Zebralight H501 or H501w owners please confirm your findings

I have been running AW 14500 in my H501w for a long time. Always going with the impression that Li-Ion gives me more output than NiMH, I did not bother to run Eneloop in the H501w until today. To my amazement, it actually runs brighter! I thought that my AW 14500 is weak so I changed it out for a new freshly charged battery but it still runs dimmer than the Eneloop. Just to convince myself that the 14500 cells are not faulty, I tried them in the Thrunite Neutron 1A neutral white and it runs brighter on all the 14500 than on an Eneloop.

Can any H501 or H501w users who have both 14500 and Eneloop batteries confirm this?

Yep the H501 is considerably brighter on the Eneloops. There's no real reason to use a 14500 in it.

Foxx510 said:

Yep the H501 is considerably brighter on the Eneloops. There's no real reason to use a 14500 in it.

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So you too share the same findings? My god, why am I using 14500 in it all these while?

Yep I've tried both. A 14500 is close to medium on an Eneloop if I remember correctly. Zebralight have talked about it in a thread from long ago, briefly saying the driver was only really designed as a boost driver but will work in a limited way with a 14500.

I must have missed the post where Zebralight said that. Thanks so much for sharing! Now I could free up one more 14500 for the other lights that needed it more.

i had the same experience...
i have the older H501w with only the L/M/H and double click for strobe.

back when i first got it, i tried a AW14500, and it actually seemed dimmer... that got me a little nervous and never tried it again.

i strictly use L91s in it, and im glad it doesnt seem dangerous to use a 14500. based from your usage hehe.

Foxx510 said:

Yep the H501 is considerably brighter on the Eneloops. There's no real reason to use a 14500 in it.

Click to expand...

Ditto, I chucked my 14500's in favor of the Eneloops. Actually, they are in a drawer, might come in handy someday for something else, but seems to be a waste of money for me at the moment.

Wrong forum. Moving it to Headlamps...

hmm- I wonder what the runtime difference is with 14500?

Runtime seems long enough on 14500. Have been using it frequently for my one day camping trips over the weekend and there is never a need to change out the battery until I got home.

H501 runtime tests - shows relative output too.


- Syncytial.

syncytial said:

H501 runtime tests - shows relative output too.


- Syncytial.

Click to expand...

^^^^ oh yeah I forgot about that awesome test.
thanks for the work homie!!

Thanks for the link syncytial. It is very helpful.