DX 3W 123 Cree light draws LOTS of current

[maxhawk]

Just received DX's P1 clone (single mode though) and noticed it got hot real fast. It's very bright, probably as bright or brighter than the P1 on high. I checked the current with an HP meter (34401A) and it's drawing 1.45A from my Tenergy 3.0V RCR123! I don't know what the voltage is sagging to since I didn't go through the trouble of soldering wires to access the positive and negative nodes. 4.2V is printed on the little PCB so I guess it's designed to work with 3.6V RCR's. However at this current drive I wouldn't recommend running the light for long periods of time.

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.2821

 

[nerdgineer]

Yeah. A lot of the Fenix clones look close and may be near as bright as the Fenix originals, but few come close to Fenix's circuit efficiency and most of the cheaper DX/Kai ones fall WAY short (like half) of the Fenix efficiencies.