Several reviews of this are up already so just some basic opinions:
1) The light itself is nicely designed. Lanyard loop is at the head end where it belongs. That makes it much easier to point the light at a keyhole if the light is attached to your keychain. Also, the light stands on end straightforwardly because the lanyard loop isn't on the tail. It stands a little bit wobbly because of the rounded edges, but that's no big deal.
2) The UKE is a little bit smaller (thinner mostly) than the PT Blast, but the Blast stays my favorite 2aaa pocket light. The UKE is comparable in volume to a CMG Infinity, though it weighs less. It's wider but thinner than an Infinity. It's far larger than an Arc AAA.
3) Mine has a nice warm-white beam, a more pleasing and whiter color than the blue-white from my Arc AAA and CMG Infinity and Ultra-G. I think this may be luck of the draw.
4) A hat clip is included but is kind of silly unless you're really going to clip the light to your hat. Otherwise, it just gets in the way, makes the light bigger, falls off easily, etc. It's useless as a pocket clip. The PT Blast's integrally molded clip is much better, unobtrusive and doubles as a pocket clip. The UKE is really a pocket light, so I removed the hat clip and stored it with the rest of my flashlight junk. (Update 23Jan2004: The UKE's clip has the nice feature that it's on the side of the light rather than the back, so you can clip the light to your jeans' watch pocket for a handsfree walking light, or to the side of a headband for a lightweight headlamp without needing to wear a cap with a brim.)
5) The UKE does have quite a bit more throw than the Arc AAA because of the UKE's optic. This has the expected cost of a narrow beam and limited spill. It's still useful but I prefer a wider beam. One obvious mod would be use a Dremel to flatten the front lens, then polish it somehow. It's just acrylic and shouldn't be too difficult.
6) It's kind of a pain to insert the batteries but who cares, they run for 20 hours, you don't have to change them very often.
7) The bezel has a circular PC board about 1/2" dia. containing the LED and a boost converter. It should be possible to remove this board and use it in another light, if you wanted for some reason to build your own 2-cell light with a 5mm LED.
8) All in all I'd say this light is good value at $10 (Countycomm) but I'd actually prefer the incandescent version (it's much brighter). Except for its greater waterproofness and lower cost, the UKE LED version isn't as nice as an Arc AAA. I've had a couple of the UKE 2aaa incandescent penlights which use the same bezel and which are quite nice. The penlight and side-by-side form factors each have their advantages of course. I may swap one of my penlight bezels onto this light. That would give a more compact, end-standing alternative to the PT Blast with a little bit less brightness and throw.
Update: I notice the bezel of this light is NOT interchangeable with the 2aaa UKE incandescent penlight. The bezel portion underneath the threads on the penlight is a little bit longer than on the eLED, and the penlight has two O-rings instead of just one. I can put the eLED bezel on the penlight and it works fine, but I can't put the penlight bezel on the eLED and tighten it far enough to turn the light on. I don't know whether the side-by-side incandescent 2AAA mini-light is set up like the eLED or like the penlight. My guess is that it's like the eLED, since the shorter bezel keeps the overall length down.
Update 2: A couple other people have pointed out that the top contact in the light, the one that connects the negative battery terminal to the contact on the edge of the bezel (it's hooked around the edge of the bezel) can fall out easily and be lost while you're changing the batteries. I've confirmed this and would call it a significant design bug. I might try to fix it with a drop of crazy glue.
Update 3 (23Jan2004): Runtime test.
I loaded my UKE 2AAA eLED with 700 mAH NiMH cells that were fully but not freshly charged (probably 80-90%) about 12 hours or so ago. It ran strong til maybe 1/2 hour ago but has now gotten pretty dim, maybe 1/2 of CMG Infinity level. This is still plenty bright enough for walking around a dark room or finding the can in the dark. Perhaps more importantly, it seems to be holding steady at this brightness. I'll see how long it lasts. The claim of 20 hours on two alkaline AAA's certainly sounds realistic.
I actually don't think total runtime is all that important even for small EDC lights. Much more important is knowing with certainty that you have a reasonable amount of runtime left (say 1 hour). This "moon mode" does a good job of notifying you to change the batteries while still giving enough light to be useable without fuss. My guess is it's basically direct driving the LED at 2 volts or so. The result is a lot better than direct drive with a 1 cell light at 1 volt or so, making a barely perceptable glow. The focusing optic also is helpful here, in giving the light more reach.
So this is another reason to find that the eLED is a nice backup light.
Update 3.1: About 1 hour later, the Infinity now swamps the eLED. The eLED is maybe at 1/10th of the Infinity's brightness. Believe it or not, that's still a useful level of light. It's daytime and I'm not dark adapted, but going into a closet and shutting the door, I can still easily find my way around with this light. That's much more than I can do with an Arc AAA in moon mode. I guess I'll toss the NiMH cells back on the charger now.
