AlecGold
Enlightened
Last year, when I heard that Lupine was designing and testing a handheld flashlight, I was seriously interested.
I'm not paid by Lupine, I always had to pay (a lot) for their products, but time and again I found it money well spend. And if I wanted to upgrade, the resale value of these lights might not be into the regions of Tom Mayo or Rolex, but it certainly isn't as bad as a new car.
A long time ago I started using one of their Babylu lights. It was really something special and I used it with great pleasure. That was at a time when Surefire was making the big dog, the M6, 500 lumens, waterproof, big strong fella. But the Babylu wasn't cheesy either, 300 lumens was as much as 5 Surefire 6P's. And it had a big advantage over the M6: it was rechargeable! Then was a time when I needed to go to a photo store to buy CR123's with a price of 8 Euro's each (ouch), so the M6 wasn't a useable option for me.
After the Babylu came an Edison and the latest was a Wilma. All these lights were totally different: halogen, arc and LED. But all of them shared the same basic design, same principle of operation and the same unbelievable build quality. I'm not sure how to put it, but I often think the build quality of the Lupine lights might be a tiny bit better than that of Surefire. But both are in such high quality that it is difficult to find flaws. And it is hard to compare them as they come from different worlds: Surefires are tactical lights and Lupines are bike lights.
Before I get sucked in a discussion about this, let me say that I've always liked Surefire a lot and I admire their ethos, since I bought my first 6P (the one with Laser Products on the back ring) they always stayed true to the principle of building sound tactical lights of the highest quality they can achieve.
So, now a flashlight from Lupine is a bit like Surefire making a headlamp. You know it will be build magnificent but will it really work? Will it all come together and be more than the sum of the parts? Let's take a look at the parts first.
Unwrapping the box, you open a second cardboard black box. Inside it is another box, but this is a boxy kind of bag and is made of Cordura and has semi-rigid outside and foam padding inside. Packaging isn't everything, but this kind of packaging is really nice and useful for storing and protecting your light. Inside are dividers with Velcro that you can change around. Also inside is your new light. The head, two Li-ion batteries, a charger, adapter and some manuals. There also was a note stating that the holster would be delivered (free of charge) when it came available.
First things first, the head. It's made from aluminium, shot peened and very thick black anodizing. This gives it a smooth/rough surface that is pretty grippy without knurling. The reflector has a bit odd pattern, it's a hexagonal surfaced reflector that I hadn't seen before (I know they used it before on the Tesla Headlamp). It's a rather wide reflector: the business end is 50mm (2") wide on the outside. The battery side of the head is 39mm wide (about 1,5"). There is a led inside, I think it is a SST-90 led, but I haven't found anywhere the specifics. Lupine states on their site that they buy the Leds and sort them out into specific bins and use what ever they like best.
Then there is the switch. It's not a tactical light, it doesn't have a tactical switch on the back, it has their propriety PVS-switch just behind the head. To make it easier to locate, they made the opposite side behind the head flat. It works. You are meant to use it with your thumb, but if it happens to get at your index finger, it still works great. Just above the rubber sealed switch, there are some leds. Blue, green, yellow and red. They serve all kinds of functions and I know most of them from the headlamps I've used. These LEDs are simple in function, but they can tell you a lot. On of the useful features is how much power there is in the battery. It goes like this: if you put the battery on, there is first some self testing. Then the blue led will start blinking. Each blip gives 1V in the battery. After the blue ones, the green start blinking for 0,1 Volt. So if you have a partial depleted battery you will get 6 green blips, and then 3 blue and you know you still have 6,3V out of 7,2V. It doesn't tell everything, but it gives you a good idea how much juice is left in your battery. There is also a function to switch off these leds, (stealth mode) but I find them handy. There are more functions displayed by these leds, but I won't repeat the whole manual. It works, surprisingly easily, but you better not be a complete digital clumsy person. I tested in on my wife who isn't very handy with these things and most of all not very interested. She got the idea within a few minutes, played around with it and ended with the remark: "Well, it makes light. Sometimes a lot, and if it blinks again like that in my face it is going to die". That last remark is for the strobe function it has. There is a 12,5Hz disorienting flash on it. She activated that, while looking into it. I tried it later on myself and it isn't funny to get 1200 lumen flashes. It does disorient, but I wouldn't use it against a guy holding a gun/knife. It tends to annoy the hell out of my co-workers . But I guess it is really, really good at getting attention when in dire need.
