Newbie question (s): brightness of Mini 3W Cree 1xCR123A Flashlight?

My first post here.

Actually I know this forum for years from another Hot Deals boards but just registered to post. My first purchase of the LED were Target 2C and 2AA River Rock with moon like beam years ago. The second purchase was the Task Force 1w 3AAA at Lowes on clearance for $2.50 each and I cleaned all 12 of them at my local store. The third one was Task Force 2C new 60x Cree last year about Halloween time (I got to wait until it hit my local Lowes). All above deals from other Hot Deals forums with links to this one. But only in about more than a month I've spent more time here than the other Hot Deals ones :laughing:. I've made few purchases on budget flashlights, you know where, instead of looking for stuffs FAR or even make money AR:candle:

Enough, now to the point. Base on this post I bought few of the brightess lights: RC-G2 (gray+black), RC-F4 (gray+black), Mini 3W Cree, Ultrafire 602C Q5 5 modes. I bought some Tenergy LiFePO4 RCR123A with charger from BatteryJunction and they came before all the lights from China (I haven't had any CR123A batteries of any kinds) so I got time to charge all 12 of them. I also got some Buckle lights from Kai with no problems on them. When testing the brightness between Mini 3W Cree and RC-F4 the output from the Mini is no where close to the RC-F4 to my eyes. Remember I'm a newbie don't know how to look at the beams yet and don't have any equipment to check the lux output, but I still can see which one is brighter. The Mini 3W is only a little brighter than RC-G2. Is my Mini a defect item? In bessiebeny's thread there are some people with the bad ones so I guess I'm in the same boat.

About the Ultrafire 602C Q5 5 mode it's only close to the RC-G2 in the high level. The beam is more flood than the throw G2, is this what it's supposed to be?

Your Mini 3W need a different battery. It needs a Li-ion battery which is 3.6v(4.2 off the charger) vs 3.0v of the LiFePO4.

The 602c has a smaller reflector, hence the wider hotspot(and might seem dimmer).

Our eye don't sense light linearly. It take much more then 2x the light for something to seem 2x brighter.

:welcome:

Gunner12 said:

Your Mini 3W need a different battery. It needs a Li-ion battery which is 3.6v(4.2 off the charger) vs 3.0v of the LiFePO4.

The 602c has a smaller reflector, hence the wider hotspot(and might seem dimmer).

Our eye don't sense light linearly. It take much more then 2x the light for something to seem 2x brighter.

:welcome:

Click to expand...

Thanks! As a newbie I bought 12 (10 + 2 in the charger package) of LiFePO4 CR123A to be safe at 3.0v. But now looks like I have to get 3.6v RCR123A and the charger (the LiFePO4 won't charge these right?) to try out. What about primary CR123A?

But still, I use LiFePO4 on all of them so if it's good for the RC-F4 I guess it's the same with Mini 3W and 602C, right?

The charger won't charge the batteries. There is a 0.6v difference(not to mention the different chemistry). Primaries won't work too well either, voltage difference(I don't think there is a driver in the light, the LED is pretty much connected directly to the battery for the 3W Cree).

I just returned my UF 602C Q5 5mode from DX due to being very dim.
I don't have 3.6V RCR123A to know if it would be acceptable with the higher voltage. Using a CR123A mine was dimmer than my RC-G2 even on the high setting.