I actually finally gave in to curiosity a couple of weeks ago and bought a Fusion 36 drop-in. I have to say that my feelings about it are rather mixed, as this piece certainly has its good points and not so good points. As far as its good points, as has been said quite a few times in this thread, the quality of the light put out by this unit is GREAT. If you are using your lights for 'outdoor adventure' use rather than, say, law enforcement or search and rescue, you probably appreciate flood MUCH more than throw. And this unit is probably about the BEST flooder you are going to get your hands on. The hotspot is rather subtle, and transitions rather gently into the spill. In other words, lighting is VERY even. If you use this light on a dark trail, it will light up LARGE areas of land, giving you a good view of the the trail and everything surrounding it. You won't see much 700 feet down the trail. But for 100-150 feet, things will be quite well lit. Additionally, tint is pretty good. The light is on the warm side, but without any of that annoying yellowish green that can plague some other lights. And finally, as others have said, it drops into a Mag in no time.
So what's there not to like? Light output, for one. While the QUALITY of the light output is AWESOME, the brightness is a little underwelming. It's not bad considering the low cost of this drop-in. But it just doesn't live up to the numbers. This unit is advertised as putting out 400-900 lumens. And I can only assume that they mean 400 lumens with two cells and 900 lumens with six cells (and somewhere in between accordingly with 3-5 cells). But you certainly WON'T get 400 lumens with only two cells. Maybe 200-250 tops. And you MIGHT get around 400 lumens with six cells. I'm using five cells. And it's somewhat brighter than my 270 lumen Malkoff drop-in for my 2C. But it's nowhere NEAR as bright as my 600 lumen (on three cells, or 900 on four) Malkoff XM-L2 drop-in. I would estimate maybe 350-400 lumens (or so). Again, it's certainly not bad for $26. But be aware that, if you're expecting 900 lumens from six cells, these ARE 'Chinese lumens'.
I've als had contact problems. This seems to be common with this piece. And it seems to happen quite soon. Sometimes, I would have to turn the head a few turns to get the light to come on. Other times, I would have to hit the light as if it was some junky, cheap light from the 70s. One thing that I have found helpful is running it with the retaining collar in the bulb socket. It would seem like this puts a little more pressure on the bulb base that they use on this unit. Hopefully, it will hold up. But I don't know how much I trust it in the long run. Especially as my main light out on a trail somewhere. It just seems like they could have done better here. But again, this piece was certainly built to a budget.
Does anybody have runtime figures for the Fusion 36?
On 5 C cells, I'm getting a tailcap current of about .85A. With 4000mAH Tenergy Centuras, this works out to be approximately 4.5-5 hours. Given that tailcap current seems to drop slightly with increasing number of cells (there appears to be SOME degree of regulation), 5 hours seems about right with six 4000mAH cells. Of course, the light will run longer with higher capacity cells (like 5000mAH Premium cells).
