how's everybody's experience with the blackshadow terminator?

so i'm just curious about how whoever's got them finds them. i got mine, a U2 version beginning this month and although i was just as pleased with the appearance and construction of the unit as those who've written reviews, i can't say the same for the output, which fared worse than my apex and SRK, even though the reflectors made it a better thrower. i just ordered myself a U3 that's selling at discounted prices now mere weeks after i had to be coaxed into buying the U2 for $105 but i'm not sure if i'll be getting much better out of it. i feel that i might have just gotten a lemon with the U2 but i dunno. How's everybody's experience with their terminator?

I picked up a U2 version as well a couple of weeks ago. Couldn't pass up on the price, $95.00. I haven't put it through its paces yet. Just played with it in the back yard. Seems pretty bright to me. I don't know about 3500 lumens bright, but good enough for me.

I really like my T6 NW version. Awesome output, beautiful neutral white tint (~5000K). My only "problem" is the visible pwm flickering in low and medium mode. My most used flashlight at now, the Terminator T6 NW and Jetbeam DDR30 (3*XM-L U3). Very good price value for money

nice shot of your flashlight there $95... hmm lol there's a U3 for 105 now and someone's measured around 3000 lumens sustained on his unit. i sure hope i get that one unit that performs as it should. although i suppose you can't expect everything from a budget flashlight.. has anybody noticed the reversed off/on indicators on the battery tube anw? haha mine's got it, although i'm not complaining about that.

My experience hasn't been too bad at all. I thought i would be pretty frustrated with the PWM, but so far for me its been a non issue. If i remember correctly, mine's the U2, but it's darn bright. It doesn't out throw my Olight M3X, but it has more output overall.

Sent from my cm_tenderloin using Tapatalk 4 Beta

i can't see the PWM myself, only with the camera so it's not a problem in my case. 2000 lumens is never not pleasing enough haha until you get the likes of the TM26 fitting in your hand.

The PWM on mine doesn't usually bother me, and the output is definitely not disappointing. I suppose it's possible you ended up with a lemon somehow, I don't think BlackShadow has been around long enough for us to have a good idea on their quality control levels. What kind of batteries are you using? I don't know if that would make much difference...

hey bigmac, did you manage to obtain a figure for your lumen output? apparently they've been around since Nov 2011, but i wouldn't know too, having myself gotten into multiple LED lights only last may. wasn't a favorable first impression with that since the threads were scrapping pretty badly against the other.
i'm using 3000mAh IMRs. made in japan apparently, and i bought it locally for about 15 a piece. IMRs should be doing well at the amp draw bit though.

R10500 said:

hey bigmac, did you manage to obtain a figure for your lumen output? apparently they've been around since Nov 2011, but i wouldn't know too, having myself gotten into multiple LED lights only last may. wasn't a favorable first impression with that since the threads were scrapping pretty badly against the other.
i'm using 3000mAh IMRs. made in japan apparently, and i bought it locally for about 15 a piece. IMRs should be doing well at the amp draw bit though.

Click to expand...

Unfortunately I haven't gotten my lightbox calibrated for lumens yet. I need to find someone with a calibrated integrating sphere that I can send a few lights to and have them get data for, then I can calibrate by box using those lights. However, very rough estimate would be to say mine did about 3100 lumens on startup, falling to 2600 over the first five minutes, then stepping down to about 400 lumens for the next four hours.

Yeah, IMR cells should be able to handle the current just fine. As for the scraping, yeah, mine did lack lubrication on it's threads. I put a drop of nyogel on them and haven't had trouble since.

i don't even have a lux meter myself lol that's way better than mine then, estimate or not. i should be envious but i'm putting all my hopes into the replacement U3 haha. i didn't think it could do 4 hours overall though, what cells are you using? i'm waiting to get me some panasonic 3400mAh but would that really increase runtime?

I use Callies' Kustoms 3100mAh ICR cells for most of my official tests, and 2400mAh Trustfires for general use.

