ErickThakrar
Enlightened
(Reviewers note: This unit was provided by the manufacturer for review.)
In the last couple of years, improvements in the performance of LEDs has progressed by leaps and bounds.
We have, in the space of only a few years, come from the meager output of a few lumens to now several hundred lumens, available in a compact, portable package with remarkable battery life, almost fully dethroning the former indisputable kings of the high-output flashlight throne, the incandescent lamps.
That is not to say that incandescent lamps have fallen entirely into disrepute. But for most people, the performance and price of an LED-based light is certainly very attractive, especially now that they're available with outputs in excess of 500 lumens
The new LEDs that have made this kind of performance possible are available from a few different vendors, but the light that we'll be looking at today is powered by a Seoul Semi-Conductor P7, a multi-die LED capable of in excess of 700 lumens and in some cases over a 1000 lumens!
LumaPower, whose products I've covered in some detail here in the past, came out a few months ago, with their LumaPower MVP-P7 or “Most Valuable Player” flashlight.
The MVP is the first P7-powered light from LumaPower, but the design and features draws heavily on their past experiences and it shows.
I'll list the specs as per the usual approach and we'll go from there.
As you can see from the specifications, the MVP-P7 is not a small light. However, it is light enough at right around a pound to be easily carried, and aside from the head is relatively slender. I typically carry it in the sidepocket of my backpack.
Now, there are two versions of the MVP. The one that we'll be looking at here is – as may be deduced from the specifications – the Seoul P7 LED, where as the other version uses 3 Cree XR-E Q5 LEDs to achieve roughly the same output but with considerably more throw and less flood.
The MVP Turboforce P7 is very much a flood light.
Output
The beam put out by the MVP P7 is rather impressive. Pure white although leaning towards the warm end, with a large and very bright spill-beam, there is only a minor hint of a “donut-hole” in the beam and that only at certain ranges.
In my use I found any shadows or artifacts in the beam so slight as to be entirely inconsequential.
There is a slight yellowish ring around the center hotspot right where it fades into the spill-beam, but again, it's so minor that I can comfortably stand by my previous assertion and refer to the beam as being pure white.
The 3 different levels on the MVP are spaced very nicely apart, giving you a noticeable difference in brightness. This is, in my opinion far more useful than having 4 or more levels spaced more closely together. Having a range spanning from 700 lumens to 50 lumens in only a few clicks of the button, is very convenient.
The strobe is reportedly running right in the proper range for maximum visual disruption, IE between 10 and 15 herz and it's rather annoying. I find it considerably more annoying than my other strobe lights that use a similar frequency and at a guess I would say that this increased effect is due to the significantly brighter light put out by the MVP.
While the MVP Turboforce P7 is billed primarily as a floodlight, I find that due to the massive output, it throws surprisingly far. I've lit up houses and other objects at several hundred yards and in my opinion this is a far more useful beam than what you find on a dedicated thrower flashlight.
Build Quality & Design
As with my other LumaPower lights, I have very few bad things to say about the build quality. The threads are smooth and while they arrived a little dry, a quick lubing with some standard silicone grease has everything running quite nicely.
The machining is over-all quite crisp with well-defined edges. Knurling on the body, while some-what sparse, is well-done and provides enough grip to feel secure in your hand.
The knurling could perhaps be a tiny bit more aggressive, but it does get the job done.
The tail-cap button is not recessed and is easy to activate. I would personally have liked to have seen a button guard similar to what LumaPower put on the tailcap of the M1-T, to prevent accidental activation but it's not a major issue, more of a personal preference.
Both the tailcap button and the SideKick switch have a solid feel with positive feedback. The tailcap uses a forward clicky with half-press for momentary on. It does not appear possible to lock-out the tailcap switch. The switch is however, as is usual with LumaPower, also modular and can be removed easily for repair or replacement.
The SideKick switch is somewhat interesting in that clicking on the SK switch takes the MVP down to it's lowest level before switching to the next position. You could conceivably use this to momentarily drop the output down to 50 lumens and by only using a half-press, release and go back to whatever setting you had it on previously.
