Fenix L0D Rebel - will it come out with the Rebel 100?

does anyone know if the Fenix L0D which is now on pre-order with the new Rebel 80, might soon come out with the Rebel 100?

The other lights in the Fenix LxD and PxD lines are coming out with baseline Rebel 80 editions, but also premium editions with the Rebel 100's.

thanks!

Pro Light Japan has some in limited quantity with the rebel 100 and cree Q4 so hopefully 4sevens can look into it.

they also have other Fenix lights coming with Q5 wc tint.
here is the the link to prolightjapan:

http://translate.google.com/transla.../search?q=pro+light+japan&hl=en&safe=off&sa=G

i can't seem to get a direct link, so from link above click where it says "Fenix and" in small red letters which is to the right of the HDS EDC picture.

If its available in Japan at this time, my guess is that it will be available here soon - maybe one or two weeks - just a guess

many thanks, THE_dAY!

I've just been to that website. There is indeed some (translated) info on the L0D Rebel 100.

It doesn't list lumens, but gives the run-times. From this it appears that the different modes have the same run-times as the L0D Rebel 80, which must mean that the whole improvement from the upgraded LED must go to brightness (ie, more lumens).

The website also seems to indicate that the Rebel 100 is at 100 lumens at 350 mA, and that the high mode on the L0D Rebel 100 is set at 250 mA. So this little light should be able to get quite a bit of lumens out at max.

Finally, there is a picture, and it turns out that the light can also be had at a natural HA-III finish! Personally, I'd prefer that over the black finish.

Now, to await for it to appear over here in the US!

I would hope that this whole R80 L0D thing is just a missunderstanding, and that Fenix isn't seriously proposing to continue this 'premium' garbage in regard to the Rebel, because that would be a frigin JOKE.

Rebel 100 LED's are dirt common, and available for only about 2 or 3 bucks more than the basic Rebel 80 so it's totally stupid to even consider putting an R80 Rebel into the L0D as the 'standard' version then trying to charge a 'premium' for a R100 version.

Plus, the cost of the 'premium' R100 LED's is on a par with what STANDARD P4 CREE LED's sell for anyway, and in volume maybe even less, so maybe Fenix should be offering R100 DISCOUNTS instead on insulting our intelligence with this 'premium edition' garbage).

If I sound a little miffed, it's because I had heard that the Fenix L0D Rebel version was now ready, and was looking forward to ordering one. Of course I naturally assumed that it would have a R100 Rebel emitter, because only an idiot would use a less efficient emitter in a tiny little light like the L0D that needs all the help it can get.

Let's see if I have this right. We have this little tiny battery challenged light . . . Hey, I know, let's deliberately screw up it's performance by using a less efficient emitter to save, what? Two or Three bucks? Come, on, how stupid do they think we are???

Of course Fenix was the company that took forever to even offer 'premium' orange peel reflectors, long after they were STANDARD on lights selling at half the cost.

I can't speak for fenix but if I recall correctly, initially they didn't believe that the rebel 100 offered any advantage over the 80. Perhaps they have found otherwise.
As I understand it, the LOD r100 is a limited edition of Pro Light Japan for a while. Very good people to work with. On a par with our favorite online dealers.

I'd be interested in a seoul L0D. Something floody.

aceo07 said:

I'd be interested in a seoul L0D. Something floody.

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I've inquired of fenix about a floodier version of any of their lights. Seems they've got throw on their minds mostly. And they don't seem to like the seoul, relegating it to inferior status.
I use my fenix lights all the time and like them all. I'm anxious to buy more from fenix, but would like them to be floody beamed fenix lights.

Luminescent said:

Rebel 100 LED's are dirt common...

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What do you base this statement on?

I've heard from a number of sources, including the "fenix grapevine" that the Rebel 100's are hard to get a hold of.

My understanding is that Fenix is putting them in the other more powerful lights like the P3D and putting the Rebel 80's in the L0D's because there just aren't enough 100's to go around right now.

