new Fifthunit LED shootout - reactions?

refractrfractal

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This has come up in a couple of threads (e.g., here and here) but I think it deserves its own discussion.

Kai at Fifthunit.com has just published an extensive comparison of its (mostly) LED lights, including the new "10w" and the incandescent Superfire G120 (yow, 248 lumens for $20?!).
I have been a big fan in flashlights and I visit candlepowerforums.com at least several times a day for flashlight news and reviews. Few months ago, I came across one of the best flashlight review website, flashlightreviews.com, and ever since then I have been inspired of doing a similar benchmark review for all of these Chinese made flashlights we carried. After a couple of emails going back and forth between Doug P. (the owner of flashlightreviews.com), I have decided to put together a benchmark test
He's looking to come close to the methods used by flashlightreviews.com for ease of comparison (see details of his effort to duplicate the methods here) -- but he covers several lights that have generated a good deal of interest here and haven't yet made it onto Doug's site.

Pretty interesting stuff. What do people think?
 

Brighteyez

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Isn't Fifthunit the new name of that web vendor in Blaine WA that packed up and went back to Hong Kong suddenly earlier in the year? I think they had an address that was a block away from Diamond/Quality-Item-Flashlights/etc.
 

SuperNinja

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Brighteyez said:
Isn't Fifthunit the new name of that web vendor in Blaine WA that packed up and went back to Hong Kong suddenly earlier in the year? I think they had an address that was a block away from Diamond/Quality-Item-Flashlights/etc.
No.

FifthUnit is a company formed by a former employee of AXShop. (At least that is what most people believe)

AXShop mentioned they were having problems with one or more employees, before they closed up shop.
 

VF1Jskull1

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don't matter much if i can't get my flashlight within 3 days and $5 or less shipping. 3 weeks is just too long for most people to get a "low cost, high performance flashlight".
 

Randy Shackleford

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VF1Jskull1 said:
don't matter much if i can't get my flashlight within 3 days and $5 or less shipping. 3 weeks is just too long for most people to get a "low cost, high performance flashlight".

it's usually less than two weeks.
 

SuperNinja

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VF1Jskull1 said:
don't matter much if i can't get my flashlight within 3 days and $5 or less shipping. 3 weeks is just too long for most people to get a "low cost, high performance flashlight".
A lot of great deals require some patience.

Do you have a link to a comparable seller? (price wise)
 

VF1Jskull1

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SuperNinja said:
A lot of great deals require some patience.

Do you have a link to a comparable seller? (price wise)

I was just venting my opinions based on lights i've order from 2 different vendors. Yeah, it doesn't really matter much once you get the light in your hands, but to some, i've would think that getting it early without much anticipation would be so much better.....
 

SuperNinja

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VF1Jskull1 said:
Yeah, it doesn't really matter much once you get the light in your hands, but to some, i've would think that getting it early without much anticipation would be so much better.....
And to some, I would think that the extra cost to get it quicker would make it not so much better....
 

john2551

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I too would like to see runtimes. I'm interested in the 7w 3AAA model.
 

Brighteyez

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Yeah, that's the concern. The "former employee" could well have been the owners that motivated the AXshop site to be hacked by disgruntled employees.

SuperNinja said:
FifthUnit is a company formed by a former employee of AXShop. (At least that is what most people believe)
 

Pax et Lux

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I thought the whole point of reviews was that they were unbiassed. This looks more like sales copy than anything else. The lack of runtime is the big giveaway, isn't it?

I'd be interested if any of these lights make it through to flashlightreviews.com, to compare both reviews.

But if you forget about the words, and just look at the numbers, it's a great idea. If only other flashlight retailers attempted to publish realistic output figures. . .
 

SuperNinja

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Pax et Lux said:
I thought the whole point of reviews was that they were unbiassed. This looks more like sales copy than anything else. The lack of runtime is the big giveaway, isn't it?
If you look through their comments on all of their items, you will see that they DO give unbiased opinions.
They have pointed out the negatives, as well as the positives on a LOT of the items they sell.
 

SuperNinja

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Brighteyez said:
Yeah, that's the concern. The "former employee" could well have been the owners that motivated the AXshop site to be hacked by disgruntled employees.
All of that is still just guessing though.
 

nerdgineer

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Pax et Lux said:
I thought the whole point of reviews was that they were unbiassed. This looks more like sales copy than anything else. The lack of runtime is the big giveaway, isn't it?...
To give Kai the benefit of the doubt, it takes a lot more equipment to do a runtime graph than to take measurements so I don't believe their lack is necessarily an indication of bias.

Numbers don't lie and the lux measurements, beamshots, and relative output measurements are helpful. I appreciate the effort to publish them.

The one additional thing Kai could do is to take measurements of known makes of lights (L1P, whatever) with his equipment so we can get a calibration point for comparison.
 
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john2551

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A runtime graph would be nice but in the absence of a graph just listing the runtime down, to say, 50% output level would give us all a baseline to go by.
 

softfeel

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Is it just me or does all the names of their products sounds like something out of the IKEA-catalog?

"HEMMA", "PATRULL", "TIMRA", "KRAMARE", "VATTERN" etc.
 

Upplyst

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Softfeel,

You are most correct on this assumption. There is a lot of swedish words there. And, quite a lot of them are actually from the IKEA catalog. Rather bizarre if you ask me :).

I would not expect Fifth unit to become the equivalent of IKEA when it comes to flashlights, though.
 
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