cheap chinise flashlights on ebay

I have always paid top price for fenix or olight torches and when i saw my mates chinise zoomable light
with a square beam for ony a £5 plus free postage i was blown away its so cheap and bright and for nothing
sure the big boys are over priced at £500 for something like an acebeam x65
or an olight £350 or a Maxabeam 2K and maybe better to buy a 3 watt laser for 100 miles of throw instead
I could buy a 1000 chinise lights and tape them together to make a monster torch lol

Stevebills said:

I have always paid top price for fenix or olight torches and when i saw my mates chinise zoomable light
with a square beam for ony a £5 plus free postage i was blown away its so cheap and bright and for nothing
sure the big boys are over priced at £500 for something like an acebeam x65
or an olight £350 or a Maxabeam 2K and maybe better to buy a 3 watt laser for 100 miles of throw instead
I could buy a 1000 chinise lights and tape them together to make a monster torch lol

Click to expand...

I have a half dozen cheap chinese ebay lights and like them all for the price I spent on them but they do have drawbacks in that they are not as efficient and most have party modes (flashing, SOS) that are unneeded. They all have the latticebright LEDs I believe they are about 2/3 as efficient as the cree LEDs they purport to be.

Stevebills said:

I could buy a 1000 chinise lights and tape them together to make a monster torch lol

Click to expand...

You could do that, but it would probably be less expensive, and you'd have higher lumen output, if you shopped here:
http://skylumen.com/collections/v54-lights

You own Fenix and Olights but it was a cheap zoomy that really blew you away ???

There is strength in numbers. Lots of friends buy those cards full-o-shower head LED lights for under a buck per light. Kids toss them, ex wives confiscate them (well actually the furniture those are in but yea know) and some occasionally break. Yet almost always one will make an appearance when needed. Odds are if you have a bunch you will have at least one on hand. For times when I really need it to work and can't have 20 of the same thing find the justification for cheap kit harder to swallow. What else would I spend discretionary income on. Don't smoke and rarely drink. It's like buying cheap rappelling (mine is getting old. LOL) rope. Why? That said don't buy cheap batteries. That can end badly.

OP it's "Chinese" not "Chinise"

For people who want disposable worry free lights that underperform and that eat gobs of AAA batteries and have you fumbling with frustrating battery holders in the dark the shower head lights are for you. I can get plenty of 1AA and 1x18650 lights off ebay for $1.50 to $3.00 that blow away the cheap 3AAA 9xled lights you find everywhere. Back in the days of the luxeon 1 when a 8 or 9 5mm LED light was $5 and a luxeon 1 light was $25+ the shower head lights were a definite option in that the total amount of light they produces matched or exceeded the luxeon and the floodiness up close was nice. Today even a cheap cree knockoff blows away the 9 led shower head lights in output and throws a hundred feet well enough to be useful. All my shower head lights have been shelved etc not even my 1AA shower heads are used for a cheap 1AA with an optic that beats all but the 27 LED one in output. There is no justified cost savings for shower heads now even if you get 2 or 3 for the same price it takes that many to match a single emitter light. The reason you see the shower head lights is that they want you to buy them and throw them away when the batteries or lights die stores love selling disposable things instead of encouraging you to by otherwise. Like the cheap plastic 2D incans growing up that lasted about 6 months to a year before either the cheap battery threw up inside the light or it was dropped or started endless flickering and you tossed it in the trash and sooner or later you spent 3-4 times as much for a high quality light that lasted 5-10 years and instead of using heavy duty batteries in it you used leak less often alkalines.
Yes there are many good cheap chinese flashlights on ebay and many mediocre junky lights that are just too cheap to keep.

They work...until they don't

Heck, i love those little 3.99 lights kicked up with an Olight 14500 rechargeable ! It may only run for 25 min on a charge but its my EDC.
they come with a great pocket clip and will burn your retinas out!

Stevebills said:

I have always paid top price for fenix or olight torches and when i saw my mates chinise zoomable light
with a square beam for ony a £5 plus free postage i was blown away its so cheap and bright and for nothing
sure the big boys are over priced at £500 for something like an acebeam x65
or an olight £350 or a Maxabeam 2K and maybe better to buy a 3 watt laser for 100 miles of throw instead
I could buy a 1000 chinise lights and tape them together to make a monster torch lol

Click to expand...

I have had a £9.99 Chinese cree torch cable tied to my caving hat that I use when doing a battery change in my headlamp, a single 18650 cell and it has been working okay for nearly 3 years now and has not faltered once but the strobe mode is a pain, I reckon that it is the luck of the draw because I also know lads who have bought them and had them break after a few uses although it always seems to be the end cap with the switch and driver that fails....luck of the draw I suppose but having a proven quality torch or headlamp makes better sense I reckon for your main light source.

I have one cheap Chinese light that I bought over a year ago that I can honestly say that I got my money`s worth out of.

It`s a 3 mode Ultrafire C1, I paid $13 for it shipped.

They rate it at 1200 Lum but side by side with my Fenix PD35Tac it`s tit for tat, it`s a solid 1k Lum.