To answer the original question - I'm sure the L0D will come with a Rebel 100. But that probably won't be for a while, and may be after the other lights are coming with Rebel 120's or something like that. Either way, it won't be until the 100's are easier to get a hold of.

shakeylegs said:

I can't speak for fenix but if I recall correctly, initially they didn't believe that the rebel 100 offered any advantage over the 80.

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Except for a full 20% increase in efficiency, no.

LukeA said:

Except for a full 20% increase in efficiency, no.

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One would think so. But correspondence with fenix service left me with that impression:
"Yes, it is true. We just want use 80 lumen emitter on L0D, because 100 lumen emitter could not exert more power compared with that used on P3D, L2D, or P2D. If we use 100 lumen rebel emitter on L0D, it could be a little waste. J"

As I understand it, the driver of the LOD can't fully use the efficiency of the higher vf emitters without resorting to lithium or nimh batteries. Guess they want to preserve usefullness with alkalines.
Perhaps fenix has found out that the rebel 100, with lower vf can, after all, be driven by the LOD efficiently. In any case, I've ordered 2 and will compare to my Q2 soon.

shakeylegs said:

One would think so. But correspondence with fenix service left me with that impression:
"Yes, it is true. We just want use 80 lumen emitter on L0D, because 100 lumen emitter could not exert more power compared with that used on P3D, L2D, or P2D. If we use 100 lumen rebel emitter on L0D, it could be a little waste. J"

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Huh???

At the drive levels used in the L0D, the Rebel 100 is still 20% more efficient than the Rebel 80, so this doesn't make any sense at all, unless what this idiot at Fenix you corresponded with is really saying is "We at Fenix only think in terms of driving the crap out of the emitter, and are totally brainless about efficiency, therefore since we don't plan to try to put out 200 lumens with the LOD, it would be a waste".

shakeylegs said:

As I understand it, the driver of the LOD can't fully use the efficiency of the higher vf emitters without resorting to lithium or nimh batteries. Guess they want to preserve usefulness with alkalines.
Perhaps fenix has found out that the rebel 100, with lower vf can, after all, be driven by the LOD efficiently. In any case, I've ordered 2 and will compare to my Q2 soon.

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No offense, but you seem to be contradicting yourself, first saying:
"can't fully use the efficiency of higher Vf emitters . . ."

Then following up with:
"Perhaps fenix has found out that the rebel 100, with lower vf . . ."

Which is it "higher Vf" or "lower vf"?

The fact is the Rebel is a SLIGHTLY LOWER Vf emitter, as you said in your second statement, but isn't really radically different than the newer CREE P4's with 4 bond wires when it comes to Vf so this isn't really that big of deal.

I guess that even a small change in Vf could however make a big difference when the L0D is abused by those who stupidly insist on running it in "Direct Drive" with non-approved higher voltage lithium cells.

I don't see where this would be a reason to prefer the R80 over the R100 Rebel though, because from what I have seen there is no real difference in the Rebel 80 and Rebel 100 when it comes to Vf and when properly mounted the Rebel 100 can take at least as much abuse as the R80.

So a side benefit of the newer lower Vf Rebels may well be that morons who are determined to FRY their L0D, will probably find it easier to do, but for those of us who don't choose to play stupid "Direct Drive Roulette" games with our L0D's the Rebel 100 could easily offer more than 100 HONEST lumens in the highest 'Max' mode, while running on simple NiMH batteries.

I wish Fenix was bright enough to figure out that the issues with Lithium batteries could be EASILY resolved by simply supplying the L0D with a little drop-in disk with an embedded series DIODE which would provide just enough voltage drop to prevent the light from going into unregulated "Direct Drive" with lithium cells. Then you could safely use lithium batteries to get a reasonable improvement in output and efficiency without the risk of a meltdown (but still remove the disk for better efficiency with NiMH batteries).

Or they could supply a special order battery tube with the diode built into the tailcap for those who wish to use the L0D with Lithium cells.

This isn't rocket science, but frankly, reading Fenix's clueless response to the R80 vs. R100 issue above, I'm not surprised that Fenix hasn't thought of it.