The two batteries that come with the head are made in the same materials & quality on the outside. It has a PCB on the connecting part with some gold plated parts. On the outside is a short list of functions, on the bottom it says: Lupine Tesla, Made in Germany. Not much special.
Inside are some very high quality batteries; they give 7.2V nominal and 2.5A. When hot after charging them they give around 8,3V but that is normal for Li-ions
Then there is the charger. This is something nice. On high, the batteries last about 60 minutes. (not tested them myself yet, but Lupine has been modest in the past about their performances). The Charger One is their top of the line model and can charge the battery in 1,5 hours. This means you can always have continual light as long as you have power in an outlet and don't use it all the time on high. When you use 4 Watt of light, you get 4,5 hours of light. And believe me when I say that 4 Watt of light is too much for most close up and enough for walking and riding a bike at normal speeds. You can also charge in the car, but I'm not sure if the outlet in the car has enough power to charge that fast.
The charger is housed in a nice aluminium house, CNC made like the flashlight parts, same shot peen treatment with the same anodizing. There is one button and a two lines display that gives a cool blue light. The charger is highly sophisticated, able to charge Li-ions, Ni-MH and Ni-Cd. You can also discharge the Ni-Cd's. It tells you how much mAh it did charge yet and all kind of other stuff if you want that. But the most important thing is: you plug it in and it will charge your battery perfect right out of the box.
And, this is the beauty of the Lupine systems: my (?) 10 years old battery from the Babylu works also on the Charger One. And if I buy a new battery for my Babylu, I get a new, highly sophisticated Li-ion. But it still works on the 10 years old Babylu. Now how's that for long term compatibility?
Then there is the holster, it didn't came with the light yet, but they send it free of charge a week orso later. You can wear it on your belt, and the size of the belt doesn't matter it has a kind of PALS webbing on the back, making it pretty adaptable. The holster fits the light nicely. Closing is done with a magnetic button that easily latches on and opening is only while drawing the flap up (no noisy Velcro here). The whole is made from nice genuine leather with a smooth surface. It's a nice extra which makes the non-pocket size of the flashlight (although cargo pockets shouldn't have any problem) a bit less of an issue.
All in all if you hold the light, but also the charger, it all oozes quality. No corners cut here, no cheap feeling plastic rings or cheap clickies. Even the adapter that comes with the charger is apparently a higher quality, more efficient one.
But now where it get's important. How does it work.
I tried it on against an G2L, and M6 HOLA and the H7 lamps of my car.
The G2L is nowhere to be found.
The M6 HOLA with a fresh bulb and a fresh batteries has a very different beam pattern, so you can clearly see it inside the hotspot of the Tesla. E.g. if I light up a tree with the Tesla about 100meters away, I light up the whole of the tree. The M6 lights up part of the crown. I would say about ¼ of what the Tesla lights up. And the light from the M6 is much more yellow. So if you want a pure search light, the M6 is still pretty good. But the Tesla is so much more useful for all applications. From walking a dog to searching a field. That might seem like a contradiction, but if you want to light out a single item or really long distances, the M6 is your friend. But if you want to look at what is happening at a field, the Tesla gives you a much more natural viewing angle. You don't have to hunt through the field, with a rather small beam.
If you are walking the dog, the Tesla lights up the path in front of your feet, but also 20m away. And that is on the lowest setting, 10%. It also lights it evenly so that you can just hold the light and let your eyes see. Doing the same with a M6 is much more tiring because you have to wave the light up and down, combine with the fact that the M6 at close it is much, much to bright.
And another thing I noticed is that the Tesla's button on the side is much easier to use. Almost all my flashlights (Fenix, Surefire, McGizmo) have tactical buttons at the end. This almost always forces you to push it with the thumb while holding the light almost at face height, or you need to clamp it between two fingers and push with the thumb. Now you hand just hangs down, you can still push it with the thumb but you don't have to keep your hand up. When walking that same old dog again, it's much less tiring to keep your hand down and hold the light than to have your arm at eye level or keep it protruding forward when doing a cigar-grip.
So up until now I have always felt that the Surefire M6 was more useful than any high powered multi led light when it came to searching/long distances. The tungsten gives around 3500K light IIRC and leds usually give around 6500K. The difference? With the yellowish light of tungsten you can see more differences in colours. And the colours look more natural to our eyes. The 6500K is much more blueish light, less contrast and easier to blind you. So even several 700 or 900 lumens led-lights didn't make me put the M6 away. They might have been 900 lumens in an integrated sphere, but when using the 500 lumens of the M6 was worth more to me.
