Hi guys,
I don't consider this a review of the Pelican 7060 LAPD light but rather a preview based on a Beta sample and some images, observations and rough comparisons.
The sample I received came with a charging dock and a 110 wall wart to provide the dock with 12VDC in:
I will leave the specs to the manufacturer's supplied data and since this light is a Beta light and not a production light, it is likely that some changes could be made to what I have here. I am not qualified or at liberty to discuss what little I know or understand about the circuitry of both the battery and the LED driver beyond commenting that there is indeed circuitry in both the battery as well as a constant current driver in the light engine. I don't know what the drive level is to the LED but expect it to be one amp or even in excess of 1 amp. I base this on the relative output of the light in comparison with other lights I have.
The LED module with reflector is a threaded coupling between the Bezel and base of the light:
The contacts between the module and base are plated and look quite substantial in construction, to my perception:
There are O-ring seals for these threaded joints and both switches have rubber boots for protection. The switches are of a "three way" function like three way switches in a house with the additional feature of momentary on from either switch if the light is in the off state. Either switch can latch the light into either on or off. This "three way" circuit requires two paths between the two switches and the contact points of these paths can be seen as the two pins in the tail caps which connect to the two outer pads on the battery case:
The center contact that mates to the tapered coil spring is the negative pick up from the battery. The battery pack has a longitudinal key that mates with a keyway in the base body. The tail cap is designed in a manner such that it self aligns when seated completely. The battery has side contacts for these two paths with one seen in the picture below:
The side switch as well as tail cap switch add some length to the light when compared to a light that would only have one of the two switches. In a line up with some other lights below, compare the 7060 to the Pelican M9 in particular:
I left the light on and unattended and picked it up 40 minutes later. The heat sink was quite warm but I was able to grab the light by the sink and hold tight without any real discomfort. Holding the light by the base body was no issue at all; slightly warm.
Well the 7060 uses a Cree XR-E and it has a very deep specular finish reflector. As many know, the XR-E requires a deep reflector to harness its light output if the intent is to collimate in a concentrated beam. The reflector has a short focal length and is relatively very deep. This is the first production (or beta of a production) light I have handled with a reflector designed specifically for the Cree XR-E and with intent of "throw".
So how well does it throw?
Since the 7060 is targeted at a market that is predominantly incandescent at present, I included a couple incandescent lights I had for some beam comparisons along with two LED lights; my S27-Cx2 and a SureFire Kroma. The beam shot field in daylight:
For the beam shots, I placed a blue gray T-shirt on the wall bellow the middle bananna tree. The shots were taken from the same location as this day shot and the camera (Nikon D70S) was set on manual with 24mm focal length and shutter speed of 10 seconds with F stop at F9. The T-shirt was 36 feet from the lights.
Four of the beam shots combined in one image:
In the combined shot, note the grass in the foreground of each beam. I believe the strength of the spill of the Cree XR-E is evident in the 7060 beam shot. Regardless of exposure setting of the camera, I don't think the camera can catch some artifacts in the 7060 beam that you can detect with your own eyes. With the specular reflectors of both the M9 and 7060, you can see some artifacts but I personally don't consider them a distraction or of a level of significance that would cause a misread of that being illuminated.
I took the group image and saturated it in photo shop to give a better feel of the overall beam including the spill and closer to providing an image of what you can actually see. Even here though, I could see much more detail than these pictures reveal (the lights were more than adequate for illuminating the back yard):
I also took some relative mesaurements which are reasonable fair to be used in comparison of the lights measured but should not be taken in absolute numbers.
For a lux measure, I used a Lutron light meter and placed the lights on a fixture with a hole through it that was placed approximately 1 meter above the light meter's sensor. A set distance from the front of each light and not the light source itself.