There is a removable steel lanyard ring, big enough to use paracord or snap a small carabiner onto. It feels excessively sturdy and I am not in the slightest concerned about breakage on this ring. With the lanyard ring removed, there is no unsightly gap left behind, merely two small holes. It's a nice solution and well-carried out by LumaPowers design team.
The reflector on the MVP is absolutely enormous. It's really a beautiful piece of engineering and it's protected by an equally large lens with a nicely done anti-reflective coating. I did notice a slight hazing in parts on the reflector in my unit, but it seems to have no visible effect on the beam. I carefully tried to clean the reflector but it made no difference. However, as it appears to have no real effect, I'm somewhat unconcerned by this.
The over-all length of the light is quite long at right about 10.5 inches but feels nicely balanced. You can use the light with 2 rechargeable CR123 batteries instead of the typical 2X18650 batteries, and this would let you remove the battery extension tube and thus cut down the length quite drastically. You suffer a decided hit in run-time however and I prefer to run the MVP on two 18650 batteries.
The lettering on my unit is crisp and clear. Easy to read. I do wish though, that LumaPower would fix their word use. The light says “LumaPower Advance Flashlight” instead of “LumaPower Advanced Flashlight”. It's a small thing, I'm being entirely pedantic, but my concern is more for LumaPower. Some customers may see this and doubt the quality of the light itself. Which would be a shame.
The MVP is entirely modular. And as always, LumaPower has taken into consideration that their end users will likely wish to upgrade their light at some point in the future. This means that nothing is glued in place, there are no annoying gobs of loc-tite or epoxy in places they don't belong.
The finish on the MVP is an even and seemingly quite thick HAIII coating in black. The finish on my unit arrived intact, with no chips or thin edges. It has a matte look, and feels quite nice.
The specifications list that the MVP-P7 has an anti-roll body design. This isn't entirely accurate. There is a polygonal ring behind the bezel, but the bezel is so wide to make room for the enormous reflector that the ring doesn't ever touch whatever surface you're laying the MVP on. It may work just fine on the standard MVP, but not on the MVP-P7.
This is the first LumaPower light that I've had my hands on that uses the SideKick switching system. This was first implemented in the MRV SK and is a pretty nice approach to managing the levels in a flashlight. It's very, very simple to use and actually uses a mechanical switch, which means you can switch between levels without the light having to be turned on. I tend to have my light set on high. I know it takes 3 clicks to go from high to the strobe function. Very straight-forward and rather ingenious in my opinion. The only caveat I have about the SideKick system is that because of the long body of the MVP when using it in the standard configuration, you can't reach the SideKick switch at the same time as the tailcap. This necessitates having to shift your grip on the MVP to change levels. I have attached a wrist lanyard to prevent dropping the MVP while doing this repositioning. I fear that Ricky from LumaPower would be rather cross with me if I dropped the MVP down a mineshaft...
Accessories
The MVP doesn't come with a whole lot of accessories. There is, in the box, the usual zip-loc baggie with a full set of replacement O-rings and a glow-in-the-dark tailcap to replace the factory installed black tailcap button. It also comes with a pretty decent manual, one that is actually better written and more comprehensive than some manuals I've seen put out by American companies. Another way that LumaPower shows their dedication to their customers.
I would have really liked to have seen a holster included in the future. It's something that the MVP could really use, being how big of a light that it is.
Conclusion
I'm quite enamored by the MVP P7. It's a fantastic light, with an amazing amount of light output in a convenient form-factor. This is a light that I have no trouble seeing finding a place in the hands of somebody doing Search & Rescue or police work. It's almost perfect for use as a searchlight. The wide, even flood of light and the large hotspot means that you can cover some large areas of terrain at a single glance and the strobe if you need that kind of thing can be quite disorienting and will certainly ruin an aggressors nightvision in short order!