However, the spread of the beam of the Tesla is really useful. And the colour is less blueish, but also not some awful yellow like some earlier leds. It's a bit like my McGizmo Sundrop, which has a much better colour rendering than any other led I know off.
The better colour, better spread of the light and coupled with an enormous output of 1200 lumens, makes the Tesla outperform the M6.
And then there are multiple levels of light, which makes it much more efficient to use, coupled with two rechargeable batteries.
But, I have to say, if my boss was paying CR123's and I was working in a swat team, I would still take the M6. For tactical use it is much better.
For EDCing, I now have the Tesla in my bag. I use it daily for lighting up dark attics, power outs, pester annoying kids in the street, when camping for two weeks in Scotland etc. It's not the only light, I also have a McGizmo Haiku and a UV Sundrop with me. But the combination of the Haiku and a Tesla is pretty much perfect. Haiku for all the smaller jobs and the Tesla for the big jobs often outside.
So, this is one sturdy build light, it's not overly heavy, well dimensioned, it uses propriety Li-ions batteries, has a superb charger and it does what it was designed for: give light and a whole lot of it and in a useful EDC manner. On paper it looks good and in real life it worked for me even better. Walking the dog, checking oil in the dark, training with S&R it can look good distances and wide over water and meadows and when inside, you light up a room completely with a simple ceiling bounce.
There are just two drawbacks that I could find. First is the lowest setting. The lowest that it goes is 10% and that is way to much light for reading a map or book, writing some notes when you're in your tent/shelter etc. I guess it is around 100 lumens orso and for reading and writing 10 lumens is a bit much, so 100 lumens is completely blinding. If not for me, than for my wife sleeping next to me when I'm reading my book/planning the next day.
The second thing I regret is not really a flaw. It's just that I can't find any 50mm/2" red filters that fit the head. I like to use red filters when reading a map/walking outdoors to preserve my night vision. Certainly in combination with the 100lumens you don't see an inch in front of you without using the light after you have consulted a map.
These are IMHO minor points and I would like to conclude that for a SWAT team, police officers in rural areas and the likes, I guess there is nothing like a M6.
But for most people the Tesla 1200 "Taschenleuchte" could be very well a new holy grail.
I'm not paid by Lupine, I always had to pay (a lot) for their products, but time and again I found it money well spend. And if I wanted to upgrade, the resale value of these lights might not be into the regions of Tom Mayo or Rolex, but it certainly isn't as bad as a new car.
A long time ago I started using one of their Babylu lights. It was really something special and I used it with great pleasure. That was at a time when Surefire was making the big dog, the M6, 500 lumens, waterproof, big strong fella. But the Babylu wasn't cheesy either, 300 lumens was as much as 5 Surefire 6P's. And it had a big advantage over the M6: it was rechargeable! Then was a time when I needed to go to a photo store to buy CR123's with a price of 8 Euro's each (ouch), so the M6 wasn't a useable option for me.
After the Babylu came an Edison and the latest was a Wilma. All these lights were totally different: halogen, arc and LED. But all of them shared the same basic design, same principle of operation and the same unbelievable build quality. I'm not sure how to put it, but I often think the build quality of the Lupine lights might be a tiny bit better than that of Surefire. But both are in such high quality that it is difficult to find flaws. And it is hard to compare them as they come from different worlds: Surefires are tactical lights and Lupines are bike lights.
Before I get sucked in a discussion about this, let me say that I've always liked Surefire a lot and I admire their ethos, since I bought my first 6P (the one with Laser Products on the back ring) they always stayed true to the principle of building sound tactical lights of the highest quality they can achieve.
So, now a flashlight from Lupine is a bit like Surefire making a headlamp. You know it will be build magnificent but will it really work? Will it all come together and be more than the sum of the parts? Let's take a look at the parts first.
Unwrapping the box, you open a second cardboard black box. Inside it is another box, but this is a boxy kind of bag and is made of Cordura and has semi-rigid outside and foam padding inside. Packaging isn't everything, but this kind of packaging is really nice and useful for storing and protecting your light. Inside are dividers with Velcro that you can change around. Also inside is your new light. The head, two Li-ion batteries, a charger, adapter and some manuals. There also was a note stating that the holster would be delivered (free of charge) when it came available.