I just looked back at your earlier post, and I don't know a lot about batteries but I think IMR batteries that actually hold 3000mAh would be pretty unusual. The AW IMR 18650's on CPFMP right now are only 2000 mAh. Either way, 3400mAh batteries would surely give you an increase in run time. In general, you'll likely want ICR batteries over IMR for anything except very high current from a single cell.

ok. yeah i just reached that conclusion too after a brief search about IMRs here lol trust me to be getting them from a trusted shop in the heart of town... ICRs.... while i get that into my brain i shall be saving up for my next purchase of 12 186560s lol got too many flashlights and not enough to feed them

My U3 Terminator tested at 2830 lumens after 30sec and has a throw of 57k. Nice little light overall.

that's decently bright... hope my U3 at least measures that, if not better... i don't have a history of good luck with stuff like this lol

How's the U3 working out?

My U3 blew away both my Gold & Black Skyray Kings,
not only total brightness, but throw, usable levels & quality...
So I sold both SRK's & bought another Term...

'Awesome going for walks with 6000+ lumens at just over $200...! :-D

I brought my T6 NW version for a CPF meet last saturday held at a national park. The forestation was pretty dense with the trees blocking out any ambient light from nearby towns, it was a new moon last weekend so we didn't have any moonlight to worry. It was pitch dark, so dark that even if you held your palm an inch from you face you couldn't even see a shadow or silhouette. There was a light mist from the low clouds passing through the hill. Ambient temperature was around 5'C or 41'F.

The B.S-Term was nothing short of fantastic. With 4 Panasonic 3100mah cells, I only used the 400lumen low mode most of the time for the walk through the dense forestation. Using anything more than low mode was really a waste of batteries. Turning on mid or high modes was too blinding, even for the user. Norm's (administrator on CPF) Solarforce S2200 with the new Cree MT-G2 could not compete with the B.S-T for output, however the S2200 did out throw the B.S-T because of that HUGE SR90 like reflector, but not by as much as one would think. The sheer brute force output of the B.S-T was just amazing! Everyone who sees the B.S-T for the first time always under estimates its output. Until they see it in action then they all go: "WTH was that?!?"

I love the mug-handle design, makes it so easy to carry and ergonomic to use while hiking 2km uphill in dense forest on rocky and windy tracks. It was faster to point n shoot with the button on the the handle than any of my tubular designed lights with a tailcap switch.

The rated 3500lumens on high appears realistic when compared to other lights of similar rated output that has been measured, I don't think the output is over rated on the B.S-T, then again this would depend on individual opinion I guess.

Overall I am very impressed with the quality of the materials and finish, the design, ergonomics and performance of the B.S-T. For around $110 shipped, its fantastic value for money.

I think it is a great torch for $105.00!! It does produce a lot of lumens, with decent throw and beam intensity.I have the U3 version but I am sure the U2 does well also. Really is NOT that much difference between the two as far as output, throw, PBI. I learned that from the TK-75,,Original and new version!! It is so small that the human eye can't pick it up,,,,at least mine can't!


Over all it is brighter and floodier than my TK-75, but doesn't have the throw and beam intensity[cd's] that the TK-75.

They are both great in their own ways and when you consider that the BST is $105.00 compared to the TM26 that is more than 3 times that amount,it is a great deal. Just by a little bit, the BST out throws the TM26 and has a bit more cd's.

Ciao,,,Roberto,,,"Capo di Capo" "KEEP LIGHTING UP THE DARKNESS"

Capolini said:

I think it is a great torch for $105.00!! It does produce a lot of lumens, with decent throw and beam intensity.I have the U3 version but I am sure the U2 does well also. Really is NOT that much difference between the two as far as output, throw, PBI. I learned that from the TK-75,,Original and new version!! It is so small that the human eye can't pick it up,,,,at least mine can't!


Over all it is brighter and floodier than my TK-75, but doesn't have the throw and beam intensity[cd's] that the TK-75.

They are both great in their own ways and when you consider that the BST is $105.00 compared to the TM26 that is more than 3 times that amount,it is a great deal. Just by a little bit, the BST out throws the TM26 and has a bit more cd's.

Ciao,,,Roberto,,,"Capo di Capo" "KEEP LIGHTING UP THE DARKNESS"

Click to expand...

The human eye is terrible at judging total brightness.

The difference for example between a 2,500 L and a 3,000 L light can be easily missed, especially if the beam patterns are not identical.

The only way humans have a shot at telling the difference is by comparing what TARGETS they can see WITH a comparison of lights, not the beams/spots of light that they see.

IE: Shined at the side of a barn..the two big white circles of light might be indistinguishable from each other.

