LED Advice

Hi all

I supermarket next to my house selling like 8 pieces of an unknown LED light that is not of any brand i have seen before and the thing that caught my attention is that it has an aspheric lens with adjustable zoom and it uses 3 AAAs but no lumens rating mentioned and I can't test it out,

oh and its priced at like 12$ only,

its made of Anodized aluminum according to what they have written, is it worth getting it and maybe modding it ??

[EDIT] I can get a photo if it helps

This is pretty standard stuff. If you go to ebay and lookup zoomable cree led you will find TONS and tons of them.

They usually use a XR-E emitter, usually a P4 or maybe Q3 if you are lucky. (R2 is the latest bin of XR-E).

They have a cheap aspeheric lens which is pretty ringy when in throw mode.


That said, they are really useful lights. I use mine all the time because in flood mode, it has NO hotspot which makes it better as a work light for me. It is also really impressive in full throw mode too.

Expect about 100 lumens out of it. Most zoomables are black painted on the sides, instead of mirror finish so they lose alot of lumens in throw mode.



However, it really is feast or famine in the world of zoomables. You can buy TONS and tons of cheap ones like this, but its extremely hard to find a good quality one without paying a fortune.
Wolf Eyes has several good ones that are hard to find, and Led Lensor has quite a few flood to throw for a fairly high price point.

Best bet is likely to go to shiningbeam and buy a Romisen flood to throw that uses an XR-E R2 bin for max throw, or an XP-G R5 if you want maximum floody lumens. For 20-25 bucks, you get decent quality and a pretty good emitter.

I'd recommend the following: http://www.shiningbeam.com/servlet/the-162/Romisen-RC-dsh-C6-II-R2/Detail
It uses an XR-E R2 and a CR123 battery. You can "overdrive" it about 40% with an RCR123 battery for extra brightness. It is unlikely that they drive the XR-E to its max, so the extra boost shouldn't hurt the LED as long as you don't leave it on long enuf for the heat to build up.

Woah...massive triplepost!

notext

hehe man I got it the first time around

but really thanks for the advice