It also appears to be very sturdy, the build quality is such that I have a lot of confidence in it's toughness. If I could be assured of being able to get regular access to a reliable powersource, I would have no qualms about taking it with me during a military deployment.
I've taken it with me a couple of times into some old mines and it did really well. Just a pleasure to use. Being able to click it into the high level and really put some light down a tunnel, stope or adit is a great feeling. It makes all my other lights feel remarkably anemic! Out in the open it also shames all my other lights, by virtue of the clean output and the sheer volume of light.
And the multiple levels means that you can easily extend the runtime for a very long time while still having access to blistering levels of light with just a few button presses. The MVP-P7 is a fantastic effort by the guys at LumaPower and I'm excited to see them continue to raise the bar for themselves and for other manufacturers as well.
The only thing that I can seriously put a finger on as being a little disappointing is the lack of an available holster. That's the only thing that the MVP really needs and it would be really nice to see one be made available.
I would recommend that if LumaPower does make a holster available, that they try to avoid many of the mistakes that I've seen made with light holsters in the past.
A holster, especially for a light this size, needs to be sturdy and to have a very solid belt attachment. Using Cordura webbing, double layers of material, possibly a plastic liner/reinforcement and a rigid belt-attachment method would go a long way to making the holster useful for those that would use the MVP for SAR or police.
However, despite the lack of a holster, I can highly recommend the MVP-P7. Solid, bright, simple user interface and great quality. LumaPower has done it again!
http://specialcircumstancesinc.blogspot.com/2009/03/lumapower-mvp-p7-review.html
In the last couple of years, improvements in the performance of LEDs has progressed by leaps and bounds.
We have, in the space of only a few years, come from the meager output of a few lumens to now several hundred lumens, available in a compact, portable package with remarkable battery life, almost fully dethroning the former indisputable kings of the high-output flashlight throne, the incandescent lamps.
That is not to say that incandescent lamps have fallen entirely into disrepute. But for most people, the performance and price of an LED-based light is certainly very attractive, especially now that they're available with outputs in excess of 500 lumens
The new LEDs that have made this kind of performance possible are available from a few different vendors, but the light that we'll be looking at today is powered by a Seoul Semi-Conductor P7, a multi-die LED capable of in excess of 700 lumens and in some cases over a 1000 lumens!
LumaPower, whose products I've covered in some detail here in the past, came out a few months ago, with their LumaPower MVP-P7 or “Most Valuable Player” flashlight.
The MVP is the first P7-powered light from LumaPower, but the design and features draws heavily on their past experiences and it shows.
I'll list the specs as per the usual approach and we'll go from there.
- Uses a state of the art SSC P7 LED. Up to 700 lumens of total output!
- 3 Brightness levels: Hi: ~700L, Medium:~250L, Low: ~50L, Strobe: ~650L
- Wide input voltage from 6.5-10V allows users to use a variety of battery types/combinations:2X Li-Ion (16340(RCR123A, 17650, 17670 or 18650 (18650 recommended for longest runtime and highest output)(4xCR123A cab be used on low and medium output modes for emergencies and backup and for up to 4 minutes on high)
- Over discharge protection (For 2x Li-Ion batteries) at 4.8V
- Runtime: 90 minutes on High, 2500 minutes on Low (using 2x18650 2600mAH)
- State of the art, super efficient, current controlled DC-DC power circuit
- Anti-Roll Body design
- Removable Lanyard Ring
- AR coated lens for maximum light transmission and reduced reflection
- Dimensions: Length:264mm, Bezel Diameter:71mm, Body Diameter:28mm, Tail cap Diameter:32mm, Reflector Diameter : 60mm, Weight:463g(without batteries)
As you can see from the specifications, the MVP-P7 is not a small light. However, it is light enough at right around a pound to be easily carried, and aside from the head is relatively slender. I typically carry it in the sidepocket of my backpack.
Now, there are two versions of the MVP. The one that we'll be looking at here is – as may be deduced from the specifications – the Seoul P7 LED, where as the other version uses 3 Cree XR-E Q5 LEDs to achieve roughly the same output but with considerably more throw and less flood.
