I have the Preon II. Some impressions:
The light looks very snazzy. Fairly thin, especially the main body part. The head flares out a bit to accomodate the electronics and the reflector, and adds to the style of the light.
Watch out for the clip! As others have warned, don't breech load (load from the back) your batteries - take off the head, that way you won't scratch the body with the rough edge of the clip (which is stainless steel, btw, not Ti). And you can make sure the tail is screwed on tight so that the clip won't scoot around and scratch the finish, by putting a piece of paper under the clip and torquing the tail down tight. Load your batteries from the head.
The brightness, on my 2AAA version, on low does seem to be around 2.x lumens as advertised. Definitely nowhere near as low as the stock lowest low on my old HDS SSC mod, but low enough. High is really bright, and I also don't doubt the 160 lumen figure. It gets warm after a few minutes, and hot after ~10, so doesn't seem to have any issues with heatsinking. Medium is just about bright enough for walking along semi-lit streets (took it for a walk yesterday).
The beam is flawless. The hotspot is fairly wide, is defined but with a nicely soft edge, and takes up about 1/5 of the overall total beam diameter. The spillbeam has a nice soft but defined edge too, and there are no artifacts whatsoever. Nice work on the beam focusing and the reflector! My emitter is perfectly centered. The color was a very neutral white. A hit of warmth indoors, in incan room lighting and outdoors amidst sodium streetlamps, coolish. No green or pink here.
The UI - well, personally I don't like the UI, as I would have MUCH preferred a memory mode. Yes, I knew the UI would be like this before I bought it. But, just reporting on the how the UI performed during my out and about test yesterday. I would use the light on medium, then jump to high to check out something in an empty alley I was passing, and then turn it off when an area was well lit enough - and then of course upon turning it on again, it would come on in low. Sure, you could muscle-memory the click-tap-tap needed to go to high, but why would you want to do that if you could have just clicked to go back to the last level you used? Hopefully this is a design choice David would be open to incorporating into future Preons. (Same holds for strobe - I could see myself using strobe in a situation - directing traffic, getting someone's attention at a large event, and wanting it to be readily available with one click for a period of time).
There is one problem, and I'm not sure if it's just with my light (poor QA) or all of them (poor design), but the clicky does not seem to work well. The ti clicky sticks a good percentage of the time. David advocated the 'click in the middle, light press to the edge' usage of the clicky, so I tried that out. But the edges of the bottom of the clicky (inside the body) seem to be rough, so that it grinds as it clicks/taps down, unless your finger is perfectly centered and plunging the clicky straight down. Even a slightly off-center click will make it grind, and sometimes stick altogether. Once I put clipped the Preon to my pocket after using it, and when I got it out, I couldn't click it at all - the clicky had jammed to the point where it felt like one solid piece and wouldn't budge. This was weird because I had been using the clicky fine in the use just previous, so either my last 'off' click was poorly done, or it got pushed about while clipped to my pocket - but either way, I wasn't abusing the light and it was disconcerting for me that I wouldn't have had light if I really needed it right after unclipping it from my pocket.
I tried to click the clicky many many times in succession to 'break in' the clicky, and also tried turning the clicky in place as well, to help wear down any burrs or anything. But it hasn't helped so far, and nor do I think I should have to do this with a new light!
There is also a high-pitched whine on low and medium, which is more noticeable on medium.
Conclusion: I like the light overall. It has a great satin finish (which though picks up scratches easily, that's just Ti for you though), good output (though a lower low would have been nice), great form factor, and it's made in Ti. For the price of $60 it's a decent backup light. I don't know if I'd trust it to be my main and only light, due to the issue with the clicky mentioned above. But it'd be a great dress light and non-main duty light. For some reason, something about the penlight form factor really appeals to me.
Btw, the threads are gritty and tight, so I don't know if I'd like this as a twisty - so if you got the Preon Ti in 1AAA, I would definitely spring for a clicky.
Other Preon Ti owners: what are your thoughts?