First things first, the head. It's made from aluminium, shot peened and very thick black anodizing. This gives it a smooth/rough surface that is pretty grippy without knurling. The reflector has a bit odd pattern, it's a hexagonal surfaced reflector that I hadn't seen before (I know they used it before on the Tesla Headlamp). It's a rather wide reflector: the business end is 50mm (2") wide on the outside. The battery side of the head is 39mm wide (about 1,5"). There is a led inside, I think it is a SST-90 led, but I haven't found anywhere the specifics. Lupine states on their site that they buy the Leds and sort them out into specific bins and use what ever they like best.
Then there is the switch. It's not a tactical light, it doesn't have a tactical switch on the back, it has their propriety PVS-switch just behind the head. To make it easier to locate, they made the opposite side behind the head flat. It works. You are meant to use it with your thumb, but if it happens to get at your index finger, it still works great. Just above the rubber sealed switch, there are some leds. Blue, green, yellow and red. They serve all kinds of functions and I know most of them from the headlamps I've used. These LEDs are simple in function, but they can tell you a lot. On of the useful features is how much power there is in the battery. It goes like this: if you put the battery on, there is first some self testing. Then the blue led will start blinking. Each blip gives 1V in the battery. After the blue ones, the green start blinking for 0,1 Volt. So if you have a partial depleted battery you will get 6 green blips, and then 3 blue and you know you still have 6,3V out of 7,2V. It doesn't tell everything, but it gives you a good idea how much juice is left in your battery. There is also a function to switch off these leds, (stealth mode) but I find them handy. There are more functions displayed by these leds, but I won't repeat the whole manual. It works, surprisingly easily, but you better not be a complete digital clumsy person. I tested in on my wife who isn't very handy with these things and most of all not very interested. She got the idea within a few minutes, played around with it and ended with the remark: "Well, it makes light. Sometimes a lot, and if it blinks again like that in my face it is going to die". That last remark is for the strobe function it has. There is a 12,5Hz disorienting flash on it. She activated that, while looking into it. I tried it later on myself and it isn't funny to get 1200 lumen flashes. It does disorient, but I wouldn't use it against a guy holding a gun/knife. It tends to annoy the hell out of my co-workers . But I guess it is really, really good at getting attention when in dire need.
The two batteries that come with the head are made in the same materials & quality on the outside. It has a PCB on the connecting part with some gold plated parts. On the outside is a short list of functions, on the bottom it says: Lupine Tesla, Made in Germany. Not much special.
Inside are some very high quality batteries; they give 7.2V nominal and 2.5A. When hot after charging them they give around 8,3V but that is normal for Li-ions
Then there is the charger. This is something nice. On high, the batteries last about 60 minutes. (not tested them myself yet, but Lupine has been modest in the past about their performances). The Charger One is their top of the line model and can charge the battery in 1,5 hours. This means you can always have continual light as long as you have power in an outlet and don't use it all the time on high. When you use 4 Watt of light, you get 4,5 hours of light. And believe me when I say that 4 Watt of light is too much for most close up and enough for walking and riding a bike at normal speeds. You can also charge in the car, but I'm not sure if the outlet in the car has enough power to charge that fast.
The charger is housed in a nice aluminium house, CNC made like the flashlight parts, same shot peen treatment with the same anodizing. There is one button and a two lines display that gives a cool blue light. The charger is highly sophisticated, able to charge Li-ions, Ni-MH and Ni-Cd. You can also discharge the Ni-Cd's. It tells you how much mAh it did charge yet and all kind of other stuff if you want that. But the most important thing is: you plug it in and it will charge your battery perfect right out of the box.
And, this is the beauty of the Lupine systems: my (?) 10 years old battery from the Babylu works also on the Charger One. And if I buy a new battery for my Babylu, I get a new, highly sophisticated Li-ion. But it still works on the 10 years old Babylu. Now how's that for long term compatibility?
Then there is the holster, it didn't came with the light yet, but they send it free of charge a week orso later. You can wear it on your belt, and the size of the belt doesn't matter it has a kind of PALS webbing on the back, making it pretty adaptable. The holster fits the light nicely. Closing is done with a magnetic button that easily latches on and opening is only while drawing the flap up (no noisy Velcro here). The whole is made from nice genuine leather with a smooth surface. It's a nice extra which makes the non-pocket size of the flashlight (although cargo pockets shouldn't have any problem) a bit less of an issue.
All in all if you hold the light, but also the charger, it all oozes quality. No corners cut here, no cheap feeling plastic rings or cheap clickies. Even the adapter that comes with the charger is apparently a higher quality, more efficient one.
