Which budget Drop-ins work well with 18650??

I use a Dereelight drop-in with an 18650 and love it.

Some friends want to set up some lights to use with bike riding and I trying to help them do it on the cheap.

The host will be and Xtar light with AW 18650 battery. Looking for a Q5 or R2 drop in with OP reflector that runs well on an 18650.

Do any of the DX dropins run well with an 18650? I'm thinking those with a wide voltage range like 3.7 - 18v would work better at the higher voltage.

Is there anything good and cheap or is a $32 Dereelight drop-in as cheap as I'll find?

Thanks

Any dropin will work. The all run off of a single li-ion cell. A Q5 one from DX with input range 3V-18V is here.

DX sku.6090 is CPF's favorite budget dropin, and the linked dropin is the same, but with a Q5 instead of a P4.

There's also this one and this one. They're cheap, but not Q5.

Thanks Luke. I understand they will all light up with a single LiIon but as I understand it, some will have poor regulation or are considerably less bright with the lower voltage. For example this one that runs pretty poorly under 6v although the specs say 3.7 - 9V:

http://www.light-reviews.com/q4_wc_module/review.html

I also had another one from DX (can't remember which one) that was much brighter with 2 x R123 than 1 x 18650, and tended to flicker when run on a single 18650.

The Dereelight on the other hand is very bright and has great regulation on 1 x 18650.

Have you or (anyone else) tried the Q5 or R2 modules from DX with a single 18650? If so how was the output and regulation using that power source?

Thanks

I have a spotlight that runs 7 sku.1343 very brightly off of NiMH cells at 3.6V nominal. That's a P4 module though, and I don't have any experience with Q5 dropins from DX.

This one runs poorly on one 17670, but super bright on 2 RCR123 batteries.
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.11836

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.11074
And nice review.
http://light-reviews.com/dx_sku_11074/review.html

You might be able to buy one of the drop ins and then replace the board with a driver board more dedicated to the 3.7v range. IT is pretty easy to replace the boards in them. From what I have seen posted here most of the drop ins seems to be at their best around 6v.

phantom23 said:

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.11074
And nice review.
http://light-reviews.com/dx_sku_11074/review.html

Click to expand...

+1

I have two of these drop-in's and i find they are perfect.
Very well suited for use with single 18650 cell.

Plus, they have :

- built-in low voltage cut-off battery protection circuit
- built-in reverse polarity protection

Thanks for the replies. How do you find the UI of that sku 11074? It seems fairly complicated.

My friends would use it on high most of the the time and switch to medium when going through town to save batteries. Would a non-flashaholic have any trouble operating the different modes?

harddrive said:

Thanks for the replies. How do you find the UI of that sku 11074? It seems fairly complicated.

My friends would use it on high most of the the time and switch to medium when going through town to save batteries. Would a non-flashaholic have any trouble operating the different modes?

Click to expand...

Another +1 for the 11074. I'm using it in an XTAR host, and it's my favorite P60 setup. I replaced the plastic XTAR lens w/ a glass lens, and it is now a bit brighter than my Dereelight CL1H V3 3SD (w/ textured reflector). It also has less of a dark ring around the hotspot then the 3SD module.

The UI takes some experimenting to understand how the group changing works (although I actually like having all the different groups). If you stick w/ the H-M-L group and mainly just use Hi & Med modes you shouldn't run into too many problems w/ accidently shifting to a different group. The review at light-reviews.com has a very good explanation of how the group changing works.

That is good to hear Glow_Worm.

Do you remember what sized lens you used for the Xtar? Where did you order from?

Thanks

harddrive said:

That is good to hear Glow_Worm.

Do you remember what sized lens you used for the Xtar? Where did you order from?

Thanks

Click to expand...

I used the UDF lens out of my Mr. Bulk VIP BulkHead. The lens from a Mr. Bulk Chameleon or LionHeart is the same size as well. It's a 27.8 mm lens according to the Flashlightlens.com applications chart (http://www.flashlightlens.com/str/index.php?app=ccp0&ns=display&ref=apps_specs), but I haven't been able to figure out a way to order it from their website. Maybe you could call and ask if they still stock it.

I *think* that this 27mm lens from DX should work (http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.5646), as mine measures closer to 27mm than 28mm, but I haven't tried the DX one so I can't say for sure. I also use an o-ring of the same size between the lens and the bezel.