Cheap lenses from DX any good?

I usually subscribe to the "you pay for what you get" mantra . . . but these lenses have me a little curious.

(DX is down at the moment or I would link you but bascially I'm asking about the 52mm glass lenses they sell for around 69 cents.)

Can they hold a candle to a Borofloat?

if it's the ones they sell in the 5-pack, I didn't notice much difference in output to the naked eye. as for durability, can't really answer as I haven't abused them much.

having said that, I use borofload on my ROP and these lense on my SSC mag mods. it's more for peace of mind than any real world application reasons.

The stock lens in my DX 1-mode enhanced lasted well for me; used it on my bike for about 3 months and it dropped a few times. It did chip once, but held up well after that until I got a UCL for it...

After I upgraded from a P4 and what ever driver to the current set up (Q5 pushed at about 600mA), I upgraded to a UCL. Going from the DX stock to the UCL did make a noticable difference, but the stock lens had many miles on it at that point, and a crack near the edge.

The borofloat or UCL lens is definitely cleaner than the one from DX or KD. However, I don't see much differnece between them in terms of light output. I do noticed that the DX/KD one picks up more moisture though. Maybe it's due to the temperature difference. I have a quad cree light using the KD lens and another similar tri-cree light using a UCL. There are always some moisture-like stuff on the KD lens (which makes the lens unclear) but not on the UCL. It's not significant and can be cleaned easily with a cloth or tissue, but it's pretty annoying some time.

I use 2 of the 52mm DX ones for my dive mag. Had it down to 60meters in a test pot and 40 odd meters in a lake no problems. Much better than the stock lens.