Rexlight headed for the drawer

I bought a Rexlight back in the late spring for an EDC light. It's been ok, decent brightness and beam. Annoying that it has so many modes.

Well, today I found a major weakness - it won't turn on when the battery is low :thumbsdow I had let the battery (14500) get pretty low, I've been using it a lot recently. I had expected that it would just get dimmer. Nope. When I reached for it tonight when I was helping my GF move some furniture it wouldn't turn on.

This is completely unacceptable for a light that I expect to always work when I need it. I like the AA form factor for an EDC light so I can get cheap primaries if needed. I like the Lumapower LM301 I gave my GF a few months ago, it just has low and high, you always know which mode it'll be in, it accepts 14500s, and has a decent beam. But I'll shop a little bit to make sure it's still a good choice :thumbsup:

I can't give the Rexlight to anyone, all the modes are annoying, and the lack of power-on when batteries are low is pathetic. It's headed for the drawer and will probably stay there.

Are you using a protected 14500 which has 'shut off' due to the protection PCB?

Duh!

It's not a protected 14500, but I bet the Rexlight was shutting off because it didn't want to hurt the battery.

Vermonter73 said:

I can't give the Rexlight to anyone

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I got backup.

Original Rexlight will NOT turn on when the voltage drops. I have observed it using Alkaline and NiMh. If it is on, it will stay on but if you turn it off, it will no come back on. CE-L V1 did the same too but it's voltage cut off is slightly better.

- Vikas

Sounds to me if you have that many complaints about a fine light such as the Rexlight, your drawer is gonna be filled up pretty quickly.

.....and I'll also send $10. :naughty:

Seems like most of the AA Cree lights need at least 1.0 volt to fire up. I'm always looking for good battery drainers, but my Rexlight, Jetbeam C-LE, and Fenix L2Dce (on one battery) all need about that much to light.

Geoff

Flying Turtle said:

Seems like most of the AA Cree lights need at least 1.0 volt to fire up. I'm always looking for good battery drainers, but my Rexlight, Jetbeam C-LE, and Fenix L2Dce (on one battery) all need about that much to light.

Geoff

Click to expand...

Coast DigiTacs I & II are also AA lights, and exhibit similar behavior when using alkaline primaries (haven't tried NiMh cells in them, so i won't address that issue, but it's probably the same behavior, IMO).

Not in OP's case, since he was NOT using the light prior to it exhibiting the problem, but i've personally had this happen many times with the Coast single AA cell lights as follows: run the light for a while, turn it off, and it won't turn right back on when the cell voltage is low; let it cool and it will turn back on (voltage recovery due to decrease in internal cell resistance as the cell cools off) - up until a point when the voltage becomes just too low either power the light or turn it on even after significant cooling.

A light which just abruptly cuts off bugs me a little also. My C-LE Jetbeam isn't too bad. It will noticeably dim for several minutes on a AA Alkaline (but dims much more quickly, flickers and then cuts off on NiMH).

Just bought a L0D-Q4 AAA light

http://candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?t=181417

This light has a GREAT 'moon-mode' low when the cells start to get low. It will run at least a half hour that way on Alkaline AAA and several minutes even on NiMH. The runtime graphs for the L0D don't show this for NiMH because I think that most folks cut the test off when the light first starts to dim out of concern for the battery. Actually I have NEVER had a problem with NiMH running them flat (only with Lithium cells).

No light will give a super long moon mode on NiMH (the NiMH discharge curve cuts off too quick when they are fully discharged) but this little light does better than any of my others by a wide margin.

Here is a link to a post in my L0D-Q4 thread with more info about the L0D 'moon-mode' behavior.

http://candlepowerforums.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2244125&postcount=18

Don't under estimate this little AAA light, it's bright as hell and will keep up with many single AA CREE lights on output.

Thanks to the higher bin Q4 emitter, it has about the same total output as my C-LE with just a touch more flood (and naturally just a touch less throw), and the runtimes are still more than an hour on high, 2 to 3 hours on medium, and about 6 to 8 hours on low.

So far I have only seen the Q4 offered as the L0D Q4 'seasonal special' at the Fenix-Store in a RED color (the body of the light is red not the emitter color).

Not everyone will like the RED color, but if you can get past this, you have to admidt that the chance to get a 'premium' L0D-Q4 at the regular price (about 42 bucks SHIPPED with the CPF8 coupon code at checkout), is one hell of a great deal.

At first I wasn't sure how I would like the RED color (and I can understand if it may be a show stopper for some), but I found that it looks fantastic once I got the light (several others in the above ' Kudos' thread have made the same comment, so it seems that most are finding that it looks pretty nice once they give it a chance).

The red color gives my L0D-Q4 a nice 'aerospace' appearance, which looks just fantastic in the sleeve pocket of my MA-1 flight jacket.

I've had similar problems with the Liteflux LF5, not lighting up on nimh with decent power left.

I surprisingly had a similar problem with a Fenix L1T V2.0. Seems to need a decent amount of power to re-light up. This only happend once so I will have to re-confirm at some point.


A simple light will drain a battery dry. Think Lumapower LM31 (or 301 depending on who you talk to)
works well for me to suck batteries dry.