Fenix LD01 puts out similar amount of light from a AAA battery as a Surefire backup?

I was looking at the surefire backup as a potential purchase, the spec says it puts out 80 lumens for 1.3 hours. I already have a Fenix LD01 that puts out 80 lumens for 1 hour and that uses a normal AAA battery! The Fenix PD20 takes the same CR123A battery, but puts out 180 lumens for 1 hour. Are Surefire torches inefficient for a good reason?

heh.. surefire rates its lights at lower lumens, even though they may be brighter.

Surefire also uses "torch lumens"... as in, what actually comes out of the light. (adjusted for losses in reflector, optics, etc)

On the other hand.. other brands often overrate their lumen output, and, they cite emitter output.
consider the surefire backup noticeably brighter.

cybersoga said:

I was looking at the surefire backup as a potential purchase, the spec says it puts out 80 lumens for 1.3 hours. I already have a Fenix LD01 that puts out 80 lumens for 1 hour and that uses a normal AAA battery! The Fenix PD20 takes the same CR123A battery, but puts out 180 lumens for 1 hour. Are Surefire torches inefficient for a good reason?

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I have an L0D (predecessor of the LD01) and an E1B and I can assure you that the E1B is waaay brighter!

Sorry, I don't know how to quantify the difference cos I'm a complete beginner to this flashlight stuff.

I am however completely addicted already and this forum has now taken over as my favourite (my favourite until a couple of weeks ago was a mobile phone forum).

In the lasy year or two me & my wife have bought 2 x Fenix L0D, 2 x Surefire E1B, 2 x Fenix P3D, 2 x Nitecore D10 R2 & a Gladius Nightops

There'll be more......

Sorry to threadjack, back to the OP: There is a big difference between the two lights, the Surefire is much brighter!

With Fenix calculated lumens, as a rule of thumb, subtract one third and you are at the "lumen out front" rating. So a LD01 at 50 lumens, yes, 80 - no way.

You can't compare a AAA light with a CR123 light. They both are rated at 80 lumens but surefire under rates their lights, plus they are designed for thow, making it look even brighter.

Comparing the P2D vs the E1B would be correct but then we are heading into another throw vs overall output discussion.

Cato said:

With Fenix calculated lumens, as a rule of thumb, subtract one third and you are at the "lumen out front" rating. So a LD01 at 50 lumens, yes, 80 - no way.

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Can you prove this? Because I dont think my TK11 is only 158 lumens...

richardcpf said:

You can't compare a AAA light with a CR123 light. They both are rated at 80 lumens but surefire under rates their lights, plus they are designed for thow, making it look even brighter.

Comparing the P2D vs the E1B would be correct but then we are heading into another throw vs overall output discussion.




Can you prove this? Because I dont think my TK11 is only 158 lumens...

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Fenix lights used to overrate their lights in the past, however the TK11 was tested at well over 200 lumens out the front. The P3D was also around 200 lumens out the front lumens as well.

The E1B is designed for throw, while the LD01 uses a shallow reflector and is more of a floody beam. This will make the E1B look MUCH brighter, when in reality they very well could be closer in brightness than you would expect.

Surefire also lists out the front lumens on all of their models, but the reason the runtime seems shorter than Fenix models is because Fenix uses the most efficient constant current circuits on the market. I don't know for sure exactly what Surefire uses, but it isn't nearly as efficient has what Fenix has in their lights.

The Fenix digital lineup is nearly unmatched in terms of efficiency.

adirondackdestroyer said:

The E1B is designed for throw, while the LD01 uses a shallow reflector and is more of a floody beam. This will make the E1B look MUCH brighter, when in reality they very well could be closer in brightness than you would expect.

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Yeah most people look at the brightest point of the beam, and not the whole beam it self.

Cato said:

With Fenix calculated lumens, as a rule of thumb, subtract one third and you are at the "lumen out front" rating. So a LD01 at 50 lumens, yes, 80 - no way.

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That's about right. My lightbox shows 52lm for the LD01.

The E1B also has a bigger reflector. Emitters themselves vary a lot I recently was able to test a bunch of Surefire P60L's and was able to hand select a few. The leds ranged from 180 tested to 255 tested not actual lumens as I had no way to get a standard. But some were much brighter than others.

I have three E1B's(should say had before mods) and they are so damn green they dont look as bright as they should, just my opinion. My ld01 looks pretty damn bright but the E1B is still a little brighter, if it was actually white or even blue tint it would be alot more useful too, this green tint just sucks. First the Surefires were just not very bright for the money and now they got the tints screwed up? I dont have another single light that is as green as these E1B's....

adirondackdestroyer said:

Surefire also lists out the front lumens on all of their models, but the reason the runtime seems shorter than Fenix models is because Fenix uses the most efficient constant current circuits on the market. I don't know for sure exactly what Surefire uses, but it isn't nearly as efficient has what Fenix has in their lights.

The Fenix digital lineup is nearly unmatched in terms of efficiency.

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Surefire circuit efficiency stinks, guess they just don't consider it a priority. I did a graph a while ago comparing SF L1 and NC EX10 runtime/output, the lighter blue is NC, darker is SF

Let's just pretend the E1B and LD01 both have 80 lumens out the front.

The E1B uses an optic that focuses most of the light into a tight hot spot, with a fairly dim spill.

