Arc-AAA vs the Mag Solitaire: efficiency

[Eugene]

I think the Solitaire doesn't quite get a fair deal here. I compared mine to my Arc AAA that I just received and to me they were even in brightness. I tried shining against a wall and ceiling in a couple rooms in various levels of lighting. I also tried my old test against rubber printer rollers. They both reflected off worn rollers equally as well. The difference with the Arc was a "cleaner" light, no dark/light spots like the solitiare requiring which used to require me to move the light a bit. The arc AAA seemed kine of blueish to me as well where the solitaire was yellowish light. They also both hurt my eyes equally when I looked direct at the bulb /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif
Also I have only replaced one mag bulb so far. I have carried a 2AAA for a couple years and a Solitaire for much longer than that. The Solitiare I carried was black and wore completely down to bare aluminum but the original bulb worked untill one of the pins rusted away not long after I left the light in my pocket in the laundry. Guess it wasn't quite waterproof enough.

 

[paulr]

The Arc AAA and Mag Solitaire have roughly equal brightness when the batteries are new. Run a Solitaire for even a few minutes and it will be dimmer than the Arc. Run the Solitaire until it completely dims out, then put the battery into the Arc, and the Arc will run just fine on the "dead" battery.

 

[gyverpete]

I just compared the two with new batteries and the Arc puts out about THREE TIMES as much light. I did two tests. One by shining at a wall. The other by shining up at a white ceiling and observing the indirect light(this test yields the same brightness from the mag whether spot or flood)
No contest. I then compared the Arc to a 2AAA minimag the same way, and they're about the same brightness. That's a more fair comparison.
So, you guys must either have defective Arcs or exceptional solitaires, or I have just the opposite.

If I can manage a beam shot, I'll post it.

 

[js]

Peter,

The ability to fully utilize batteries is VERY important, IMHO. I weight it a whole lot in my light buying decisions. It all started with one of your very own Arc AAA-LE's. After that I realized how very nice a feature regulation really is, especially with alkalines. So, for what it's worth, my vote is "YES" on that question.

As for the Solitare, it is mostly worthless. My wife had one on her keychain (until I got her an Arc /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif ) and it really just doesn't perform well. With a good bulb and brand new batteries, it is OK for a minute or two, but then after that, I much prefer a cigaratte lighter or a match--better color and better throw than the Solitare!

 

[Dave Wright]

Eugene,

Objective brightness tests that Peter commissioned from a third party tester turned up 2 lumens for the Solitaire and 3 lumens for the Arc AAA. And the test methodology was, IMO, biased toward the Solitaire. The Arc AAA was tested with a real battery. The Solitaire was fed a controlled 1.5 volts from a power supply. In reality the Solitaire would draw down even a fresh battery to below 1.5 volts.

My personal observations & guess is that the Arc starts out about twice as bright as the Solitaire lasts at least twice as long on a battery.

 

[Catapult]

[ QUOTE ]
I then compared the Arc to a 2AAA minimag the same way, and they're about the same brightness. That's a more fair comparison.

[/ QUOTE ]

I can't see how an Arc AAA's performance can meet the 2AAA Minimag. It blows the Arc AAA away. But if used batteries are placed in the 2AAA during the comparison, then that would make sense.

The Solitaire with fresh batteries will out-throw an Arc AAA, but the beam will be quite narrow. After a few minutes, then the Arc will perform better in every way.

These are my observations. I've got a couple Solitaires collecting dust, and three times as many Arc AAAs.

 

[gyverpete]

Here are some beam shots I just took of the AAA vs. Solitaire. Both with new batteries, solitaire with new bulb. The test targets were white printer paper and a file cabinet. My camera doesn't have long exposure capability so I couldn't do an indirect lighting comparison.

 

[onelight]

/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif I bought a new solitaire once I threw it away the day I got it. dim dim dim and would not stay on.They must not have all been that bad or they would have stopped selling them long ago. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbsdown.gif

 

[LED_ASAP]

Mag series are the pearl of the 80's, and Arc is the creation of the new millenium. We can clearly see how technology has improved over the years. Both Solitaire and Arc AAA are very good platforms for modholics /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

 

[paulr]

The Solitaire was a nice useful light if you use it the way most people use a keychain light, to occasionally find a keyhole in the dark, that kind of thing. The main problem with mine was unreliable battery contacts. The thing went completely flaky after a while. I replaced it with a Photon II and later replaced the Photon II with an Arc AAA. The Arc has 5 hours of useful runtime. The Solitaire has maybe 1 hour, if you give the battery recovery time between uses. So if you use it a minute or so a week, the battery is good for a year. There's nothing disreputable about that. The Solitaire was a perfectly respectable light for its time; the Arc is just much newer and better.