The light looks very snazzy. Fairly thin, especially the main body part. The head flares out a bit to accomodate the electronics and the reflector, and adds to the style of the light.
Watch out for the clip! As others have warned, don't breech load (load from the back) your batteries - take off the head, that way you won't scratch the body with the rough edge of the clip (which is stainless steel, btw, not Ti). And you can make sure the tail is screwed on tight so that the clip won't scoot around and scratch the finish, by putting a piece of paper under the clip and torquing the tail down tight. Load your batteries from the head.
The brightness, on my 2AAA version, on low does seem to be around 2.x lumens as advertised. Definitely nowhere near as low as the stock lowest low on my old HDS SSC mod, but low enough. High is really bright, and I also don't doubt the 160 lumen figure. It gets warm after a few minutes, and hot after ~10, so doesn't seem to have any issues with heatsinking. Medium is just about bright enough for walking along semi-lit streets (took it for a walk yesterday).
The beam is flawless. The hotspot is fairly wide, is defined but with a nicely soft edge, and takes up about 1/5 of the overall total beam diameter. The spillbeam has a nice soft but defined edge too, and there are no artifacts whatsoever. Nice work on the beam focusing and the reflector! My emitter is perfectly centered. The color was a very neutral white. A hit of warmth indoors, in incan room lighting and outdoors amidst sodium streetlamps, coolish. No green or pink here.
The UI - well, personally I don't like the UI, as I would have MUCH preferred a memory mode. Yes, I knew the UI would be like this before I bought it. But, just reporting on the how the UI performed during my out and about test yesterday. I would use the light on medium, then jump to high to check out something in an empty alley I was passing, and then turn it off when an area was well lit enough - and then of course upon turning it on again, it would come on in low. Sure, you could muscle-memory the click-tap-tap needed to go to high, but why would you want to do that if you could have just clicked to go back to the last level you used? Hopefully this is a design choice David would be open to incorporating into future Preons. (Same holds for strobe - I could see myself using strobe in a situation - directing traffic, getting someone's attention at a large event, and wanting it to be readily available with one click for a period of time).
There is one problem, and I'm not sure if it's just with my light (poor QA) or all of them (poor design), but the clicky does not seem to work well. The ti clicky sticks a good percentage of the time. David advocated the 'click in the middle, light press to the edge' usage of the clicky, so I tried that out. But the edges of the bottom of the clicky (inside the body) seem to be rough, so that it grinds as it clicks/taps down, unless your finger is perfectly centered and plunging the clicky straight down. Even a slightly off-center click will make it grind, and sometimes stick altogether. Once I put clipped the Preon to my pocket after using it, and when I got it out, I couldn't click it at all - the clicky had jammed to the point where it felt like one solid piece and wouldn't budge. This was weird because I had been using the clicky fine in the use just previous, so either my last 'off' click was poorly done, or it got pushed about while clipped to my pocket - but either way, I wasn't abusing the light and it was disconcerting for me that I wouldn't have had light if I really needed it right after unclipping it from my pocket.
I tried to click the clicky many many times in succession to 'break in' the clicky, and also tried turning the clicky in place as well, to help wear down any burrs or anything. But it hasn't helped so far, and nor do I think I should have to do this with a new light!
There is also a high-pitched whine on low and medium, which is more noticeable on medium.
Conclusion: I like the light overall. It has a great satin finish (which though picks up scratches easily, that's just Ti for you though), good output (though a lower low would have been nice), great form factor, and it's made in Ti. For the price of $60 it's a decent backup light. I don't know if I'd trust it to be my main and only light, due to the issue with the clicky mentioned above. But it'd be a great dress light and non-main duty light. For some reason, something about the penlight form factor really appeals to me.
Btw, the threads are gritty and tight, so I don't know if I'd like this as a twisty - so if you got the Preon Ti in 1AAA, I would definitely spring for a clicky.
Other Preon Ti owners: what are your thoughts?
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