Has anyone ever heard of a defective Fenix LD01?

Hi all!

So, I recently ordered a new Fenix LD01 R4, to replace my beloved R2 that I lost in a snowbank the other day. Once it arrived though, I noticed a problem with it... The medium and high settings are indistinguishable from one another. In a well-lit room they looked the same, and they had exactly the same illumination and throw in a (large) dark room. I tried it with cheap alkaline, fresh Duracell, cheap NiMH, and freshly-charged Eneloop batteries, and I still can't tell the difference between the two settings. The low setting works, as far as I can tell, but it's noticeably dimmer than my R2 was (to be expected, since the R4 is 3lm versus the R2's 10lm).

I know lumens are hard to gauge visually, but I had no trouble telling the difference between the three settings on my old Fenix. Am I missing something here, or does this one have to go back to Amazon?

Hi Lukeonia and welcome to CPF.

I have an LD01 R4 - though an XP-G one - and I can easily tell the difference between high and medium. If you tested it with good Eneloop batteries, then I'd say you might have ended up with a defective light. You could just try to leave it on for 10 minutes on high and then try again to see if the problem disappears with the voltage dropping but with eneloops I don't you'd have this problem even when freshly charged.

Do you have the more recent XP-E model?

Labrador72 said:

Do you have the more recent XP-E model?

Click to expand...

Yes, it's an XP-E.

This is strange: I just tried it again with a different Eneloop, fresh off the charger, and it gave me three distinct modes. (This also allowed me to determine that with the other batteries, the High mode only gives Medium output.) Out of curiosity I tried all my other Eneloops in it, and all but the first one worked properly.

I think I'll send this one back to Amazon for an exchange, but if the replacement is no better I might have to try and source an older R2, or else switch to something else, maybe a Foursevens P1-AE. There's not much point in a AAA flashlight if it only works with premium NiMH batteries.