 

[gyverpete]

[ QUOTE ]
paulr said:
The Solitaire was a perfectly respectable light for its time; the Arc is just much newer and better.

[/ QUOTE ]
I agree. I was impressed with my Solitaire when I first got one several years ago. With all Mags in fact. They're well made but LEDs win for both whiteness and efficiency. If Mag eventually incorporates the newer technology, they might then be able to compete.

 

[smokinbasser]

I thought I was having loading problems with the mediaplayer I thought I came into this movie half way through. I saw the solitare come on for a nanosecond and then saw the battery removed and placed in the arc and great light so I reloaded and watched it once again. Finally it soaked in as to what I just saw. That says it all.

 

[radellaf]

I think DivX is another format that has spotty cross-platform support and which was based on a beta of a Windows Media codec. Any of the MPEG formats would be preferable. QuickTime is available for free for Windows, and as far as I know includes ALL the codecs the mac version has.

VLC is a great alternative player to QuickTime but still won't play the Arc video.

What the heck, soon I'll have my AA, and I'm pretty familiar with the Solitaire vs. Arc AAA comparison having carried a Solitaire from 1988 till 2000 or so when the Photon showed up in the Hosfelt catalog, and the Arc AAA for the past two years or so. I bought a new Solitaire because I somehow lost the old one <weep>, and I was wondering if the new one would have less contact problems.

Personally, the Photon is my favorite for a pure keyhole finder type light, just on the basis of how small it is. The Solitaire's main problem for keychain use IMHO is that the back end keeps unscrewing itself. OTOH, the lanyard it includes is nice enough to be worth the $5 price just to use it with the Arc AAA.

Any data on how they compare with a NiMH battery? That would negate the long tail of an LED on alkaline, and actually be able to support the current draw of the incandescent.

Testing that in my house, the Arc is no doubt brighter, but loses the huge runtime advantage. Also, the solitaire, though yellow, has better throw.

Mag @ 220mA = 3:24 Arc @ 180mA = 4:10

That's all I'll say to give the Solitaire its due.

However, a MiniMag AAA on NiMH cells with a NexStar 500mA lamp is brighter and further throwing than an Arc...and much bigger. Heck, the Arc AAA makes the Solitaire look kinda big.

Really, like we all know, the Arc AAA is a paragon of micro-portable illuminators. Apart from the battery it uses, it's about as un-like a Solitaire as it can get.

 

[Connor]

radellaf,

DivX 3.11 was indeed based on a hacked M$ codec, but DivX 4.x and 5.x are true, written from scratch, MPEG-4 codecs with very good visual quality and compression ratios. They're also available for almost every OS and thus I would prefer the ARC videos in DivX, too.

Hey Peter, you would even reduce your website traffic with DivX movies (and the vids would look much crisper and more professional).

-Connor

 

[radellaf]

Well, as long as "almost every" includes Mac OS X, and preferably QuickTime player.

 

[Connor]

radellaf,

http://www.divx.com/divx/
http://www.divx.com/divx/mac/
http://www.divx.com/divx/linux/

"almost every" enough for you? ;-)

-Connor

 

[radellaf]

Yeah, I guess so... what's the connection to MPEG-4 that's implied in the descriptions?

 

[Connor]

radellaf,

DivX belongs to the 'family' of MPEG-4 compliant codecs.
Look here for more info: http://www.divx-digest.com/articles/mpeg4_intervideo.html

 

[radellaf]

So (newer) DivX streams should play on QuickTime as MPEG-4 compliant video, it seems. Sounds like DivX is a MPEG4 encoder that makes smaller files. If so, hey, fine, great.

 

[CM]

Peter, I had a coworker who had a solitaire on his keychain and we were trying to look in the back of his PC with it. Of course it's dim and yellow as hell. I gave him my AAA and said pull your battery out and put it in my arc. He was blown away. He bought one the next day /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif I don't buy AAA batteries anymore for the Arc. I just take my spent ones from other equipment and put it in the Arc. I get many more hours of useful light out of them.