Luminescent,
Hardly seems an issue to get so worked up over. As for contradicting myself, you can see I am only relaying the information I was given.
Re: the vf issue, again, I've been told and I offer for your consideration, that the higher vf's of the Q4 and Q5 don't consistently obtain full efficiency with the existing LOD driver on alkalines. I've not claimed to have validated the notion. Take it for what it's worth. Better yet, since you seem to have a complete technical grasp of the situation, contact fenix and offer them your advice for improvement. I'm sure we would all benefit from your largesse.:wave:

shakeylegs said:

Luminescent,
Hardly seems an issue to get so worked up over. As for contradicting myself, you can see I am only relaying the information I was given.
Re: the vf issue, again, I've been told and I offer for your consideration, that the higher vf's of the Q4 and Q5 don't consistently obtain full efficiency with the existing LOD driver on alkalines. I've not claimed to have validated the notion. Take it for what it's worth. Better yet, since you seem to have a complete technical grasp of the situation, contact fenix and offer them your advice for improvement. I'm sure we would all benefit from your largesse.:wave:

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I did not understand why you were talking about high Vf emitters and then lower Vf emitters only a moment later.

Now I see that you were talking about two different issues.

It is absolutely true that most boost converters in single cell lights will become less efficient at higher boost ratios, so if Vf goes up (or the battery voltage goes down), efficiency suffers.

I guess I didn't understand what that had to do with the Rebels which typically have Vf numbers at the lower end of the range (3.0 to 3.2 at 350mA) which should make for better runtimes and efficiency, but in relation to some of the early Q4 or Q5 emitters with higher Vf's it makes sense.

I am an electrical engineer, and do know enough about this subject that I was able to tinker together my own 90% efficient 1.2 volt boost converter (using synchronous rectification with 12 milliohm RDSon MosFets).

Most recently, I am tinkering with a much simpler non-discrete design using the LTC3490 chip. This chip actually wouldn't be too bad of choice for a L0D clone, because it is available in a ultra-tiny 3mm x 3mm SMT package and only needs an equally tiny surface mount inductor and capacitor to operate because of it's high switching frequency.

Using this chip, the whole multi-mode boost converter 'light engine' only has 4 or 5 parts (counting the CPU for mode control) and will fit into a space about 8mm diameter x 6mm deep, which is the perfect size for a AAA light.

This chip puts out up to 350mA, which isn't all that much by today's overdriven emitter standards, but it sure as heck can drive the little Rebel to a full 100 lumens, in a tiny single AAA light as small or smaller than the L0D with no problems at all.

I thought of the Diode trick I mentioned for Lithium Cells, because the LTC3490 works VERY well at 3 to 3.5 volts (90% plus efficiency), but is NOT set up to handle 'Direct Drive'. So the logical thing would be to make sure that if the battery voltage is just slightly too high (as it is with 3.6 volt lithium cells), that you drop it down just a couple tenths with a schottky diode (as I said this isn't rocket science).

Of course minus 'Direct Drive' the using 10440 cells in your light wouldn't produce the 'fry your eyeballs' light levels that some seem to be looking for, it would just run close to an hour at 100 lumens vs. maybe 45 minutes on NiMH

So having just been dealing with some of the issues you mentioned, I guess I was a little quick to shoot of my mouth on the subject.

Sorry if I seemed to be coming on too strongly.

Luminescent,
Without passion most forums would be pretty dull places. I've followed your posts and respect your knowledge. Check you PM's, I've sent you some background that may clarify my post.
Regards
shakeylegs

That's why I like this forum! :twothumbs
Back to topic...

shakeylegs said:

Luminescent,
Without passion most forums would be pretty dull places. I've followed your posts and respect your knowledge. Check you PM's, I've sent you some background that may clarify my post.
Regards
shakeylegs

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I got your private message, and now see how the misunderstanding occurred.

I apologize, as something got lost in translation, and it seems it was a misunderstanding on my part of the points your friend at Fenix in Japan was making.

Some time back there were no Rebel-100's available at all, so the choice was between something like a Q4 CREE and the R80.

