the optic is a simple aspheric lens and nothing else. On my LED Lenser P5 it is a rather complicated engineered plastic lens that actually wraps completely around the emitter. When the simple aspheric lights are zoomed from flood to spot, half the lumens are lost inside the bezel resulting in a very dramatic decrease in overall output immediately noticeable in a ceiling bounce test. Amazingly, when I try the same test with my Lenser P5 there appears to be no noticeable reduction in output regardless of whether the lens is in flood or spot mode. The engineered optic seems to be quite a bit more efficient than a plain aspheric lens.

Still, even with the impressive zoom lens setup, Lensers have far too many disadvantages and are lacking too many features to stand up to other flashlights in the same price range. Informed flashlight owners tend to avoid LED Lensers with good reason.

 

[Kevinkw1]

Given the long list of other weaknesses, I'm actually not surprised they don't license it. It's their sole competitive advantage. It's might be ugly for them when the patent protection expires.

The funny thing is that they have such market penetration to the general public but! They are in so many "retail" stores like the "king of knives" and other "tobacco" stores in Australa. They must offer some awesome incentives to make these places become their dealers.

 

[dc38]

Well, I'm still in the process of planning on modding my P7 lenser...Lemme tell you, the wiring is a nightmare. (not really, but the internals of the light are pretty much garbage.) Until I can get a new driver and a way to make the current switch work with it and my xml to fit into the pill, I don't really touch this light anymore. The only real thing that sells this light was mentioned above, the "patented focus" lens. Aside from that...half the pill is freaking plastic! :thumbsdow On top of that, all the other faults were mentioned above. However, If i can fit just the right emitter in there, this host may have the potential to be ranked among the top throw kings (an xml may be too large, so maybe an r5 or r2 will have to do )

 

[utlgoa]

I own an Olight SR90, Fenix TK35, HID Onboard, Nitecore TM-11 and a Coast HP17, and none of them comes close to the LedLenser X21.

 

[somnambulated]

The funny thing is that they have such market penetration to the general public but! They are in so many "retail" stores like the "king of knives" and other "tobacco" stores in Australa. They must offer some awesome incentives to make these places become their dealers.

Just to echo this, Tobacco stores here in the States carry junk knives and lights. Not sure if it's the same overseas, but remember MSRP doesn't always have much to do with what the retailer paid for the item.

Via iPhone & Tapatalk

 

[Jash]

I own an Olight SR90, Fenix TK35, HID Onboard, Nitecore TM-11 and a Coast HP17, and none of them comes close to the LedLenser X21.

I've seen both the SR90 and X21 in action. Your SR90 must be stuck on low.

 

[somnambulated]

I've seen both the SR90 and X21 in action. Your SR90 must be stuck on low.

Also note that he's comparing $90 flashlights to the $300 Lenser...


Via iPhone & Tapatalk

 

[eh4]

Actually the zoom is the only thing on an LED Lenser that makes the light stand out. Apart from the zoom, LED Lensers have the features of a typical $10 budget light. The problem is the zoom alone is just not enough to justify paying 4x, 5x or even 10x the price of a budget light.

Exactly, they are sitting on their laurels and keeping other makers from using a very common sense feature. BS!!!

 

[rambo180]

Awesome replies. Thankyou to everyone, I have learnt a lot about quality and specs, and most importantly learnt what NOT to buy! I will no longer wonder why none of the other high-end manufacturers don't sell zoom flashlights.

 

[JulianP]

The LED Lenser zoom mechanism is fairly good. On my LED Lenser, light output does not noticeably diminish zooming from spot to flood in a ceiling bounce test.

I don't have a Led Lenser, but even with my rudimentary understanding of optics this puzzles me. Surely if you spread the same lumens out to a wider area, the beam must get a bit dimmer. What am I missing?

 

[Bigmac_79]

I don't have a Led Lenser, but even with my rudimentary understanding of optics this puzzles me. Surely if you spread the same lumens out to a wider area, the beam must get a bit dimmer. What am I missing?