Shined out into a field with various shrubs and grasses and so forth, the 3k L light will show more of the STUFF than the 2.5k L light....you'd see more of what's out there at a time...even if you could not tell the BEAMS apart, you will typically be able to tell that you saw more shrubs, etc.

Add to that that most humans will report that a light with a small hot spot is "Brighter" than a light with a flood pattern...even if the flood patterned light has 10x the output. The eye perceives the hand print of brightness as "Bright", and does not perceive the 10 square meters of dimmer light as brighter.

The fact that it takes more light to do the second large surface area than to do the teeny first area is not perceived.

So lights with pronounced hot spots (Throwers) tend to be universally seen as "Brighter"...its just how our eyes lie to us.

So if two lights are being compared, we generally seem to be unable to judge the output by looking at the pattern on the wall....and, which ever one makes a larger hot spot, is the one we will report to be the brightest. The lumens sent to the corona and spill, etc, are simply not counted. If BOTH lights have 2,000 L going into their hot spots, but one has a hand print sized hot spot, and one has a hot spot the size of a bedsheet....we will say the light with the hand print sized spot is brighter.

That gets to the cd. The cd and the throw of a light is the same thing. The cd is the lux at one meter for the light...IE: If you were to shine the light at a light meter 1 meter away, how many lux would the light meter read out? (For larger lights, with beam patterns that take longer to form, the measurements are taken farther away..and then back calculated, etc)

So, saying a light has more throw and more cds is like saying the car is faster and has more mph.

ALL you need is a light's cd to predict how bright it is at any given range, as it can be calculated from that number.

The floody lights like the terminator, etc, are almost impossible to compare to each other w/o the above shrubs, etc, as the "Wall of Light" patterns, in of themselves, are too hard to visually compare w/o targets to calibrate what we are looking at.

I might see 20% fewer shrubs with a T6 than with a U3 LED in the same light for example - but the beams themselves will tend to look the same in intensity/brightness to our eyes, because we are simply horrible at judging lumen out put.



Floody lights like the Terminator are generally a lot more useful to use, for the majority of people...but, are an under appreciated sector. Fans of Mules, etc, get it. Those who have tried to set up a tent with a TIR or throw/tight pattern oriented light, only get it if they then get to do it again with a floody beamed light, etc. This is because to them, that IS what a flashlight's beam looks like, and they famously make statements like "10 lumens is blinding, and I need 0.001 lumens to read by at 3 am", etc....because they can't imagine that the same 10 lumens spread out over a larger area would NOT be blinding, and so forth.

Thanks for catching me again on that teej!! I do know that cd and throw are interrelated, go hand in hand and are the same thing! Next time I bring it up I will sound more intelligent! I will use one or another!

Prof. teej, by the end of the year I will be 77.7678654% as knowledgeable as you!! lol!

But I will ALWAYS BE MORE DIVERSIFIED IN THE "EMOTICON" DEPT.!!!:thumbsup::nana::grouphug::mecry::rock::twothumbs

Ciao,,,Roberto,,,"Capo di Capo" "KEEP LIGHTING UP THE DARKNESS"

Capolini said:

Thanks for catching me again on that teej!! I do know that cd and throw are interrelated, go hand in hand and are the same thing! Next time I bring it up I will sound more intelligent! I will use one or another!

Prof. teej, by the end of the year I will be 77.7678654% as knowledgeable as you!! lol!

But I will ALWAYS BE MORE DIVERSIFIED IN THE "EMOTICON" DEPT.!!!:thumbsup::nana::grouphug::mecry::rock::twothumbs

Ciao,,,Roberto,,,"Capo di Capo" "KEEP LIGHTING UP THE DARKNESS"

Click to expand...

LOL

It was merely a funny way of putting it....there was no real intention to "correct you".

I concede my emoticon diversity to yours in a heart beat...as I find my self typing what's on my face as I type, which is almost always a smile.



If there was a face palm one, or a rolled eye one I liked, I MIGHT consider adding those too once in a while.....and, I have used a few every once in a while...but, no where NEAR ~77% of the time you do, so, we can call it an even situation, with emoticon and flashlight trivia coming to parity.



When you surpass my knowledge in a few months, I will STILL be behind you in emoticon use, and, I will have to live with that, it is my fate.

Maybe I can ask you questions about lighting with smiley faces, and you can answer in your erudite and heavily emoticoned way.