The LD01 uses a small reflector which creates a larger and dimmer hot spot and brighter spill.

The LD01 may run at 80 lumens for the life of the battery and then shut off.

Looking at the run time graph above of the L1, the E1B may maintain 80 lumens for 1.3 hours, but then drop below 80 lumens and continue to run for another hour, or whatever, dimming the whole time.

So the E1B should run longer on it's CR123 than the LD01 runs on it's AAA when both are set to max.

Lately Fenix has been more accurate with their specs as I believe they now use an IS and measure out the front lumens.

When it comes to Surefire, I have an E1B that is probably around 80 lumens, but others have E1B's that maybe closer to 120 lumens. The E1B's MINIMUM out the front lumens should be 80, but SF often exceeds their specs. They may have released the first E1B's with XR-E P4's which produced 80 lumens out the front, but now they maybe using Q4's, Q5's, etc, and producing 100-120 lumens. I figure they wouldn't change their specs to reflect the brighter emitters because there is probably still old stock out there with the older emitters. Since Surefire doesn't specify what bin LED they use it can be luck of the draw, but you should get a light that performs at the advertised spec at the worst, although the tint maybe another story.

So the E1B will certainly look brighter as it has most of the light focused into that small hot spot, but that doesn't mean the LD01 isn't producing a similar amount of lumens. In most cases I would expect an E1B to have slightly more overal output than a LD01, unless you stick a 10440 3.7v AAA in the LD01 and then it's game over for the E1B, at least when it comes to lumens. The LD01 will be putting out around 200+ lumens, out the front, with a 10440, for a short while anyway. The E1B would still probably have more throw though.

WadeF said:

The LD01 may run at 80 lumens for the life of the battery and then shut off.

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The LD01 doesn't shut off, it gradually becomes dimmer. How quickly that happens depends on the battery type. As with all high current Fenix AA or AAA lights, NiMHs should have much higher regulated runtime, and then exhibit rapidly diminishing brightness than alkalines, and the latter will instead cause the light to fade out slowly. Lithium primaries more or less combine both properties.

WadeF said:

Looking at the run time graph above of the L1, the E1B may maintain 80 lumens for 1.3 hours, but then drop below 80 lumens and continue to run for another hour, or whatever, dimming the whole time.

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I don't have an LD01 runtime graph, but the L0D on lithium graph looks similar to that for the E1B.

The 94 lumens high mode on my LD20 does seem significantly brighter (more than just 14 lumens anyway) than the LD01 on 80 lumens, even when taking the tighter beam into account, but I have no measurements to back this up.

I have three E1B's(should say had before mods) and they are so damn green they dont look as bright as they should, just my opinion. My ld01 looks pretty damn bright but the E1B is still a little brighter, if it was actually white or even blue tint it would be alot more useful too, this green tint just sucks. First the Surefires were just not very bright for the money and now they got the tints screwed up? I dont have another single light that is as green as these E1B's....

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I feel your pain! I got one of those awful green E1B's a while back, it's hard to describe how bad it looks. I tossed it in a drawer for a while, buying other lights, trying to ease my suffering.

Fortunately, a wise contributor on another thread pointed out that the Nightcore Extreme was parts compatible with the E1B. I put the head of the NEX on the E1B body and it is great. I still have the green E1B head, I'll try to mod it with another emitter when time permits.

Surefire is good about lumens in their specs but they continue to vastly exaggerate, uh, I mean they use different methods to measure, runtimes.

For the latest example, check out Sean's great T1A review below. SF implies that the light will run four hours on the highest setting, Sean finds that it runs less than two before dropping below 50%:

https://www.candlepowerforums.com/posts/2939531&postcount=1

Vox Clamatis in Deserto said:

Sean finds that it runs less than two before dropping below 50%:

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You just made me realize that I never put the exact time the light reached 50% I fixed that now. I didn't think there was even a remote chance of getting to 4 hours but I had to see. All the other Surefire single cell lights last about the same amount of time (~90 minutes).

Back to the original poster's question. It has already been stated but Surefire LED lights put out more than they claim and Fenix normally put out less. Here is an example of two lights I have personally owned:

Fenix T1:
Fenix claims 225 lumens high, 60 lumens low.
My tests show: 170ish lumens high and 47 lumens low.

Surefire E2DL:
Surefire claims 120 lumens high, 3 lumens low.
My tests show: 160ish lumens high, 9 lumens low.

I've had two Fenix T1's and they are both very close (within a few lumens) to each other. Others have tested their T1's and E2DL's and found they are both a little brigher. Which points out something we already knew, LEDs vary. The Fenix T1 on low does outrun the E2L KX2A head by a few hours. So Fenix does manage to squeeze more juice out of a battery than Surefire does.

As always, your results may vary.

Sean said:

and Fenix normally put out less. Here is an example of two lights I have personally owned:

Fenix T1:
Fenix claims 225 lumens high, 60 lumens low.
My tests show: 170ish lumens high and 47 lumens low.

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Really??

REAL IS testing shows the T1 to be right at it's claim. The PD30 and P3D have been correlated to the T1, and they too are right at their advertised values.

come on with that all SF-lumens and Fenix-Lumens measurement aside, for the price isnt it expected for E1B to performed better than LD01? I dont mind Fenix overated their light a bit well they are cheaper and we got what we pay for.