My T5 arrived. Review:

INOVA T5 review.

First of all, I have been waiting for this light since mid-october. I am glad to see that it has been worth it.

This sucker is LIGHT! My t4 was heavier AND smaller! Just as powerful as the t4 too... although I no longer have my t4 to do a comparison.
Tonight, I will post here what I thought of the beam and distance, etc.

-pf

Yeah, I am happy with mine too. It's just a bit brighter than my T3s. Well built light with thick walls. It's a nice medium distance thrower. Good luck with yours.

Performance for the T5 is the same as the T4 as far as I can gather.

- A few rings and I can light a tree fairly well at 50 yards.
- Little or no spill at short distance. Resolts below do not include the infamous Inova T-series halos:

1 foot diameter at 5 feet
2 foot diameter at 10 feet
3 foot diameter at 15 feet
6 foot diameter at 25 feet
10 foot diameter at 50 feet (see picture)



Beam is not freakin' sea green like this... cameraphone pix blow huge chunky monkeys.

Anyway, the benefits of the T5 versus the T4 are clear:

- Longevity due to less of a complicated product
- More lightweight
- Longer body for whacking over-zealous pitbulls.
- Possibly dunk-proof although I have yet to verify this from Inova. (anyone?)

If anyone wants more cameraphone pix of the light or whatever, let me know.

Thats it, Happy St. Patricks Day! G'bye! :wave:

Mine just arrived this past Thursday. I found the same thing as you did. I'm very happy with the T5 and also like the thick walls (1/8"), along with the mid body switch. Wasn't sure about the switch but in handling the T5, and it being 9.0" long, the mid body switch is a bit handier to me. I have a T3 which is rated at 85 lumens vs. the T5 at 100 lumens. Not sure how accurate that is as I've read that INOVA might rate higher than actual, but I would say that the T3 is a little less bright than the T5 and a 15 lumen difference would be about correct. Hey, I like my T5!

I found the 3hr+ runtime very valuable. I got well over 3Hrs using SF batteries for the first test. I got a similar result using Amondotech Titaniums. Not bad at all.

With respect to pfmedic's question about whether T5 is dunk-proof: answer is yes, entire T series is classified as water resistant EXCEPT T4

steve_vance said:

With respect to pfmedic's question about whether T5 is dunk-proof: answer is yes, entire T series is classified as water resistant EXCEPT T4

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That is indeed good news! This calls for a celebration!! Tonight, I dine on PRIME RIB!!!:rock:

steve_vance said:

With respect to pfmedic's question about whether T5 is dunk-proof: answer is yes, entire T series is classified as water resistant EXCEPT T4

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The T4 and T5 have the same switch - how is the T5 supposed to be more water-resistant than the T4?

Maybe some finally verifies how much dunking the T4/5 can take...

BBL said:

The T4 and T5 have the same switch - how is the T5 supposed to be more water-resistant than the T4?

Maybe some finally verifies how much dunking the T4/5 can take...

Click to expand...

The T4 has the external contacts for the charger.

I have a new T5 and a coworker has the XO3, we have an integration sphere and digital light meter (calibrated by metrology department) in the optics lab at work and measure a lot of light sources for work. The T5 brand new with new batteries only measured 46 lumens. The X03 measured 38 Lumens with new batteries. Although I like the overall functionality of the light, I am not impressed with the lumens output. To me the T5 is only a little bit brigher than the new maglights with the 3 watt LED. I would sure like to read some other quantifieable data about lumens outputs on these things. I sent an email to Emissive Energy asking how it is this thing only reads less than half of their rated output, brand new out of the box. We shall see how they respond.

Thank you Mr G man. Your review saved me the disappointment of getting a flashlight not much better than my current Pelican 2390.:lolsign:

MrGman said:

I have a new T5 and a coworker has the XO3, we have an integration sphere and digital light meter (calibrated by metrology department) in the optics lab at work and measure a lot of light sources for work. The T5 brand new with new batteries only measured 46 lumens. The X03 measured 38 Lumens with new batteries. Although I like the overall functionality of the light, I am not impressed with the lumens output. To me the T5 is only a little bit brigher than the new maglights with the 3 watt LED. I would sure like to read some other quantifieable data about lumens outputs on these things. I sent an email to Emissive Energy asking how it is this thing only reads less than half of their rated output, brand new out of the box. We shall see how they respond.

Click to expand...

Using the sphere I built I figured mine was about 40ish lumens too (don't remember the exact number I recorded). The amount of light they put out really isn't impressive.

And now for the update. I brought the 4 D maglight in to work today and it initially measured 50 lumens with the new 3 watt LED from Maglight. Then we watched the reading fall off. Within a minute it was down around 40 lumens and held around there. The phosphor coating inside the lens or on top of the die loses some efficiency as it gets hot and these higher brightness leds do warm up at the surface. The batteries are used and I just tested them, I am going to put them at about the 90% fresh range. I doubt that brand new batteries would have really changed the reading as the current loading is not that high for 3 watts from a 6V source for a D cell.

I brought the 4 C cell maglight and tested that with some old used NiCad batteries that just happen to be in it. It started out at 30 lumens and started to drop a little. I measured those batteries when I came home and one of them was pretty much dead, the other 3 were marginal. Very impressed at the output control of the Mag Light 3 watt LED with whatever internal control circuitry it has that it was putting out 30 lumens with far less then 6V from only 3 of 4 Nicads. I charged the batteries and put the 4D and 3C side by side and they are now about the same brightness, so it was just the batteries that made the 4C Maglight less bright, not surprised since it has the same type LED and same size reflector head. Have not heard anything from Energy Emissive yet, will give them a week before I send them another email. May send them a formal letter with the complete make and model of the integration sphere, meter set up at work and ask for a detailed explanation as to how they don't even come close to their published lumens output. I don't take this type of misrepresentation lightly.

But having said all that let me say this. The nice smooth white beam is almost as bright as the maglite but covers a wider area at the same distance. Within useable ranges its a great light. it lights up the night. To get the mag light to have the same diameter beam at the same distance by refocusing, it has the dark spot in the middle but the rest of the overall beam doesn't appear as bright as the T5 once it is spread out over a larger square area (not including the dark spot in the center from the focus issue). Yet in the integration sphere the maglight is the clear winner. Of course its twice the size and about 4 times the weight as the T5 which is mostly the batteries of course.

Maybe I will get lucky and Energy Emissive (Inova) will feel bad and replace my unit with a hand picked cherry unit that will have really high output knowing dang well that I will put it in the integration sphere and they want it to have a good reading so it doesn't come back and I don't hound them into the ground.

tested out the regulation circuitry of the new T5. With weak CR123 batteries already down to about 2.7V each under no load or only 50mA during test loads, the flashlight was drawing current in the 700mA range. With 3.6V (each) Lithium rechargeables at or near full charge the T5 was only drawing about 400mA, thus it appears it is truly regulating power to keep it constant, high voltage low current, low voltage, high current. I have some other flashlights that make the claim but their circuitry is non existent or very lame, more voltage, higher current draw through the LED and its brighter.

I bet that would respond great to a U-bin upgrade.

Is this the one with the TIR lense or the new reflector one? Looks like from the beamshot a TIR version?

BTW, Is that picture outside? Is that a volleyball net and court? At first, I thought HOLY shitte you have a badminton court indoors(cause badminton rocks :rock: ), but then I looked at the big holes in the net, and it looks like a volleyball net...

It's the original T5 with the TIROS optic. The new lights won't ship for at least another 30 days and the original post is almost a year old. The term 'new T5' is being misapplied here as there's only 1 version of the T5 currently on the market with the 'new' version still a month away.