But now where it get's important. How does it work.
I tried it on against an G2L, and M6 HOLA and the H7 lamps of my car.
The G2L is nowhere to be found.
The M6 HOLA with a fresh bulb and a fresh batteries has a very different beam pattern, so you can clearly see it inside the hotspot of the Tesla. E.g. if I light up a tree with the Tesla about 100meters away, I light up the whole of the tree. The M6 lights up part of the crown. I would say about ¼ of what the Tesla lights up. And the light from the M6 is much more yellow. So if you want a pure search light, the M6 is still pretty good. But the Tesla is so much more useful for all applications. From walking a dog to searching a field. That might seem like a contradiction, but if you want to light out a single item or really long distances, the M6 is your friend. But if you want to look at what is happening at a field, the Tesla gives you a much more natural viewing angle. You don't have to hunt through the field, with a rather small beam.
If you are walking the dog, the Tesla lights up the path in front of your feet, but also 20m away. And that is on the lowest setting, 10%. It also lights it evenly so that you can just hold the light and let your eyes see. Doing the same with a M6 is much more tiring because you have to wave the light up and down, combine with the fact that the M6 at close it is much, much to bright.
And another thing I noticed is that the Tesla's button on the side is much easier to use. Almost all my flashlights (Fenix, Surefire, McGizmo) have tactical buttons at the end. This almost always forces you to push it with the thumb while holding the light almost at face height, or you need to clamp it between two fingers and push with the thumb. Now you hand just hangs down, you can still push it with the thumb but you don't have to keep your hand up. When walking that same old dog again, it's much less tiring to keep your hand down and hold the light than to have your arm at eye level or keep it protruding forward when doing a cigar-grip.
So up until now I have always felt that the Surefire M6 was more useful than any high powered multi led light when it came to searching/long distances. The tungsten gives around 3500K light IIRC and leds usually give around 6500K. The difference? With the yellowish light of tungsten you can see more differences in colours. And the colours look more natural to our eyes. The 6500K is much more blueish light, less contrast and easier to blind you. So even several 700 or 900 lumens led-lights didn't make me put the M6 away. They might have been 900 lumens in an integrated sphere, but when using the 500 lumens of the M6 was worth more to me.
However, the spread of the beam of the Tesla is really useful. And the colour is less blueish, but also not some awful yellow like some earlier leds. It's a bit like my McGizmo Sundrop, which has a much better colour rendering than any other led I know off.
The better colour, better spread of the light and coupled with an enormous output of 1200 lumens, makes the Tesla outperform the M6.
And then there are multiple levels of light, which makes it much more efficient to use, coupled with two rechargeable batteries.
But, I have to say, if my boss was paying CR123's and I was working in a swat team, I would still take the M6. For tactical use it is much better.
For EDCing, I now have the Tesla in my bag. I use it daily for lighting up dark attics, power outs, pester annoying kids in the street, when camping for two weeks in Scotland etc. It's not the only light, I also have a McGizmo Haiku and a UV Sundrop with me. But the combination of the Haiku and a Tesla is pretty much perfect. Haiku for all the smaller jobs and the Tesla for the big jobs often outside.
So, this is one sturdy build light, it's not overly heavy, well dimensioned, it uses propriety Li-ions batteries, has a superb charger and it does what it was designed for: give light and a whole lot of it and in a useful EDC manner. On paper it looks good and in real life it worked for me even better. Walking the dog, checking oil in the dark, training with S&R it can look good distances and wide over water and meadows and when inside, you light up a room completely with a simple ceiling bounce.
There are just two drawbacks that I could find. First is the lowest setting. The lowest that it goes is 10% and that is way to much light for reading a map or book, writing some notes when you're in your tent/shelter etc. I guess it is around 100 lumens orso and for reading and writing 10 lumens is a bit much, so 100 lumens is completely blinding. If not for me, than for my wife sleeping next to me when I'm reading my book/planning the next day.
The second thing I regret is not really a flaw. It's just that I can't find any 50mm/2" red filters that fit the head. I like to use red filters when reading a map/walking outdoors to preserve my night vision. Certainly in combination with the 100lumens you don't see an inch in front of you without using the light after you have consulted a map.
These are IMHO minor points and I would like to conclude that for a SWAT team, police officers in rural areas and the likes, I guess there is nothing like a M6.
But for most people the Tesla 1200 "Taschenleuchte" could be very well a new holy grail.