How to tell if I need a battery change...

[Snesley Wipes]

I just purchased my E1L and wanted to find out if there was a definitive way to know the battery is getting weak. It seems it would be hard to tell after a while if your beam is dimming because my eyes just accept it. Could anybody provide a little guidance?
Thank you

 

[WildChild]

I just purchased my E1L and wanted to find out if there was a definitive way to know the battery is getting weak. It seems it would be hard to tell after a while if your beam is dimming because my eyes just accept it. Could anybody provide a little guidance?
Thank you

At some point, you'll see a quick dimming but you will still have light. When this quick dimming happens, the battery is empty. Else, I don't know what to suggest...

 

[AvidHiker]

Ahh, the advantage of a regulated driver circuit, like in the E1L, is that you don't have to worry about your light gradually dimming without you noticing - they were specifically designed NOT to do that. A disadvantage to that is, once the light drops out of regulation you typically loose brightness pretty rapidly (although you will continue to get some "useful" light out for quite a while). I do not own the E1L, but being a two level design, you will also probably notice that the difference between high and low is suddenly diminished (or nonexistant), at least that's how my L2 behaves. Then its time for new batteries.

Your only other option is to get a good battery tester, like the ZTS pulse load tester.

 

[Zenster]

If the E1L is anything like the E1B, it's not "dimming" that will alert you to a low battery, it's the light not being able to operate at it's high setting.

My E1B all of a sudden would only turn on to it's low setting, so I checked the battery with my ZTS and it read totally dead. Yet, it would still light up the E1B on low.
I'll take a guess that I could get quite a bit more runtime on low if need be.

If your E1L is the single mode model, then yea, dimming is when to change the battery, but you say you just bought yours so I'll assume it's the 2-level model.

 

[guyg]

I havnt changed batteries in my L2T yet, but in the other, less expensive LED lights, the light just flat wont light.

 

[Snesley Wipes]

Cool, thanks for the replies guys. It sound like the high will stay high, because of the regulator.