Ultrafire C2 and batteriesm, 18650/CR123

After considerable consideration and help from this site, I've decided to order the UF C2 from DX as my thrower. Think the wider spill will be more useful to me than the extra throw of say the WF-400 or WF-600.

Now I need to restart buying batteries, am I right in saying that:

18650 batteries, will give me longer life while 2 X CR123 will give me more light but less battery life ???

With thanks in advanced.

fidjit;

I have several C2 lights and run them all on #18650 Sanyo cells.

They measure 700 ma on my meter and that is a good level to run them at. I don't think the regulator will deliver much more current.

With 2400 mah, they can easily run 3 hours.

#18650 technology is the most energy-dense widely available battery.

Larry

18650 is probly the way to go...the C2 seem to be regulated at the same brightness whether you use the extra voltage from the 2 x cr123.

I've heard the C2 will be much brighter with 2xRCR123's than a single 18650, but yes, run time will be less with the 2xRCR123's. I modded my C2 with a Q5 and there is a big difference between the two batteries. I don't think the 18650 will deliver enough voltage to run the Q5 at ful brightness since the Q5 has a higher VF than the P4 it replaced. So I need the extra voltge the 2xRCR123's deliver.

Havent seen a proper review of the WF400 anywhere yet, but I doubt its meant to be a proper thrower as such. The real throwers are the 600 and 800 models.
I know some people have got wf-400s here, so might wanna ask for their opinion, for some reason this light kinda has flown under the radar.
I have a C2 and am very happy with it, but the 400 comes with the Q2 for about the same price.
A beamsot comparison of the C2 and the WF400 would be a great help.
If I were to take a guess, I would say the WF400 is actually the upgraded C2, in the same style as the 600 and 800 being upgraded super thrower, and superthrower far models.
I am interested in a WF400 myself, so would like to see comments as well.
Some opinions here, but rather see in depth reviews at CPF.
PS the WF-400 also has the 2 mode operation.

The WF-400 and WF-600 are both 2-mode lights with hi/lo/off switches. Although the WF-600 is a "superthrower," the WF-400 is a good all around light and has pretty good throw too. My WF-600 lights throw about 400M while the WF-400 lights throw about 200M. It wasn't long ago when 200M would have been considered "super."

I have 3 Ultrafire C2, it is preety dim on single 18650 compared to 18650 only lights. My advice is to replace the driver that only accept 18650 for better output and regulation

Yes WF-400 is a GOOD thrower considering its price, it is not as good as its brother WF-600. It is actually has better throws compared to similar sized light.

+

This thread was about what batteries for a purchased C2.

I got one of the early C2s from Kai when he first opened Kaidomain, and the battery tube was a bit too small for protected 18650 cells, (could get it in but had to take the whole light apart)
Not sure if they are wider now but either get 17670 or go with RCR123, because the C2 seemed a bit brighter on RCR123 anyway.

rizky_p, how would you compare your C2 with the WF-400 in terms of throw and sidespill etc?

I have 5 ultrafire c2's they are all brighter with two cells.

hmm...maybe the C2 i got was dud, mine seems to be ablout the same brightness with both batteries. what kinda brightness difference are we talking about?

How different is run time 18560 compared with CR123

( Can't find a run time comparison on CPF :-( )

I can see this becoming a trade off between power and runtime now :-(

An 18650 battery will generally run twice as long as 2 x RCR123A batteries. An 18650 battery may run 3 times longer if the circuit limits the output of a single Li-ion cell to lower currents, as compared to two cell voltage.

So which battery to buy, I would definitely buy the 18650 battery and then modify the driver to run brighter.

I've had a C2 from DX for quite awhile. I use AW protected 18650's exclusively. While there is a tiny difference in the brightness compared to two high quality CR123A's, it's not enough to really notice in real world use, and the AW's perform so well and run so long, i wouldn't use anything else. The AW 18650 gives me good throw and fantastic spill for all my uses (which doesn't include lighting up white walls). - Larry

Thanks for all the assistance guys and gals.

Looks like it's a C2 ( for the extra spill ( at the expense of throw ) ) and the 1860s ( for extra runtime ( at expense of ( minimal ) brightness )

Cheers.

On my lights its a pretty big difference and when I modded to Q5 emitters its a huge difference.

Yeah, it can be a pretty big difference. I've measured a difference of ~820mA to ~400mA when using the 'Multi-mode 3.6V - 9V' flashlights.

Hi.

Yes the Q5 on the Ultrafire c2 is indeed bright. So long as you modify the power circuit.

I'm still waiting on a review of DX and KAI's new C2-Q5. I did look over KAI's runtime chart on the Q5 C2 running off 1x18650.

If the chart is accurate i would assume that they didn't modify the power circuits as the runtime vs lumens is quite a bit less than the cree p4 C2s.

I do expect a shorter runtime from the Q5 but not as bad as i seen in the chart.

Wait and see i guess.