The lights charged about 8 hours overnight before both indicators turned green. Voltage readings showed 4.11V on the battery charged in the Prime
and 4.16 on the one charged in the Elf:
While I was a big fan of the matte finish at first, it scratches very easily. This is from my attempts to put the clip on the Prime:
Now for some beam comparison. I purchased the warm versions of each Armytek light. Prime on the left, Elf on the right, Glaree e03 (aaa CREE LED light that has always looked blue to me) in the middle for reference. This is moonlight 1 for the Armyteks and the only moonlight setting on the Glaree. Incredibly low output from the Armyteks, spec'd at .4 lumens OTF.
Moonlight 2 (2.5 lm) / Moonlight / Moonlight 2 (2.3 lm). You can start to see the beam pattern differences emerge here between the Armyteks. The Prime has a much more narrow, focused beam compared to the floody Elf. More to come on this later.
Here we have Main 1 (32 lm) / Low / Main 1 (30 lm):
Main 2 (190 lm) / Low / Main 2 (150 lm):
Main 3 (410 lm) / High / Main 3 (340 lm)
Turbo (1050 lm) / High / Turbo (900 lm). Turbo doesn't look like much difference from Main 3 in the photos, but looking directly at the hotspot is actually painful at this short distance when the lights are in Turbo. High is bright, but still comfortable to look at in extreme short range like this.
Just to emphasize the beam pattern differences, I stepped back a few feet with both lights on Main 3:
The lights stayed fairly warm but at a comfortable level in Main 3. On Turbo, I only had a few minutes until the heads started to get decidedly hot. Still very usable when held by the body, however. Overall, I'm very happy with how these turned out. I picked both of these up for around $80 US shipped with the black friday discounts + reddit coupon code. I'm planning on modifying one of the 12v ports in my car to fit the magnetic charger for the Prime, as it is just a tad large to pants pocket carry. It fits well on the inner pocket of my jacket, though. The Elf will be used mostly for auto repair, and I'm happy that the beam profile fits my predicted usage pattern. I love the magnetic bases, they feel rock solid and I have no fear about them falling off a metal surface like I do with some of my other task lights.
The onboard charging IS slow, but the light stays cool when charging and the termination voltage seems conservative which I feel is both safer and will prolong the life of the battery in the long run. I ordered a proper 18650 charger (Liitokali Lii 202) from Gearbest over Black Friday as well, and I suspect I'll end up using that more often when using the lights more regularly and needing more frequent charges. Spec'd runtime on Main 3 is right around 4 hours for both lights, plenty of time for my purposes, and bumping down to Main 2 would gain me an extra 6 hours of battery life.
A few other nitpicks: I wish the pocket clip on the Prime tapered on the light side. I'm not worried about it falling out of my pocket, but it would sit a little lower if it didn't get stuck on the fabric. I wish I could have gotten them with a Nichia 219b/c LED but I am content with the color temperature of the CREE XP-L LEDs they shipped with.
My impressions with Armytek have been incredibly positive so far. Both of my lights have worked flawlessly out of the box, they got to me in a very reasonable amount of time, and they have some great features (warm light, rechargeable using standard 18650 cells, magnetic bases, sub-lumen moonlight mode) that were exactly what I was looking for.