Welcome to the "Zebralight Troll" club
Yeah, I recall that H51w vs QAA2-S2 thread back in 2010 or 2011 - that thread got me started metering my own lights and to realize how useless the ANSI standards are - every manufacturer still employs their own level of conservatism/exaggeration, and the rules are wide enough to drive a truck though.
So who's being conservative and who's exaggerating?
As a sub-lumen AA collector, I calibrate my light meter with a lumen scale that matches most of my lights and modes which are from Foursevens, Thrunite, Eagletac, Sunwayman, and most recently Malkoff, and of course this scale is significantly more conservative than the Selfbuilt/Zebralight scale. I later came across ti-force's reviews and found my lumen scale matched his. For the QAA2-X /QP2A-X (my primary calibration light), which both TF and SB have reviewed, their lumen estimates differed by 60-80 lumens at max and stepdown - I consider that kind of significant.
Here's what ti-force claims...
For those of you who aren't aware, I have my own calibrated homemade integrating sphere (I have two, actually) for measuring lumen output of different lights. My sphere's have been calibrated using lights that were measured in a professional lab sphere, so my lumen results are very accurate.
and what Selfbuilt claims.....
The point is that the relative value accuracy of my measures remains remarkably high. So, for example, if I estimate one light at 270 lumens and another at 300 lumens, you can feel fairly comfortable with the conclusion that the second light is indeed about 10% brighter. But whether or not that is really 240 and 265 lumens (or 300 and 330 lumens , etc, etc.) I cannot say with any certainty.
While I use TF's scale, I completely support Selfbuilt's relative value accuracy data and always try to reconcile with his findings. So take a look at one of SB's relative output/runtime graphs on how ZL's "280" lumens compares with a few other manufacturer's 280 (and less) lumens (SB's graph, my annotations taken from his reviews):
As much as I hate to say it, I think SB should stick with lumen scale he is using - if he were to use a more conservative one, I think a few manufacturers might stop submitting lights for his review
.
I don't know if I'm truly a ZL troll as much as a truth-in-advertising/warranty/CS troll. I alway said the ZL lights are very nice - the SC52 is brightest and (on average) most efficient in my 1xAA collection (but nowhere near what a comparison of specs suggests), it has one of the nicest UIs, it's one of the smallest, etc. - I'll stop short of build quality, though, due to LT reliability concerns (this place used to be littered with ZL reliability polls, now vastly improved). But yeah the combination of ZLs marketing, warranty and CS policies kind of bring me to them a lot....sorry
... My SC52 on Eneloop outperforms my Quark AA Tactical on 14500 (which should be about 210 lumens). Countdown til reppans arrives in this thread....
I agree with you here Wiggle, the SC52 on an Eneloop should outperform the QAA2-S2 on 3V+ (it's an old light) - I would also put the SC52 around ~220-230 lm mark that others have suggested in other thread...... And in before the lock
.