(Poor ?) Thermal design on the MecArmy IllumineX/CooYoo Quantum

I recently bought a MecArmy IllumineX-4 Al. Nice light, bar a few small niggles (o-ring is so thin and tight it broke on the first day, may replace it with a larger one).
My main worry about it is that, when I turn it on high (130 lumens from a XP-G2), the exterior of the torch barely heats up. My Fenix E11 (115 lummens from a XP-E2) heats up relatively quick, despite being a good bit larger than the IllumineX.
When I shone a bright light through the head of the IllumineX I could see it shine through the PCB at the back of the head (will try to post pics later). This, to me, seems to suggest that the LED is soldered directly to a plain, insulating (FR4) PCB, trapping the heat in the LED. Could this be right?
While I understand this light is not meant to be run on high for long, this thermal design (a rather absence of one) still seems rather poor (especially considering it isn't really cheap).
Do the DQG lights suffer the same design?

I ran a DQG Hobi on high before I wrote this to check. After three minutes or so it is pretty warm.

I ran a MecArmy IllumieX-4 for about the same time. Just barely starting to heat up.

Not very scientific but at least it's something. Not sure how much the aluminum vs stainless has to do with it.


And now a question. Will excess heat on the LED shorten it's life? Or is it just that when it gets too hot it will just break?

I've had and have been enjoying my Illuminex-4 for a couple of weeks now and am more and more impressed by this little light. I have however noticed, as you pointed out, that there doesn't appear to be much in the way of a heatsink or thermal management in this little guy.

Oddly though, this hasn't appeared to be an issue so far.

I've measured the current consumption and on high with a full charge, the XP-G2 is drawing around 200ma and dissipating approximately 1 watt, which should generate a bit of heat. Not sure if the engineers based the minimal heatsinking on the low, 100mah, capacity of the battery or the assumption that users probably won't use it on high for extended periods of time but it somehow seems to work.

sunny_nites said:

I've had and have been enjoying my Illuminex-4 for a couple of weeks now and am more and more impressed by this little light. I have however noticed, as you pointed out, that there doesn't appear to be much in the way of a heatsink or thermal management in this little guy.

Oddly though, this hasn't appeared to be an issue so far.

I've measured the current consumption and on high with a full charge, the XP-G2 is drawing around 250ma and dissipating approximately 1 watt, which should generate a bit of heat. Not sure if the engineers based the minimal heatsinking on the low, 100mah, capacity of the battery or the assumption that users probably won't use it on high for extended periods of time but it somehow seems to work.

Click to expand...

I don't think it is enough heatsinking for extended runs on high. Of course the battery won't last long on high anyway.

My apologies but I had to correct the max current listed for the Illuniex-4, in my above post.

In stock form, with a fully charged battery, the Illuminex-4 on the low setting runs at 26ma, while on the high setting runs at 200ma. I inadvertently listed the readings from my modified light that runs at 12ma on low and 250ma on high.

Sorry for the confusion.