1) The light itself is nicely designed. Lanyard loop is at the head end where it belongs. That makes it much easier to point the light at a keyhole if the light is attached to your keychain. Also, the light stands on end straightforwardly because the lanyard loop isn't on the tail. It stands a little bit wobbly because of the rounded edges, but that's no big deal.
2) The UKE is a little bit smaller (thinner mostly) than the PT Blast, but the Blast stays my favorite 2aaa pocket light. The UKE is comparable in volume to a CMG Infinity, though it weighs less. It's wider but thinner than an Infinity. It's far larger than an Arc AAA.
3) Mine has a nice warm-white beam, a more pleasing and whiter color than the blue-white from my Arc AAA and CMG Infinity and Ultra-G. I think this may be luck of the draw.
4) A hat clip is included but is kind of silly unless you're really going to clip the light to your hat. Otherwise, it just gets in the way, makes the light bigger, falls off easily, etc. It's useless as a pocket clip. The PT Blast's integrally molded clip is much better, unobtrusive and doubles as a pocket clip. The UKE is really a pocket light, so I removed the hat clip and stored it with the rest of my flashlight junk. (Update 23Jan2004: The UKE's clip has the nice feature that it's on the side of the light rather than the back, so you can clip the light to your jeans' watch pocket for a handsfree walking light, or to the side of a headband for a lightweight headlamp without needing to wear a cap with a brim.)
5) The UKE does have quite a bit more throw than the Arc AAA because of the UKE's optic. This has the expected cost of a narrow beam and limited spill. It's still useful but I prefer a wider beam. One obvious mod would be use a Dremel to flatten the front lens, then polish it somehow. It's just acrylic and shouldn't be too difficult.
6) It's kind of a pain to insert the batteries but who cares, they run for 20 hours, you don't have to change them very often.
7) The bezel has a circular PC board about 1/2" dia. containing the LED and a boost converter. It should be possible to remove this board and use it in another light, if you wanted for some reason to build your own 2-cell light with a 5mm LED.
8) All in all I'd say this light is good value at $10 (Countycomm) but I'd actually prefer the incandescent version (it's much brighter). Except for its greater waterproofness and lower cost, the UKE LED version isn't as nice as an Arc AAA. I've had a couple of the UKE 2aaa incandescent penlights which use the same bezel and which are quite nice. The penlight and side-by-side form factors each have their advantages of course. I may swap one of my penlight bezels onto this light. That would give a more compact, end-standing alternative to the PT Blast with a little bit less brightness and throw.
Update: I notice the bezel of this light is NOT interchangeable with the 2aaa UKE incandescent penlight. The bezel portion underneath the threads on the penlight is a little bit longer than on the eLED, and the penlight has two O-rings instead of just one. I can put the eLED bezel on the penlight and it works fine, but I can't put the penlight bezel on the eLED and tighten it far enough to turn the light on. I don't know whether the side-by-side incandescent 2AAA mini-light is set up like the eLED or like the penlight. My guess is that it's like the eLED, since the shorter bezel keeps the overall length down.
Update 2: A couple other people have pointed out that the top contact in the light, the one that connects the negative battery terminal to the contact on the edge of the bezel (it's hooked around the edge of the bezel) can fall out easily and be lost while you're changing the batteries. I've confirmed this and would call it a significant design bug. I might try to fix it with a drop of crazy glue.
Update 3 (23Jan2004): Runtime test.
I loaded my UKE 2AAA eLED with 700 mAH NiMH cells that were fully but not freshly charged (probably 80-90%) about 12 hours or so ago. It ran strong til maybe 1/2 hour ago but has now gotten pretty dim, maybe 1/2 of CMG Infinity level. This is still plenty bright enough for walking around a dark room or finding the can in the dark. Perhaps more importantly, it seems to be holding steady at this brightness. I'll see how long it lasts. The claim of 20 hours on two alkaline AAA's certainly sounds realistic.
I actually don't think total runtime is all that important even for small EDC lights. Much more important is knowing with certainty that you have a reasonable amount of runtime left (say 1 hour). This "moon mode" does a good job of notifying you to change the batteries while still giving enough light to be useable without fuss. My guess is it's basically direct driving the LED at 2 volts or so. The result is a lot better than direct drive with a 1 cell light at 1 volt or so, making a barely perceptable glow. The focusing optic also is helpful here, in giving the light more reach.
So this is another reason to find that the eLED is a nice backup light.
Update 3.1: About 1 hour later, the Infinity now swamps the eLED. The eLED is maybe at 1/10th of the Infinity's brightness. Believe it or not, that's still a useful level of light. It's daytime and I'm not dark adapted, but going into a closet and shutting the door, I can still easily find my way around with this light. That's much more than I can do with an Arc AAA in moon mode. I guess I'll toss the NiMH cells back on the charger now.
