How come the EA4 and EA8 have the same output and the same runtime?

It bothers me a lot: How come that the EA4 and the EA8 have almost the same maximum output(860 lumins vs 900 lumins) and almost the same runtime(1:45H vs 2:00H), given that EA8 has twice the amount of juice?

I know there is a big difference in through distance and beam intensity. But same lumins for the same time? Isn't light output in lumins depending on power consumption? My little math on this for the Turbo modes:

EA4: 4XAA = 2.4*1.2*4/1.75 = 6.6 Watts
EA8: 8XAA = 2.4*1.2*8/2.00 = 11.5 Watts

So I get the same lumins for twice the power consumption! Am I missing something here?

If not then I think having two EA4s(maybe one cool and one neutral) instead of the EA8 is more energy efficient.

What do you think?

That cant be right are you sure you read he specs right??? If so there is something funky going on!!

Wow, those are the right specs. On turbo, the EA8 must be burning up energy as heat rather than light. The lower levels show about double runtime on the EA8 vs the EA4 as expected, but wow, that turbo mode sucks.

Both the EA4 and the EA8 stepdown after 3 minutes on Turbo but the EA4 stepsdown much further than the EA8. See the comparison in selfbuilt's review of the EA8 http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?359558

I'm 100% sure about the specs of the Turbo mode, which is the mode I'm concerned about here.

Moved to LED Flashlights - Norm

What to post in the General Flashlight Discussion Sub Fourum.

oshokry said:

I'm 100% sure about the specs of the Turbo mode, which is the mode I'm concerned about here.

Click to expand...

Under the ANSI FL1 rating system, they are allowed to include the runtime after stepdown as part of the Turbo runtime. So for the EA4, the advertised Turbo runtime of 1 hour 45 minutes is actually 3 minutes on Turbo (860 lumens) + 1 hour 42 minutes on High (550 lumens).

According to selfbuilt, the EA8 only steps down to about 800 lumens so its runtime rating is more legitimately on Turbo and uses more power.

EDIT: If you look at selfbuilt's runtime graph which shows both the EA4 and EA8, it fully explains your question.

My EA8 example has no step down and my dealer's light only has about 8% step down. Looking back, I seem to remember that the step-down on EA8's was a bit inconsistent for others but Selfbuilt's result was similar to my dealer's light.