However, I have some friends that ordered the same exact model that I have, one of them received a completely different model, it was not a C1, the other ordered the same model and he received a 5 mode C1, another friend ordered two of the Model C1`s, both of his worked for 1 week.

Like someone else said, they work until they don`t, unless you get lucky and get a good one like I got, it`s a gamble, but at least it`s a small amount of money that you are gambling with.

I paid £0.01 for a flashlight from eBay. It's a skywolfeye X15. It was non of the things it said in the advert and turned up broken. I messages seller and got a refund and told to keep it. I by passed the driver completely and soldered in an led from another cheap thing I had lying around and it was brilliant for the 2 hours it worked until it burned out the led. Ordered a 20mm -17 mm driver reducer ring and am now waiting for my C8 to turn up as I have a new LED and driver to go straight in that then it's hardware will go in the eBay light and ta-dah (I hope)

Last year I ordered 4 ultrafire "1200 lumen" lights off ebay to give friends for Christmas and to no surprise only 3 worked. I new better than to order them but they were so cheap I said why not, and now about a year later I think only one still works. Live and learn, buy nice or buy twice.

Thom2022 said:

I paid £0.01 for a flashlight from eBay. It's a skywolfeye X15. It was non of the things it said in the advert and turned up broken. I messages seller and got a refund and told to keep it. I by passed the driver completely and soldered in an led from another cheap thing I had lying around and it was brilliant for the 2 hours it worked until it burned out the led. Ordered a 20mm -17 mm driver reducer ring and am now waiting for my C8 to turn up as I have a new LED and driver to go straight in that then it's hardware will go in the eBay light and ta-dah (I hope)

Click to expand...

At that price the parts in the light are probably worth more than that (hopefully). I've considered driver and led replacements for my lights but for the cost and effort of the parts I've looked for better lights and found very little that I would risk ordering from china off ebay as almost every cheap ebay light has a clone led in it (latticebright) even the ones that claim they have crees in them often don't so paying another $5 for a light that has the same drive and led as a $2 light gets you nowhere. There seems to be 2 generic drivers on the lithium ion based lights 3 and 5 modes finding a light that has more or better mode selection jumps you from $5 and under to $20 and up and getting an actual quality led in one (real cree) isn't easy from most vendors on ebay if they aren't selling a name brand you can end up throwing your money away and end up with about the same functionally equivalent light just paying more.
The great divide between the cheap ebay chinese lights and decent quality chinese lights is huge with a lot of litter between the two that are almost indistinguishable from the cheap ones.

I stumbled across it on a bid ending in 3 minutes so I though for 1 penny why the hell not. The convoy I have ordered is from a uk based vendor and the upgrade led and driver from 3tronics as recommended to me in this forum. If it means I have a host driver and led lying around why not combine them. If it works I have 2 decent flashlights i payed £30 for and if the Frankenstein light fails then I have a £30 convoy C8 that's how I want it. I see no loss here. I wouldn't buy an Chinese eBay light and expect anything good nor would I buy one with the intention of modding it.

I've found the prices of lights so cheap and auctions taking so long to complete and my chances of winning is less than 5% I just look for the cheapest price from a dealer with decent feedback. I think my issue is that I've had enough to risk buying 1 "good" light or buying a 5 cheap lights and am not upset with my decision to buy the cheap ones as I have 6 different types of cheap ebay lights and a couple of more expensive but cheap ebay lights.
I do have plans when my funds get a lot better to buy a few name brand high quality lights but to be honest these will be "tool" type lights bought to fulfill a specific need I will still have cheap ebay lights to fill generic needs around the place.
I've been looking for a decent cheap ebay headlamp but the ones as cheap as my flashlights are too funky or junky and the ones that sort of interest me I'm unsure of them they cost 2-3 times as much starting at around $5 such that buying a few to check them out isn't in the budget.
I think for most people the time and cost of checking out and buying cheap chinese ebay lights is too much for most people as I've spent about $35 on cheap ebay lights but this is over several years not at one time which is one reason I bought most of them I bought what I could afford at the time. I couldn't afford a $20 light most of the time even though I have a convoy S2+ bookmarked still plus desires for an 18650 headlamp also.

I've picked up a few of the low budget Chinese lights that are zoomable and run on AAA. They look nice but they are not very bright and are not very reliable. I gave them to my kids because they like the zoom function. But considering you can get a much better quality and brighter light for not much more than those cheap-o ones sold on eBay, I would never buy one of those cheap eBay lights again. For instance, there are occasional deals on Amazon for true 900 lumen lights for $12-$15 that run on CR123 or 18650. Why pay $7-$9 for a crappy eBay light that claims 900 lumen but in reality is about 150-200 lumen?

The zoomy ones from eBay take a 17mm driver. They are not the best led but when I made one direct drive it was bloody bright then it burned out. They massively under driven. I tested one and it was drawing 0.3amp on its brightest setting. If you fancied a bit of DIY and modding practice then putting in a basic 6x7135 or 8x7135 driver would improve it massively and only cost a couple of £/$.