Xenon bulbs (Rayovac, Mag, and Radioshack)

Some experimentation. Draw your own conclusions.

Garrity 2D G-Tech. Had a decently bright and nice enough beam KPR102 in it. I had grabbed 4 Rayovac XPR102s marked "HPX21" at Walmart.

Tried all three in the Garrity. None would focus as tight as the KPR even though I really worked with one. Thus I cant say whether they are as bright as KPRs in that same light. Oh, and a Mag Xenon Star 2D in this light makes an almost unusable TIGHT beam!

Coleman 2D Large Head Camping light. With a KPR it is decent. With a Mag Xenon Star it is tight and bright! With a Rayovac XPR102 it would not make a very nice or tight beam.

Coleman 3D. With a KPR103 nice and bright. With a Radioshack XPR103 not as tight or bright. With a Mag Xenon Star 3Cell A VERY BRIGHT nice and tight beam.

Garrity/Ozark Trail 2D (with 3 Cs in it) nicely shaped beam, never as bright as I think it should be. With any of the Rayovacs, not as nice. With the Xenon Star 3Cell it would be perfect with some tweaking.

I guess what I have learned is any Xenon PR bulb besides a Mag is not worth it. For everything else Krypton or Halogen.

Hope this helps somebody!

If only you had a dig cam to provide enLIGHTenment for us.

I'm sure it will help someone considering a "which xenon bulb to buy" type question.

Oh but I DO own a digital camera. A Sony as I remember. My buddy with two kids and a 'life' has it 99.9% of the time.

And then when I do actually get it to take pics with, I will need someone to email them to and who can post pics here.

PJS, you might want to take a look at this thread on how to post pictures via
the Imagestation account member #911 (Bart) created for us CPF'ers.

Hope this helps.

Greetings,
Velcro

Just to satisfy my curiosity.....

Are there any markings on the Mag Xenon Star bulbs? For example - bulb number, voltage or current ratings?

Discovered same myself ... Mag bulbs seem to be higher quality, more consistent

The Xenon Stars I have seen just say 2 or 3 Cell on them.

WayneM:

It's been my experience that Mag relatively unhelpfully merely indicates how many cells their bulbs are designed for. I doubt if their Xenon stars are any different.

You should be able to figure it out, by takeing the capacity of the cell(s) and looking at the runtime, it would be a rough figure at best but better than nothing.

Playboy - Thanks for doing the tests! Were you using alkaline or nimh batteries? Do you think the xenon's might be ok w/ nimh?

For the time being I am an Alkaline kind of guy.

I do have 4 Nimhs driving a KPR103, and two driving a KPR104 (2AA).

I don't believe I'll ever do anything to find out what a Xenon can take!

So to answer your question, I don't know about Xenons and Nimhs. But all my testing is with fresh alkys as done above.