Well mine appeared today, and a very pretty little thing it is. I'm going to put on my hyper-critical hat for these comments, so don't get too excitable. In no particular sequence...
- The machining is a quality piece of work. The threads feel fairly gritty, but will lap into shape after a few hundred more twists.
- Fenix could certainly have done a better job of lubricating the threads, as they appeared to be dry out of the (cardboard) box. Lubrication is particularly important for new titanium, as it tends to gall and seize if run dry. Use a tiny drop of oil on the threads, and clean and re-oil them in a while after the threads wear in...
- As had been reported on earlier Fenixes (Fenices?), the installed o-ring was pretty tight, and the supplied spare was thinner. I swapped the two, but it didn't lighten the twist much.
- It looks larger than it is. Next to my ARC AAA it looks huge, but is actually only about 1/8" longer and 1mm fatter. Most of the difference in length is actually the spring in the base of the tube. In the hand, it is a nice-feeling package.
- IMHO, the knurling needs to be extended from just the front half of the head to the rear half of the head as well, to make it feel more intuitive when twisting. The whole head should feel like a unit, since you have to move it as one. The current smooth round center section is deceptive - it feels like part of the body, not the head, so you have to learn to use your second finger to twist with.
- I could do nicely without the candle-stand tail. It just makes the tube feel longer in the pocket, and is not very stable anyway, since the base is so small. Any time you use it in candle mode, you will prop it up with something anyway, for stability or aiming. For me, I'd prefer a simple centered loop attachment, as on the ARC AAA.
- The bead-blasting on mine is not perfect. The head is ever-so-slightly lighter in tint and differently-textured than the body tube - as if the head and tube were not bead-blasted as a matched pair.
- The beam is excellent. I compared it to an original ARC AAA Premium, and it was laughable how far these things have come in a few short years.
The ARC center beam was somewhere between Low and Medium on the Fenix in brightness, but the quality of the bright-white Fenix beam was excellent - no green-and-purple mottling, and much smoother drop-off to the spill-beam. The spill-beam on the Fenix is wider, is much brighter than the ARC, and isn't purple.
- I also compared it to a custom Luxeon 1-Watt AAA-sized Luxeon Star keychain light from two years ago - a D'Mo Special. The beam of the Fenix on Medium was slightly dimmer than the D'Mo, but the Fenix High beam made the D'Mo look like a M*glite. The Fenix had a much brighter spill beam than the D'Mo - with the D'Mo, to read a menu, you had to hold the light by your ear, to spread the focused center-beam wide enough. With the Fenix, you can hold it up close to the menu, and the spill illuminates the whole menu quite readably.
- High beam is very bright for this size light - considerably brighter and throwier than the D'Mo 1-watt Luxeon. The spill beam is bright enough to be quite useful - much more so than the Luxeon with optic.
- No rings became apparent in the beam during an extensive wall-hunt, and I was able to find the wall easily every time, as long as my eyes were open.
- I don't much care for the multi-twist control sequence, but I can see why they did it. I'd strongly prefer just a continuous twist sequence for Low-Med-Hi.
- Strobe mode is a slightly slow strobe, but could be useful for visibility.
- SOS mode is so slow it is useless; no-one will ever recognize it as Morse, since the L0-Ti stretches it out to sloooooow motion. The whole ooo000ooo sequence is supposed to be about 3-4 seconds long - this light takes more like 12 seconds, with a 10-second pause between repeats. This is an SOS from someone unfamiliar with Morse code, who is on the verge of death. Simply said, it's an offal (sic) implementation by someone unfamiliar with the concept.
So, overall, the L0-Ti is a keeper, although I'd be interested in a CRE conversion, for a 90-Lumen "new-star" mode.
- The machining is a quality piece of work. The threads feel fairly gritty, but will lap into shape after a few hundred more twists.
- Fenix could certainly have done a better job of lubricating the threads, as they appeared to be dry out of the (cardboard) box. Lubrication is particularly important for new titanium, as it tends to gall and seize if run dry. Use a tiny drop of oil on the threads, and clean and re-oil them in a while after the threads wear in...
- As had been reported on earlier Fenixes (Fenices?), the installed o-ring was pretty tight, and the supplied spare was thinner. I swapped the two, but it didn't lighten the twist much.
- It looks larger than it is. Next to my ARC AAA it looks huge, but is actually only about 1/8" longer and 1mm fatter. Most of the difference in length is actually the spring in the base of the tube. In the hand, it is a nice-feeling package.
- IMHO, the knurling needs to be extended from just the front half of the head to the rear half of the head as well, to make it feel more intuitive when twisting. The whole head should feel like a unit, since you have to move it as one. The current smooth round center section is deceptive - it feels like part of the body, not the head, so you have to learn to use your second finger to twist with.
- I could do nicely without the candle-stand tail. It just makes the tube feel longer in the pocket, and is not very stable anyway, since the base is so small. Any time you use it in candle mode, you will prop it up with something anyway, for stability or aiming. For me, I'd prefer a simple centered loop attachment, as on the ARC AAA.
- The bead-blasting on mine is not perfect. The head is ever-so-slightly lighter in tint and differently-textured than the body tube - as if the head and tube were not bead-blasted as a matched pair.
- The beam is excellent. I compared it to an original ARC AAA Premium, and it was laughable how far these things have come in a few short years.
The ARC center beam was somewhere between Low and Medium on the Fenix in brightness, but the quality of the bright-white Fenix beam was excellent - no green-and-purple mottling, and much smoother drop-off to the spill-beam. The spill-beam on the Fenix is wider, is much brighter than the ARC, and isn't purple.
- I also compared it to a custom Luxeon 1-Watt AAA-sized Luxeon Star keychain light from two years ago - a D'Mo Special. The beam of the Fenix on Medium was slightly dimmer than the D'Mo, but the Fenix High beam made the D'Mo look like a M*glite. The Fenix had a much brighter spill beam than the D'Mo - with the D'Mo, to read a menu, you had to hold the light by your ear, to spread the focused center-beam wide enough. With the Fenix, you can hold it up close to the menu, and the spill illuminates the whole menu quite readably.
- High beam is very bright for this size light - considerably brighter and throwier than the D'Mo 1-watt Luxeon. The spill beam is bright enough to be quite useful - much more so than the Luxeon with optic.
- No rings became apparent in the beam during an extensive wall-hunt, and I was able to find the wall easily every time, as long as my eyes were open.
- I don't much care for the multi-twist control sequence, but I can see why they did it. I'd strongly prefer just a continuous twist sequence for Low-Med-Hi.
- Strobe mode is a slightly slow strobe, but could be useful for visibility.
- SOS mode is so slow it is useless; no-one will ever recognize it as Morse, since the L0-Ti stretches it out to sloooooow motion. The whole ooo000ooo sequence is supposed to be about 3-4 seconds long - this light takes more like 12 seconds, with a 10-second pause between repeats. This is an SOS from someone unfamiliar with Morse code, who is on the verge of death. Simply said, it's an offal (sic) implementation by someone unfamiliar with the concept.
So, overall, the L0-Ti is a keeper, although I'd be interested in a CRE conversion, for a 90-Lumen "new-star" mode.
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