Light -------------- Lux
Kroma-------------- 1580
S27-Cx2------------ 4510
C3 (P90)------------ 3340
M9 ----------------- 4650
7060 --------------- 10870
Notes about these lights: The C3 has not been used but has been fired up a few times. I did not replace its batteries with fresh from the box. The Kroma has a few minutes of use on its batteries. The S27-Cx2 is a new light of mine that hosts a Seoul P4 driven by a DB917 and powered by 2xCR123. It uses a McR-27S reflector and is basically a titanium version of the 27LT-S in terms of beam and output. (this is a light some of you are familiar with and for the rest of you,
) Both of the Pelican lights are rechargeable and their batteries had been recently charged with a few minutes of runtime after charge.
I have an integrating sphere that is useful for relative measurements in cases where the lights are "presented" to the sphere in a similar fashion. I measured these lights with following results:
Light -------------- Lumens
Kroma-------------- 85
S27-Cx2------------ 136
C3 (P90)------------ 118
M9 ----------------- 88
7060 --------------- 131 *
* The 7060 has a larger diameter reflector than the other lights and it stands off further from the port on the integrating sphere. For this reason, I knew its reading would be lower in relative terms than the others. I removed the bezel from the light and was able to bring the reflector flush with the IS port. In this manner, I measured 191 lumens. Now this is not realistic as there is light loss from the bezel window. To get a feel for this loss, I did a seperate lux reading of the 7060 with it clamped in a fixture and the light meter fixed in position. Without the bezel, I measured 1359 lux and with it, 1185 lux. The bezel window reduced the lux measure by about 13%. If we deduct 13% from the 191 lumens we get 174 lumens which should put it in a relative ball park, I believe.
I will add some personal observations, opinions and questions in later posts in this thread. I want this initial post to be as objective as possible. The lights I used for comparison were selected because they were close at hand and not with any consious intent of bias; one way or the other. Hopefully some of you are familiar with these other lights so you can use them as a bench mark against the 7060. I would like to add that the 7060 surpasses any of the lights I have that are single LED in both lux and flux even though I have a few lights with larger reflector diameters; with one exception. The exception is a light with a 4" reflector in front of a Seoul P4 LED. My point is that the 7060 is a single LED light with impressive output compared to other LED lights I have and have seen.
I don't consider this a review of the Pelican 7060 LAPD light but rather a preview based on a Beta sample and some images, observations and rough comparisons.
The sample I received came with a charging dock and a 110 wall wart to provide the dock with 12VDC in:
I will leave the specs to the manufacturer's supplied data and since this light is a Beta light and not a production light, it is likely that some changes could be made to what I have here. I am not qualified or at liberty to discuss what little I know or understand about the circuitry of both the battery and the LED driver beyond commenting that there is indeed circuitry in both the battery as well as a constant current driver in the light engine. I don't know what the drive level is to the LED but expect it to be one amp or even in excess of 1 amp. I base this on the relative output of the light in comparison with other lights I have.
The LED module with reflector is a threaded coupling between the Bezel and base of the light:
The contacts between the module and base are plated and look quite substantial in construction, to my perception:
There are O-ring seals for these threaded joints and both switches have rubber boots for protection. The switches are of a "three way" function like three way switches in a house with the additional feature of momentary on from either switch if the light is in the off state. Either switch can latch the light into either on or off. This "three way" circuit requires two paths between the two switches and the contact points of these paths can be seen as the two pins in the tail caps which connect to the two outer pads on the battery case:
The center contact that mates to the tapered coil spring is the negative pick up from the battery. The battery pack has a longitudinal key that mates with a keyway in the base body. The tail cap is designed in a manner such that it self aligns when seated completely. The battery has side contacts for these two paths with one seen in the picture below:
The side switch as well as tail cap switch add some length to the light when compared to a light that would only have one of the two switches. In a line up with some other lights below, compare the 7060 to the Pelican M9 in particular:
I left the light on and unattended and picked it up 40 minutes later. The heat sink was quite warm but I was able to grab the light by the sink and hold tight without any real discomfort. Holding the light by the base body was no issue at all; slightly warm.
