SL 4AA Luxeon question

Replay

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Ok, everone seems to be comparing their 3-5 watt led lights to the streamlight propoly 1 watt luxeon. What makes this light so bright, is it over driven or is it all in the focus? I bought one, thanks everyone for all the info.
 

Bertrik

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I think it's a bit of both. Last time I measured, it was drawing about 500 mA from a set of NiMh batteries. I can't really tell how much of that is going into the LED, but it's probably quite a bit more than the nominal current (350 mA).
 

randyo

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That large polished aluminum reflector/heat-sink gets real hot during lengthy runs. They are driving that emitter pretty good. It's designed for throw, and it does it well. Just enough spill to make it useful, but definitely biased towards the throw.
 
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Replay said:
Ok, everone seems to be comparing their 3-5 watt led lights to the streamlight propoly 1 watt luxeon. What makes this light so bright, is it over driven or is it all in the focus? I bought one, thanks everyone for all the info.

Brightness is a fuction of these three factors:

Power going to the LED
efficacy (lumens per watt)
surface area of projected spot.
 

joema

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Replay said:
Ok, everone seems to be comparing their 3-5 watt led lights to the streamlight propoly 1 watt luxeon. What makes this light so bright, is it over driven or is it all in the focus? I bought one, thanks everyone for all the info.
It has a *very* cleverly designed reflector and beam pattern that efficiently harnesses the somewhat limited emitter output.

If you look closely, the hotspot beam angle and resultant hotspot size is very small. The relatively large reflector diameter enables that.

It has a dimmer but significant corona around the hotspot. At close range this gives the impression of a broader beam width, when in actuality the hotspot beam width is very small.

At longer ranges the corona fades out, but the hotspot is still visible. The small hotspot beam angle gives excellent throw for the overall output.

There's also a useful spillbeam, but it's not super bright.

Thus the beam design provides an effective beam width at close range, yet the narrow hotspot retains good throw at long range. It's a very smart design.
 

cratz2

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Also, the second generation Streamlight TL-2 LED has more total output than the ProPolymer but less throw... Streamlight just drives their Lux I lights pretty hard, that's all... But also keep in mind, the harder the Lux is driven, the less runtime you'll get. Compare the second gen Streamlight TL-2 LED to the Lux III Inova T3 or X03. They both run for 'about' 2 hours, but the T3/X03 is a Lux III light. The batteries see a 500ma or 600ma draw the same whether it's going to a Lux I or a Lux III.
 

PlayboyJoeShmoe

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I don't know the technical reasons why the SL 4AA Lux is so good.

But in quality dark I can see just as well with it as with a P60 SF module on two fresh 123s.

To me that's AWESOME!
 
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