What a good budget P7 light?

What a good budget P7 light?

Also correct me if im wrong but is the p7 led more of a flood..

Do you think they could atleast do 2500-3000 lux or is it way less than that?

thanks

scott

dunno, yes, more

Best budget P7 lights would definitely be from DX & KD.

Most are under $50 and have pretty much the same output. I recommend you choose the P7 with (1) 18650. Pure pocket rocket!

I second what beefy said. DX has a good selection for the price. This is a light like mine http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.12271

It is fairly well built, and the heat sinking is good. On a white wall it has a tiny bit of a donut, but outside you dont notice it. I like this one because it has a decent throw and very useable spill. Also the color of the led on my light is more white than other leds I have seen.

Hope this helps.

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.12588

This one is better. Slightly bigger but has very useful low mode, very bright high and good reflector (waaay better than sku.12271).

anyone try putting one in a super far thrower yet?

If you want a super thrower then look no further than Elektolumens P7 conversion of the 3d mag light at about 138.00. Straightforward brute force approach to a direct drive with 3 d cell batteries (I use the Accupower low loss Nimh batteries at 10,000 mah to give me a 3 hour run time.) aT 700 LUMENS this is one of the brightest long throwing lights you will ever come across. Wayne has got this one right on the money.

not what I meant
DX had a light labeled SUPER FAR THROWER


I have a 3D mag, it has a heatsink
I have 12 tenergy 10ah D cells
I have several reflectors

I will be making one (or 3) soon

soon .............

Anyone have this Ultrafire light? I'm also looking at a cheap P7, and this has better reviews. Less throw, but someone reported running for 10 mins and still OK to hold.

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.13336

I like my MTE SSC P7 here. There's a couple of long thread on it or the sister two-mode model here on CPF somewhere. It's not the brightest P7 but it's relatively small, I can actually pocket it. The metal work and finish is only fair (mine has a machining defect on the tube that won't even pass for a Walmart light for example), but the assembly work and soldering looked good.

Mine has a nice white tint, slightly on the cool side, no doughnut hole, and it memorizes each mode instantly. The thing is though, you can't go by what I said here too much when considering this light, because a catch with most of these cheap P7 lights is their quality is inconsistent. It's almost a lottery what you end up with as far as tint, reliability, brightness, workmanship, and even how they handle light modes (i.e. some will go to next setting the next time you turn it on, or you need to wait a few seconds in each mode to get it to come on in that mode next time light is turned on).

Overall, I like mine and can live with the flaws, but I just can't unconditionally recommend these cheap lights because I just don't know if the light you receive will be like mine. But if you're willing to take a chance on a small but bright light, this one's worth considering.

Gator, good heatsinking means a light gets hot quickly, and a quad die emitter light gets very hot, very quickly.

Bad heatsinking means the body of the light takes a long time to heat up to a decent temperature. This can damage the emitter by overheating it.

Those prices at DealsExtreme look pretty good, I guess that means no battery or charger. I've never had to get a 18650 battery cuz I've got a huge stash of the CR123's. What are the advantages of the 18650 over the
CR123's if the CR123's were free?

More capacity, always have it fully charged before you leave the house (how often can you say that about primaries?)

What are CR23's? Forgive me if I'm being thick, I've head of CR123's and CR2's, but never CR23's.

I've got one of the DX Aurora 2X18650 P7 on order (sku 14212), looks like it may be a good thrower.

I'm tempted by some of the 2*18650 P7 lights on DX, but they're mostly $55-60. Also, double the batteries doesn't seem to mean double the run time based on some of the specs, this only claims 1~1.5 hours of runtime.

PhantomLights said:

I'm tempted by some of the 2*18650 P7 lights on DX, but they're mostly $55-60. Also, double the batteries doesn't seem to mean double the run time based on some of the specs, this only claims 1~1.5 hours of runtime.

Click to expand...

Double the batteries stacked end-to-end increases the voltage only, not the capacity. In order to wire the cells in parallel (longer runtime), you'd either have to widen the body significantly enough to accomodate two cells side-by-side, or create a custom battery holder that would still fit in the light. So why the manufacturer created a P7 light with cells in series baffles me, other than customer-preferred form factor. From what I understand, a P7 direct-driven only needs 3.6v, so two li-ion cells would flash it unless regulated which is what they've done here. If I'm mistaken on this, please correct me.

I think the problem of the batteries being in series can be overcome by the driver circuitry. It should be able to take a large range of input voltages and still supply the correct current.

PhantomLights said:

I think the problem of the batteries being in series can be overcome by the driver circuitry. It should be able to take a large range of input voltages and still supply the correct current.

Click to expand...

I agree with you, what I was implying is that there are no performance gains using 2 cells instead of 1 cell since the P7 can only accomodate so much voltage anyway. Obviously with regulation, almost anything is possible.

Maybe the 2 cell lights are brighter...

brighterisbetter said:

Double the batteries stacked end-to-end increases the voltage only, not the capacity. In order to wire the cells in parallel (longer runtime), you'd either have to widen the body significantly enough to accomodate two cells side-by-side, or create a custom battery holder that would still fit in the light. So why the manufacturer created a P7 light with cells in series baffles me, other than customer-preferred form factor. From what I understand, a P7 direct-driven only needs 3.6v, so two li-ion cells would flash it unless regulated which is what they've done here. If I'm mistaken on this, please correct me.

Click to expand...

All the 2 (or 3) cell LION single LED lights have regulators. If they didn't , the LED would be destroyed due to over voltage.
If the regulator circuit was 100% efficient (in a 2 cell), you would get double the run time of a single cell light. As no circuit is 100% efficient , less than double run time achieved.