Well the 7060 uses a Cree XR-E and it has a very deep specular finish reflector. As many know, the XR-E requires a deep reflector to harness its light output if the intent is to collimate in a concentrated beam. The reflector has a short focal length and is relatively very deep. This is the first production (or beta of a production) light I have handled with a reflector designed specifically for the Cree XR-E and with intent of "throw".
So how well does it throw?
Since the 7060 is targeted at a market that is predominantly incandescent at present, I included a couple incandescent lights I had for some beam comparisons along with two LED lights; my S27-Cx2 and a SureFire Kroma. The beam shot field in daylight:
For the beam shots, I placed a blue gray T-shirt on the wall bellow the middle bananna tree. The shots were taken from the same location as this day shot and the camera (Nikon D70S) was set on manual with 24mm focal length and shutter speed of 10 seconds with F stop at F9. The T-shirt was 36 feet from the lights.
Four of the beam shots combined in one image:
In the combined shot, note the grass in the foreground of each beam. I believe the strength of the spill of the Cree XR-E is evident in the 7060 beam shot. Regardless of exposure setting of the camera, I don't think the camera can catch some artifacts in the 7060 beam that you can detect with your own eyes. With the specular reflectors of both the M9 and 7060, you can see some artifacts but I personally don't consider them a distraction or of a level of significance that would cause a misread of that being illuminated.
I took the group image and saturated it in photo shop to give a better feel of the overall beam including the spill and closer to providing an image of what you can actually see. Even here though, I could see much more detail than these pictures reveal (the lights were more than adequate for illuminating the back yard):
I also took some relative mesaurements which are reasonable fair to be used in comparison of the lights measured but should not be taken in absolute numbers.
For a lux measure, I used a Lutron light meter and placed the lights on a fixture with a hole through it that was placed approximately 1 meter above the light meter's sensor. A set distance from the front of each light and not the light source itself.
Light -------------- Lux
Kroma-------------- 1580
S27-Cx2------------ 4510
C3 (P90)------------ 3340
M9 ----------------- 4650
7060 --------------- 10870
Notes about these lights: The C3 has not been used but has been fired up a few times. I did not replace its batteries with fresh from the box. The Kroma has a few minutes of use on its batteries. The S27-Cx2 is a new light of mine that hosts a Seoul P4 driven by a DB917 and powered by 2xCR123. It uses a McR-27S reflector and is basically a titanium version of the 27LT-S in terms of beam and output. (this is a light some of you are familiar with and for the rest of you,
I have an integrating sphere that is useful for relative measurements in cases where the lights are "presented" to the sphere in a similar fashion. I measured these lights with following results:
Light -------------- Lumens
Kroma-------------- 85
S27-Cx2------------ 136
C3 (P90)------------ 118
M9 ----------------- 88
7060 --------------- 131 *
* The 7060 has a larger diameter reflector than the other lights and it stands off further from the port on the integrating sphere. For this reason, I knew its reading would be lower in relative terms than the others. I removed the bezel from the light and was able to bring the reflector flush with the IS port. In this manner, I measured 191 lumens. Now this is not realistic as there is light loss from the bezel window. To get a feel for this loss, I did a seperate lux reading of the 7060 with it clamped in a fixture and the light meter fixed in position. Without the bezel, I measured 1359 lux and with it, 1185 lux. The bezel window reduced the lux measure by about 13%. If we deduct 13% from the 191 lumens we get 174 lumens which should put it in a relative ball park, I believe.
I will add some personal observations, opinions and questions in later posts in this thread. I want this initial post to be as objective as possible. The lights I used for comparison were selected because they were close at hand and not with any consious intent of bias; one way or the other. Hopefully some of you are familiar with these other lights so you can use them as a bench mark against the 7060. I would like to add that the 7060 surpasses any of the lights I have that are single LED in both lux and flux even though I have a few lights with larger reflector diameters; with one exception. The exception is a light with a 4" reflector in front of a Seoul P4 LED. My point is that the 7060 is a single LED light with impressive output compared to other LED lights I have and have seen.
Last edited:
lump of Titanium.
