Good flashlights no one's heard of

Good flashlights no one\'s heard of

Most if not all of us here at Candle Power Forums have probably heard of big name flashlight companies like Maglite, Streamlight, Pelican, Surefire.........etc. But what about the less known companies who spend countless hours designing and producing high quality flashlights but due to their lack of resources is unable to market their product as well as the big companies. Do you know any small and less know companies that produces good quality flashlights ??? If so please tell us about it so others in this forum can discover these hidden treasures.

Here is my hidden treasure : LedXtreme Predator

Re: Good flashlights no one\'s heard of

if you can please post a picture or link

Review : http://flashlightreviews3.home.att.net/reviews/ledxtreme_predator.htm

Website : http://www.ledxtreme.com/

Re: Good flashlights no one\'s heard of

I have just received a shipment of Predators from them. I'll post some details later.

Re: Good flashlights no one\'s heard of

Is the Predator a 1 or 3 watt?QB review says 1 and ledextreme says 3.

Re: Good flashlights no one\'s heard of

I'll tell you tonight after I've taken one apart. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Re: Good flashlights no one\'s heard of

It's a 1 Watt which is being driven at very high levels and well heatsinked to give around 3 Watts of output (as I understand it).

Re: Good flashlights no one\'s heard of

I have pictures! (bearing in mind that this is the worst camera being used by a member of this forum /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif )

Here are more details about the lights. I received a few Predators and a LX5 today.

Here is a photo taken along with a 6P, X5, McLux in E2e body.

L to R McLux PR-t on SF E2e, SF 6P, LedXtreme Predator, Inova X5, LedXtreme LX5


I won't go into details about the Predator, since QuickBeam and The LED Museum have already posted reviews. I have been unable to answer the 1W/3W Luxeon question yet, but I have sent an e-mail to LEDXtreme about that.

Beamshots:

Taken at 10'
Left: McLux 900/TV1J Rightredator

The colouring in this shot is the most representative, the TV1J looks warm, white the Predator is very white.

Taken at 4' (The brightness is really wreaking havoc with my camera for this shot)
Left: McLux 900/TV1J Rightredator


Taken at 4'
Left: LEDXtreme LX5 Right:Inova X5

The LX5 is shorter than the Inova X5 (as seen in the first photo), it is also lighter, but at the cost of a tailswitch. The LX5 is strictly twist-on/twist-off. The LX5's output is very similar to the Inova X5's, which is understandable since they both use Nichia LED's driven by 2x123. The LX5's beam is slightly tighter under 3', but this distinction is lost quickly as distance increases.

Re: Good flashlights no one\'s heard of

A excellent,cordless, multi-led worklight dubbed the "Facom Vision".Facom is a european tool manufacturer.Try http://www.facom.com there should still be a link,although I dont know if it's moved off the new product page or not.Small enough to be called a flashlight,robust enough to be a excellent mechanics,etc,worklight.

Re: Good flashlights no one\'s heard of

The Facom Vision looks great, complete with charge cradle. I can't seem to find a lot of info on the light though.

Re: Good flashlights no one\'s heard of

Great thread! By CPF standards I'm not sure I can offer anything either "good" or "unknown", but let me mention two things anyway: the InReTech and the Starlite.

First, for 2AA M*g replacements, people here seem to love the Opalec Newbeam (three 0.1W LEDs), but I've wondered why the InReTech (one 1W LED) doesn't get more notice. It gives a nice bright light, is still running pretty strong at 6 hours when the M*g has quit, and was still giving useful light -- enough to walk on a snowy trail -- after 60 hours (it was a controlled experiment, time-lapse video and all). That's on alkalines. InReTech claims it's both brighter and longer-running on lithiums; I've only verified the first half of that claim. Mine has a blueish beam, which I rather like. This is what I have knocking around in my car's glove compartment (with lithium AAs): good enough, cheap enough. On fresh batteries, it's as bright as my Arc LS (measured on a meter), but it is unregulated and dims down quickly.

http://www.inretech.com has links to reviews and tech specs. (The tech specs worked for me only in IE, not Mozilla.)
$25, only from InReTech.

The lack of regulation is my only complaint about the InReTech. My second item is the opposite. In fact, the direct-drive InReTech is incapable of running its batteries down too far, and a pair of batteries that's completely used up InReTech-wise is fresh in a Starlite.

The Starlites are cheap and cheerful flashlights, selling for -- I forget -- like $7. They use a "bulb" (standard bayonet base) consisting of a single 0.1W LED and an integral DC-DC converter. (For $7. I was amazed.) They run 24 hours on 2AA batteries with no dimming at all, and carry on a lot longer. Of course they're not super-bright to begin with, but compared with your average M*g with somewhat aged batteries and bulb they're not bad. The beam is too narrowly focused for many tasks, and is quite uneven, but nicely white and ... hey, what do you want for 7 bucks. Oh yeah, they're made of brightly colored plastic. In short, a good toy, or kid's flashlight, or knockaround multi-use flashlight, or gift introduction to the amazing world of LED flashlights. Or put the bulb any 2 D-cell flashlight and run it forever (not that I really see the point).

Starlite has two flavors of flashlights -- 1 AA and 2 AA -- and their bulbs naturally have two different DC-to-DC converters.

References:
http://www.dansdata.com/ledlights4.htm
http://ledmuseum.home.att.net/starlite.htm
$7 only by sending a check to the San Francisco address given on both these sites, but the service was quick and friendly.

Re: Good flashlights no one\'s heard of

wasabe64 - I see on Quickbeam's site the runtime.
How soon can you visually tell the light is dimming?

Re: Good flashlights no one\'s heard of

I was amazed at the number of drool flashlights at
http://www.pentalight.com

Download the catalog and enjoy!

John B

erm,


you mean www.pentagonlight.com



the ledxtreme predator looks like an absolute fantastic value for the money. when i find one, ill be buying it.. either that or a pentagon

Another very old thread dug up.

Oh, well. I suppose my favorite brand that no one talks about is Underwater Kinetics. Their 4AA Xenon with a clickie is an especially good value; watertight, bright, and a decent runtime, for only $17.

wow, very old - in 2 1/2 yrs lotta things can change ... I'd agree "UK" seems underrated

wow.. that was 2 years ago!... omg

Yes, this is an old one, and will probably get locked, but in response to the OP, CPF is an international forum with thousands of members, so it probably unlikely that a gem of a light would go too long without CPF noticing. Now the reason why some lights and brands don't get much press on CPF may have to do with other things than just being unnoticed.