P1 overheating

Do Fenix P1's have the ability to stay on for hours at a time or will they overheat. How warm will they get to the touch (too hot to handle) and if they do get hot enough to shut down how long does it usually take.

Had mine running several times for approx. 2 hours with CR123's, it gets pretty warm, but not too hot for holding in the hand.

richard

Mine has not overheated yet. I have run it a few times in ceiling bounce mode and left it on for almost an hour. Warm to the touch but not hot. The light still works very well indeed.

Mine gets quite warm to touch in a short space of time.

Will over heating damage the P1, or is the body meant to be a heat sink?

The more above room temperature it is, the better the cooling effect of the air around it therefore It should get warm quickly but should not get 'hot' as the air will start to cool it better.

KILLER KWEEZE said:

Mine gets quite warm to touch in a short space of time.Will over heating damage the P1, or is the body meant to be a heat sink?

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I'm wondering this too. My P1 does get hot on CR123As, but it gets REALLY hot on 3.7V RC123As (although it's bright and seems to suffer no ill effects, it's too hot to hold comfortably after 5 minutes or so).

but if you live in those going-to-be-winter places, those lights will be good

especially if you place them in the snow....

A similar Heat issue has been discussed here re the nifty little Peak McKinley.

Neither the Fenix P1 or the Peak McK have much metal to act as a heat sink. That's simply the flip-side of these super Size-Efficient designs. With present technology, that heat build-up is just an unavoidable -- but very manageable -- consideration.

I've found that the best course is to simply avoid long constant-on use of both these lights... and just use 'em for shorter 5-10 second intermittent bursts... with reasonable breaks to cool down.

While the heat build-up from constant-on isn't that bad, it will diminish your battery life.

TonkinWarrior said:

While the heat build-up from constant-on isn't that bad, it will diminish your battery life.

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Heat also decreases the usable lifetime of an LED. The 100,000 hours figure that is so commonly advertised as the life span of LEDs is calculated with an ideal junction temperature. And the temps these tiny pocket-rockets generate at the die junction can be quite high, especially when driving a lot of current through them.

So while it might not have a practical effect for most users (as even 1000 hrs use is a heck of a lot), technically speaking the high temps are slowly cooking the phosphor on the LED and prematurely dimming the LED.

NewBie has some very good posts on the subject...just do a little searching around.

if you use rcr123s, it's gonna override the regulation, and i wouldn't run it for extended periods of time. but it should be alright if you're running it on primary CR123s