The MVP Turboforce P7 is very much a flood light.
Output
The beam put out by the MVP P7 is rather impressive. Pure white although leaning towards the warm end, with a large and very bright spill-beam, there is only a minor hint of a “donut-hole” in the beam and that only at certain ranges.
In my use I found any shadows or artifacts in the beam so slight as to be entirely inconsequential.
There is a slight yellowish ring around the center hotspot right where it fades into the spill-beam, but again, it's so minor that I can comfortably stand by my previous assertion and refer to the beam as being pure white.
The 3 different levels on the MVP are spaced very nicely apart, giving you a noticeable difference in brightness. This is, in my opinion far more useful than having 4 or more levels spaced more closely together. Having a range spanning from 700 lumens to 50 lumens in only a few clicks of the button, is very convenient.
The strobe is reportedly running right in the proper range for maximum visual disruption, IE between 10 and 15 herz and it's rather annoying. I find it considerably more annoying than my other strobe lights that use a similar frequency and at a guess I would say that this increased effect is due to the significantly brighter light put out by the MVP.
While the MVP Turboforce P7 is billed primarily as a floodlight, I find that due to the massive output, it throws surprisingly far. I've lit up houses and other objects at several hundred yards and in my opinion this is a far more useful beam than what you find on a dedicated thrower flashlight.
Build Quality & Design
As with my other LumaPower lights, I have very few bad things to say about the build quality. The threads are smooth and while they arrived a little dry, a quick lubing with some standard silicone grease has everything running quite nicely.
The machining is over-all quite crisp with well-defined edges. Knurling on the body, while some-what sparse, is well-done and provides enough grip to feel secure in your hand.
The knurling could perhaps be a tiny bit more aggressive, but it does get the job done.
The tail-cap button is not recessed and is easy to activate. I would personally have liked to have seen a button guard similar to what LumaPower put on the tailcap of the M1-T, to prevent accidental activation but it's not a major issue, more of a personal preference.
Both the tailcap button and the SideKick switch have a solid feel with positive feedback. The tailcap uses a forward clicky with half-press for momentary on. It does not appear possible to lock-out the tailcap switch. The switch is however, as is usual with LumaPower, also modular and can be removed easily for repair or replacement.
The SideKick switch is somewhat interesting in that clicking on the SK switch takes the MVP down to it's lowest level before switching to the next position. You could conceivably use this to momentarily drop the output down to 50 lumens and by only using a half-press, release and go back to whatever setting you had it on previously.
There is a removable steel lanyard ring, big enough to use paracord or snap a small carabiner onto. It feels excessively sturdy and I am not in the slightest concerned about breakage on this ring. With the lanyard ring removed, there is no unsightly gap left behind, merely two small holes. It's a nice solution and well-carried out by LumaPowers design team.
The reflector on the MVP is absolutely enormous. It's really a beautiful piece of engineering and it's protected by an equally large lens with a nicely done anti-reflective coating. I did notice a slight hazing in parts on the reflector in my unit, but it seems to have no visible effect on the beam. I carefully tried to clean the reflector but it made no difference. However, as it appears to have no real effect, I'm somewhat unconcerned by this.
The over-all length of the light is quite long at right about 10.5 inches but feels nicely balanced. You can use the light with 2 rechargeable CR123 batteries instead of the typical 2X18650 batteries, and this would let you remove the battery extension tube and thus cut down the length quite drastically. You suffer a decided hit in run-time however and I prefer to run the MVP on two 18650 batteries.
The lettering on my unit is crisp and clear. Easy to read. I do wish though, that LumaPower would fix their word use. The light says “LumaPower Advance Flashlight” instead of “LumaPower Advanced Flashlight”. It's a small thing, I'm being entirely pedantic, but my concern is more for LumaPower. Some customers may see this and doubt the quality of the light itself. Which would be a shame.