In this comparison, the R80 could well indeed be "Just as good" because of exactly the Vf issues you mentioned. I.E. although the R80 has less lumens at 350mA, it has only slightly less Lumens/watt because of it's lower Vf, and if the L0D boost converter works better at the lower Vf anyway, then the R80 Rebel could indeed look pretty good against the Q4 or Q5 CREE.

This however does not say anything about the Rebel-80 vs. Rebel-100, because the Rebel-100 can do even MORE lumens/watt and it KEEPS the lower Vf advantage of the earlier Rebel-80.

At this point I can't see any reason at all not to assume that the Rebel-100 is just about IDEAL for the L0D light, and I would urge anyone who has a Rebel edition L0D on order from Fenix to contact them and tell them that you expect that your L0D will come with a Rebel 100 AT THE SAME PRICE, or they can just cancel the order, thank you.

The best way to make an impression on Fenix, is to hit them in their pocket book and simply refuse to accept mediocre quality when better should be available.

There are 5 mode Rebel-100 MTE lights on DX now selling for 18 dollars, so if Fenix can't ship the almost 3 times as expensive L0D with a Rebel-100 emitter, then something is seriously wrong.

By the way, for those who figure that Fenix is just being honest, and those other evil so-and-so's are probably just ripping people off, please note, unlike the 'who the hell knows' situation with the CREE Q5, the Rebel-100 can be positively identified, even if the manufacture covers the chip except for the dome, by the tiny checkerboard pattern dots on the surface of the phosphor, which are easy to spot using a 10x loop.

All Rebel chips with these dots should be Rebel-100 or later chips (at least 100 lumens/watt), because this is the LOWEST bin for these new series chips, and the older Rebel-80, Rebel-50 and lower bin Rebel series chips lack this pattern.

The cheepy MTE Rebel-100 lights I have seen DO pass this test, so I would hope that Fenix will.

Ice said:

That's why I like this forum! :twothumbs
Back to topic...

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Me too,
It's become my second home

mchlwise said:

What do you base this statement on?

I've heard from a number of sources, including the "fenix grapevine" that the Rebel 100's are hard to get a hold of.
.

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Yep, just like the ultra advanced 'orange peel reflector' technology was hard to get a hold of (execept for everyone else). It's only a slight exageration to say that NASA went to the moon faster than Fenix could figure out how to knock some dents in their reflectors (and many of their lights STILL don't offer this option) :sigh:

But we were discussing the availability of the Rebel 100's . . .

Just a few weeks ago I got a half dozen Rebel-100's from Future Electoronics, and at that time they had "100 +" availble for ONE'sey-TWO'sey small quantity orders and (5000 + available) on tape reels for bulk orders. These 100 *PLUS* and 5000 *PLUS* numbers are usually their way of saying they have TONS of stock, so I kind of ASSUMED the shortages were over. Still, as they say, when you ASSUME you make an *** out or U and ME, so just to be sure, I ordered ALL the rebels I thought I was likely to need over the next few months plus a couple more and stocked up.

Now it looks like they are out of stock again at Future Electronics on both the Rebel 100 AND the Rebel 80, but if Fenix didn't jump like I did when they had the chance, well . . . Who's fault is that?

The Rebel-100's I got from Future Electornics were unmounted, so I also picked up a few more from led-tech.de on some nice little 1cm square boards.

http://www.led-tech.de/en/Luxeon-High-Power-LEDs/Luxeon-REBEL-c_49_85.html

So Future Electronics had them, and LED-TECH.DE STILL has them, [both mounted and unmounted Rebel-100's available], so perhaps what the "fenix grapevine" meant was they weren't available at the 'fire sale' prices Chinese companies expect.

To be fair, I don't know how many Rebel-100's LED-TECH.DE still has on hand, but they are advertising a 'special price' (less than 4.59 Euros) on quantities over 100.

I have little pity for Fenix in this regard when I see MTE 5 mode lights on sale at DX for only 18 dollars that DO have Rebel-100's, and the Fenix L0D sells for almost three times as much but says it will come with a Rebel-80.

Perhaps Fenix did a bulk buy on the Rebel 80? If so, they had better wholesale them quickly out the door to folks making cheap keychain lights for DX, before they are not even wanted for that purpose.

Ain't Capitalism a *****?