dano said:
I'm VERY dubious of all these lumen output numbers for Cree LED.s The few Cree absed lights I have are not that much brighter, where I can say they are definitely 120+ Lu "out the front." I've done a few tests witha light meter, and the Cree's I have are lower than a comparable Incan (though this can't be compared to a lumen rating per se).
I think the lumen numbers of most Cree's are highly exaggerated.
The ASP Cree may actually have some truthful output numbers, thus they are quoted as being lower than what is currently the trend.
Thinking about it ASP's numbers do sound quite reasonable to me;
Assume 3 Crees driven at 350mA to give a "typical" 80 lumens each, as per specs, 240 lumens total. Halve that to give an achievable "out the front" figure of 120 lumens.
Assuming a typical vf of 3.3v, power consumption would be around 3 x 3.3 x 0.350 = 3.465W.
If a typical CR123A cell has 1300mAh of capacity at a nominal 3v, 3 x 1.3 = 3.9Wh of energy.
ASP claim a runtime of 1h/cell for the various configurations, this would give a converter efficiency of 3.465 / 3.9 = 89%.
Apply a bit of rounding off to give easy to understand numbers and you have claims that they will be able to stand by - even allowing for variation in the parts (which they won't be hand-picking!).
cratz2 said:
It does seem odd that three Crees would only barely keep up with a single Lux V and give only twice the runtime.
Surely they would also produce much less heat and last a lot longer than a Lux V (500h spec) at this drive level?
For me the important thing will be the runtime graphs to demonstrate the regulation and the beamshots (I'd love to see numbers to compare against the FLR charts).
If the build quality is high end and the regulation good I don't think that the price is extortionate either, not great though as you can get a custom mod with hand-picked parts for not too much more.
One final question for TacticalGrilling (love that concept BTW
) is whether the tubes will take the big protected rechargeable cells. With the options listed it ought to be possible to run this light on 2 or 3 Li-ions at least, if not just 1.
seth said:
BTW: Finally a non-nonsense on-off Cree... I have no clue why every manufacturer includes this multi-click / multi-brightness nonsense into Cree lights...
My guess would be that all the Cree lights so far are aimed at a broader user base than ASP aim at with their products. If you genuinely only use your light to look for the bad guys you may only want full brightness, everyone else might find 100+ lumens too bright for changing a light bulb or mapreading. Thus you can sell fewer features (but higher build quality!) for more money.
Personally I'd like to have my cake and eat it with some way of dimming this light (but defaulting to high when first turned on).
