Lighthound Cree drop-in for SF

[crocodilo]

Just got mine today. Put it in my 6P and was so blown away I changed it to my C2: fell in love with it again! Lots of throw, beautiful beam, and nicely priced.

Lighthound did it again...

One question for the forum experts: on the module it reads "CREE 750mA 3.7-9V". Does this have any sort of regulation? What kind of runtime is to be expected running on Li primaries? And what about lumens? Any advice on batteries/recharger to use with this setup?

 

[BBL]

It says '750mA' - I would it expect to be buck-regulated to exactly that current.

I got that dropin too, but i'm not very satisfied with the construction. The led is rarely heat-sinked and gets quite hot even after 2mins of operation. I intended on running it for several hours at a time on 2x 18650 li-ion, i dont think it would survive that long.

 

[NickDrak]

I had one a while back that I ran for 30mins at a time with 10min in-between for cooling. It was warm to the touch after each 30min cycle, but not "hot". I got just over 3 hours of runtime with mine before it started to gradually lose output. I think it is a solid unit especially for the price. I did end up replacing it with one of the Malkoff units. The Malkoff unit has a deeper reflector then any of the drop-in units I have seen, and the light that comes out of it is super white compared to the others I have tested as well (LightHound, Wolf Eyes, AllTeamGo from ebay).

*ETA: I was running my light with (3) CR123 "Titanium" cells from AmondoTech

 

[crocodilo]

The good people at Lighthound replied to my questions with what are probably some very conservative ballpark numbers: 90 lumens for 1,5 hours. This hardly seems state of the art, even when viewed against a simple Fenix P1CE. But then again:
-When I compared the two side by side, quite reasonably the 2x123 did much, much better in terms of perceived brigtness;
-The SF P90 LA is stated to give 90 lumens for 20 minutes. If LH numbers are right, this drop-in puts out the same brightness with a 4,5 factor increase in runtime;
-Tint and beam pattern are far better than my yellowish incan original setup (put the original LA in a 6P body and did a comparison. Same results with original 6P and G2);
-For a modest price, I brought back to use a flashlight featuring solid construction and great features. The drop-in will increase the reliability by an enormous factor (no more incan lamp burn-outs);
-To end all, I'm considering getting some protected R123, to increase performance even more and drop down on feeding costs.

Still consider this to be one of the smartest moves my small flashlight collection ever got, IMHO, even if this module isn't the top dog.