The MVP is entirely modular. And as always, LumaPower has taken into consideration that their end users will likely wish to upgrade their light at some point in the future. This means that nothing is glued in place, there are no annoying gobs of loc-tite or epoxy in places they don't belong.
The finish on the MVP is an even and seemingly quite thick HAIII coating in black. The finish on my unit arrived intact, with no chips or thin edges. It has a matte look, and feels quite nice.
The specifications list that the MVP-P7 has an anti-roll body design. This isn't entirely accurate. There is a polygonal ring behind the bezel, but the bezel is so wide to make room for the enormous reflector that the ring doesn't ever touch whatever surface you're laying the MVP on. It may work just fine on the standard MVP, but not on the MVP-P7.
This is the first LumaPower light that I've had my hands on that uses the SideKick switching system. This was first implemented in the MRV SK and is a pretty nice approach to managing the levels in a flashlight. It's very, very simple to use and actually uses a mechanical switch, which means you can switch between levels without the light having to be turned on. I tend to have my light set on high. I know it takes 3 clicks to go from high to the strobe function. Very straight-forward and rather ingenious in my opinion. The only caveat I have about the SideKick system is that because of the long body of the MVP when using it in the standard configuration, you can't reach the SideKick switch at the same time as the tailcap. This necessitates having to shift your grip on the MVP to change levels. I have attached a wrist lanyard to prevent dropping the MVP while doing this repositioning. I fear that Ricky from LumaPower would be rather cross with me if I dropped the MVP down a mineshaft...
Accessories
The MVP doesn't come with a whole lot of accessories. There is, in the box, the usual zip-loc baggie with a full set of replacement O-rings and a glow-in-the-dark tailcap to replace the factory installed black tailcap button. It also comes with a pretty decent manual, one that is actually better written and more comprehensive than some manuals I've seen put out by American companies. Another way that LumaPower shows their dedication to their customers.
I would have really liked to have seen a holster included in the future. It's something that the MVP could really use, being how big of a light that it is.
Conclusion
I'm quite enamored by the MVP P7. It's a fantastic light, with an amazing amount of light output in a convenient form-factor. This is a light that I have no trouble seeing finding a place in the hands of somebody doing Search & Rescue or police work. It's almost perfect for use as a searchlight. The wide, even flood of light and the large hotspot means that you can cover some large areas of terrain at a single glance and the strobe if you need that kind of thing can be quite disorienting and will certainly ruin an aggressors nightvision in short order!
It also appears to be very sturdy, the build quality is such that I have a lot of confidence in it's toughness. If I could be assured of being able to get regular access to a reliable powersource, I would have no qualms about taking it with me during a military deployment.
I've taken it with me a couple of times into some old mines and it did really well. Just a pleasure to use. Being able to click it into the high level and really put some light down a tunnel, stope or adit is a great feeling. It makes all my other lights feel remarkably anemic! Out in the open it also shames all my other lights, by virtue of the clean output and the sheer volume of light.
And the multiple levels means that you can easily extend the runtime for a very long time while still having access to blistering levels of light with just a few button presses. The MVP-P7 is a fantastic effort by the guys at LumaPower and I'm excited to see them continue to raise the bar for themselves and for other manufacturers as well.
The only thing that I can seriously put a finger on as being a little disappointing is the lack of an available holster. That's the only thing that the MVP really needs and it would be really nice to see one be made available.
I would recommend that if LumaPower does make a holster available, that they try to avoid many of the mistakes that I've seen made with light holsters in the past.
A holster, especially for a light this size, needs to be sturdy and to have a very solid belt attachment. Using Cordura webbing, double layers of material, possibly a plastic liner/reinforcement and a rigid belt-attachment method would go a long way to making the holster useful for those that would use the MVP for SAR or police.
However, despite the lack of a holster, I can highly recommend the MVP-P7. Solid, bright, simple user interface and great quality. LumaPower has done it again!
http://specialcircumstancesinc.blogspot.com/2009/03/lumapower-mvp-p7-review.html
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