The idea behind a ceiling bounce test is that the light is spread over the whole room, so you can make a visual comparison of the the overall amount of light coming out the front. You're correct that when moving from spot to flood, the light is spread out over a larger area and each place hit by the light will receive less light than it did while being hit with the spot. I believe Fireclaw18's point was that when shining the light on the ceiling, the ambient brightness in the room didn't change much when switching between spot and flood. This would mean that the focusing system is equally efficient in both positions, letting the same amount of light out the front (instead of more getting caught inside the head in one position).

I have tested my Led Lenser P7 in my home made light box, and the output graphs were almost identical on spot and flood, so I'd agree with Fireclaw18's observation that the overall light coming out the front is consistant in both spot and flood.

 

[rambo180]

Not really, you learned about biases.

True. I've now developed a bias towards other flashlights. I have a cheapie (but still bright) 3xAA with zoom, certainly part of the charm of zoom is pure novelty in my opinion.

 

[cccpull]

True. I've now developed a bias towards other flashlights. I have a cheapie (but still bright) 3xAA with zoom, certainly part of the charm of zoom is pure novelty in my opinion.

It has it's use, try working close-up and see how much easier it is to focus on your work when in flood mode.

Nothing wrong with cheapie's. I have some that make the me think twice about the money spent on the so called better quality/hyped-up stuff.

Enjoy the hobby.

 

[utlgoa]

I've seen both the SR90 and X21 in action. Your SR90 must be stuck on low.

I wasn't refering to lumen output.

Watch this video and be reminded that Led Lenser is more than just an LED and a Orange Peel Reflector.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRGoxOpAuns

 

[yliu]

In europe they seem to be just as popular if not, even more popular than Maglites.

I don't like them mostly because of their poor value. You can get lights with better build quality, more light output for the same money. Here, the Led Lenser M7 costs just a little less than a Olight M31! For the price of the M7 I can buy a Olight M20X, or a Fenix TK21 etc.

For the price of the X21, you can get a Fenix TK70 and still have enough to get a LD20. Just add a little bit more money, you get the Olight X6 Marauder w/ 5000 lumens.
If Led Lenser had just upgraded the chip from the XRE to an XML, it would make their light more appealing.

I also had a bad experience with my P7, it was accidentally dropped from roughly 1m height to concrete, and it stopped working. I've dropped my LD20 quite a few times from both higher and lower heights onto hard surfaces and it still works.

Really the only selling point of Led Lenser would be the focusing system, which does not appeal to everyone. Although I find the complete flood beam to be useful indoors and for close range tasks, I still tend to gravitate towards the traditional beam profile.

Although some of their new products such as the P3 AFS P.

 

[Fireclaw18]

I don't have a Led Lenser, but even with my rudimentary understanding of optics this puzzles me. Surely if you spread the same lumens out to a wider area, the beam must get a bit dimmer. What am I missing?

There are two measures of light output: "lux", which is the intensity of the beam... how far the light can throw, and "lumens", which is the total amount of light coming out of the light. A light with a highly focused beam but no spill might have high lux and low lumens. Conversely a floodlight with no spot might have very high lumens but low lux.

The goal of a ceiling bounce test is to try to get a rough comparison of the lumens coming out of the light. Inside a dark room, while standing, hold the light in hand and point it at the ceiling. Then look at an object on the floor and try to measure its brightness (do not look at the spot on the ceiling). Doing this I cycled the zoom mechanism back and forth on my P5 while looking at the floor and saw no noticeable dimming suggesting that light output (lumens) was about the same in both modes.... much different from the budget clones which use a simple aspheric and see dramatic dimming when in spot mode.

 

[kaichu dento]

The many times I've looked at them in the store displays and the few that I've owned have earned my dislike for the tints used and the beam patterns.

I have lots of lights, too many actually, and no need for any more of these.