10 white led, 5 UV led with laser. It arrived!
White, UV, Laser LED Flashlight.
It arrived!
I must confess, buying this off of eBay was just as exciting as any capabilities this flashlight/laser has. I have never received mail from Hong Kong before.
As soon as I tore open the package, I was confronted by a waft of the unmistakable (and mildly pleasant, to me anyway) petrochemical odor of "Chinese rubber", presumably from the rubber switch boot. If you've ever set foot in a Harbor Freight hardware store, you know what I mean.
Anyway, my unit looks pretty much as pictured above, except the five extra UV LED's clustered around the center laser aperture.
The basics. Here is the auction listing:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5231100697
Price: .99 British Pounds, approximately $1.80 USD, and another 7.99 British Pounds in international shipping, for a total of $16.80 USD.
Packaging:
The flashlight was shipped in a small manilla envelope with what I assume are the standard Hong Kong postal marks and customs declaration sticker. Inside, the flashlight was packed in an unmarked white box just big enough to hold it, wrapped in a small sheet of bubble wrap. There was no labeling, brand name, or documentation in the packaging, giving an impression of being a completely "OEM" or bulk wholesale, kind of item. Not that this was a hindrance, anyone of normal intelligence should be able to load and operate the light and laser just fine. I personally despise over-packaged retail items that need razors, lasers, or power tools to open due to "theft deterrence".
Build:
Approximately 7 in/15cm long. Made from platinum-grey anodized satin aluminum with a few minor dings, and a small tiny flaw in the anodizing on the body. The end of the bezel is capped with a bright polished aluminum plate on with holes for the 5mm LED's and the laser aperture. Softly rounded large square knurling, reminiscent of a stereotypical "pineapple" hand grenade improves the grip somewhat. The bezel and tail cap are threaded, and have O-rings, but the switch leads me to believe the unit is only marginally water resistant. The switch is visible when the bezel is unscrewed, it appears to be soldered to a small circuit board to make it's connections to three wires that connect to the back of the LED/Laser module in the bezel. Both the switch and board are housed in a rubber/plastic unit that looks to be a press fit into the body tube, and is one piece with the rubber boot covering the switch button. However, the plastic/rubber fitting is open on both ends inside the tube, and this forms the basis for my belief the flashlight is merely water resistant. The backside of the LED module has large solder/foil contacts on the back that look to provide a return path for the electricity fed by the three wires through the flashlight body when it is screwed together. Even though the wires are connected, the flashlight will not operate unless the bezel is screwed completely on.
There is a typical braided black nylon lanyard, with the typical crimped chrome steel ferule on the flashlight end, that we've all seen a thousand times before on any number of consumer products. The lanyard is attached via a split ring though a small hole in the corner of the tail cap. The only notable deficiency is that the split-ring is of the chintzy wire kind you normally find your car key on when you get it back from the shop. Any serious tug will rip the split ring right out, however replacing it with a more robust one if sufficiently small should pose little problem.
Aside from any incidental klutziness on my part, I am not going to administer a "Smack Test" a-la LED Museum. My guess is that it would suffer as well as any other Type 1 anodized Chinese flashlight of similar build. Nor am I going to bother with a suction or water resistance test, it's pretty obvious it's not a fully water proof light, and probably leaks a little around the rubber switch boot. Nuff said.
The switch:
The rubber switch is on the side of the body tube, just behind the bezel, in the same proportion and position familiar to any C or D M@g light. It is a non-recessed rubber button protruding just under 1cm, and about 1cm in diameter. Because it is not recessed, accidental activation is possible, but the solid push the underlying switch requires makes accidental activation unlikely unless you were to sit on it.
The switch has four modes, OFF, WHITE LED's, UV LED's, LASER, and then OFF again. Each mode runs independently, there is no combining the modes. Each click cycles you to the next mode. You have to cycle through all the modes to get the one you want, or back to OFF. The switching appears to be a purely mechanical affair, and not done by IC logic on any kind of "driver board". In each mode It is a constant on switch, the mode does not engage until a solid click is felt, however a signal or momentary-off mode is possible in each of the three light modes, if you depress the switch partway when in that mode. (OFF is still "OFF" however.)
Batteries:
Accessed by unscrewing the tail cap, the flashlight/laser takes three "AAA" alkaline batteries in the triple holder most of us would be accustomed to from other flashlights. I may be wrong, but positive appears to run through the tail cap spring and the flashlight body, while negative runs through the center contact of the triple AAA holder that is on the switch and bezel end.
White LED's:
Ten white 5mm LED's surround the outer ring of the bezel faceplate. The first click of the switch turns them on. They are suitably bright, slightly bluish like most pedestrian white LED's providing a "crisp" white . At any distance over 12"/30cm they produce a relatively even and round flood/spot with no notable gaps or artifacts that I can see. It seems to be typical for multi-LED lights of this type.
UV LED's:
A cluster of five UV LED's sits inside the outer ring of ten white LED's. The second click of the switch turns them on, and the white LED's off. There was no documentation provided as to the wavelength of the LED's, but I assume they are the more inexpensive "purple"-nm near-UVA LED's with a fair amount of violet/blue overspill. However, they do fluoresce the UV security features in US currency, checks, and credit cards nicely. As I am still at work, I have not had the opportunity to test on other things like bodily fluids, uranium glass, or scorpions.
In a brief experiment, I also used the UV LED's to fluoresce the phosphors in the 1W Luxeon LED from the Dorcy 1W AAA flashlight I cannibalized to get the AAA batteries to test the flashlight/laser. The die on the 1W Luxeon glowed a nice yellow white.
Laser:
A decent LED laser is in the center of the five UV LED's. The third click of the switch turns the laser on, and the UV LED's off. There is no FDA/CDRH laser sticker/warning anywhere on the flashlight so I have no real idea as to the wavelength or wattage, but it is the common "bar" or "dash" shaped beam, and compares in brightness almost exactly to a class IIIA <5mW 650nm keychain laser I own. The beam does appear to be better focused and the "dash" is better pronounced at almost every distance than the keychain laser. The spot was easily visible under bright office fluorescent lighting at the longest distance available within my building which is well over 100 feet.
Overall, a decent value for my $16 and change. Although this is my first UV LED product, I'm sure it's far from the best UV product out there either in brightness or wavelength, but it is certainly going to be better than the single LED key-chain fob lights that are commonly available. It's a decent <5mW red laser pointer of sufficient brightness to work in that capacity. A better point or round shaped beam would be preferable, but it is better focused than my other pointer with a dash shaped beam. It is also a decent white LED flashlight of the multi-LED type. It could easily be sold for $16-17 as a white LED flashlight at retail, IMO, and the UV and laser are just gravy. To have all three in combination probably only appeals to the flashaholic, or perhaps the lowest of the wanna-be CSI forensics show fans, but having them all in one unit makes it sufficiently unique to be worth having.
