Xnova varients... Which is best?

[IsaacHayes]

When looking for the 8led 1aa UV light which is no more on eBay, I decided I'd have to mod a Xnova light. A little more work but a nicer host.

Well they also have 8led Xnova instead of the 5 led Xnovas. Which is better? Does the 5 overdrive the leds? does the 8 underdrive them? Is the 8 led one bigger than the 5 led one?

Anyone have any comments? I'll probably mod 2 of these, one with 400nm UV, and one with 370nm UV.

 

[cratz2]

Inspired are ya? /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

I don't know the details of 5LED vs 8LED or even what current each is supplied with but like I said on the other thread, mine has 395 spec'd LEDs. I have a single MiniMag knockoff running the exact same LED on 3 cells (tried rechargeables and alkies) as my XNova and, while the single direct drive LED puts out more visible light, the XNova floursces better than the single LED and there seems to be noticably less white light in the UV XNova.

Still, very cool little light.

I will say that I bought a total of 4 XNova-type lights. 2 actual XNovas (which have a little lip on the chrome plastic bezel) and 2 of the XNova copies (a copy of a copy?) which lacks the lip. One of my actual XNovas was noticably green and had less output than the other in stock form. The other XNova was nice and impressively bright, but it kind of flickered off and on when the tailcap was within about 2 full turns of full tightness. The fake XNovas had zero problems with flickering but had greatly reduced output but I would suspect, longer runtime. Even the XNova copy is a pretty nice little lightif you have nothing else with which to compare it.

I personally would go for the 5 LED just for the 'should be' extended runtime. Esp if you're going to mod them to UV anyway.

 

[IsaacHayes]

Yes, that picture of yours is nice! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif Weird how in one host the same leds shine differently. Perhaps the single one is driven harder and emitting more purple?

I think I'll nab the 5led too as I think the head is a bit bigger on the 8led version. Since the 370nm UV led GB didn't happen I'll probably just get one and not one of each kind. I'll take a look some more though and decide later...

I think the only 5led Xnova ones I saw on ebay for a good price had a black bezel and not chrome, I guess these are the knock-offs? Since they might be dimmer, it probably won't drive the UV leds as hard and they might last longer.

-IH

 

[IsaacHayes]

darn double post!!