Re: Zebralight H51 details/preorder!!!
I hope they build this lamp out of a good chunk of Al, 200lm with 1AA means -LOTS- of heat.
Lumens have but little to do with heat other than what is implied with baseline efficiency guestimates. Wasted power is heat, and lumens don't tell the whole story. With LEDs growing in efficiency like they have. More and more power (as a percentage) is being wasted in the power circuit, which Zebra seems to have spent a great deal of effort working on. There is no law that says 1xAA@200 lumens w/XPG must put out more heat than 1xCR123@200 lumens w/XPG
CR123a are not only brighter but also denser in terms of energy. I think it was 3xAA=1cr123 So you get more runtime and arguably better performance in extreme temperature ranges, ie after being stored in a hot or cold car.
Lithium AAs are roughly equivalent to CR123s in most aspects related to performance. Rechargables are fairly comparable as well, and even favor AA types when you throw in "protected" cells or requirements for them. There is certainly not a 3:1 ratio unless you are not comparing apples to apples.
If cr123 are the standard primary, Alkalines are the counterpart.
CR123s are what, 3-5x more expensive than bog standard alkalines? That's not a real comparison. Besides, alkalines stink for high output and every runtime test shows that. I don't know anyone who uses alkalines with any regularity in nice Flashlights. If that's all you consider as comparable, I can see why you are so vehement against AA lights. I totally agree that Alkaline cells are garbage relative to other options on the market.
Even if you ignore that point, the problem with that argument is that cr123s are usually cheaper online. They last longer, and have higher voltage than L91s, which means you can use the more efficient buck circuit.
I picked up my last batch of Energizer Lithium AAs for $0.50 ea, "usually cheaper" *shrug*. I only use those for emergency backups anyway. General performance is very comparable, voltage is only an issue for circuit design. It is *easier* to build more efficient circuits for higher voltages that are *smaller*, that does not mean lower voltage based circuits cannot perform well or at similar levels of efficiency. The crappy efficiencies seen in low voltage circuits are due to wanting cheap+small (which works better with higher voltage) as well as an artifact of trying to build jack-of-all-trades circuits since you essentially *have to* optimize for lithium voltage range and that makes low voltage an after thought. This is the main thing lacking in quality AA lights, better/more efficient boost circuits from the 1.0-1.5v range and it looks like Zebralight is moving a little in that direction - good for them. Doing so usually means throwing high voltage support out the window, and I find that perfectly reasonable for a AA based light and should be thoroughly applauded.
