First impressions of the Terralux

I just got my Terralux in the mail and I threw it on a 6 year old (Edit AA MiniMag that's seen better days.

The Terralux comes with a replacement reflector in a nice case that protects it during transport. I would have to say as packaging goes, they do a very good job. Installation is a snap, even for the most technically disinclined. If you can change the Mag bulb, you can load up the Terralux, which drops into the two holes on top.

On almost-fresh Duracells, compared to the Mag stock incandescent lamp that blackens just after a couple of hours of use, there is utterly no contest. The Terralux wins no matter how you frame it, in terms of beam quality, the amount of light, and the fact that the beam actually looks closer to white than burnt orange.

I've done some comparing, and out of the three Luxeons I've had so far, this one seems the greenest. The Q4H I got from the Shoppe is closer to white with a slightly green corona but unnoticeable unless you look at the edges of the light. The Terralux has an even green color throughout the beam. But far and away the whitest is the E1e+KL1 - it keeps reminding me of how we have been spoiled by Surefire lights and why we pay the price premium for the engineering, the beam quality, the whiteness of the Luxeon, and everything that goes with it. It's not a fair comparison but these are the LED lights I have /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif

Overall, I still like the Terralux for what it does and does well. It's not meant to turn your Mag into a L4 LumaMax or even KL1 overnight. It's a side emitter, compared to the other two which are Lambertian high dome LEDs. SEs really live up to their name, the beam spills evenly out to the side. Minimal focusing is required, just twist slightly to turn it on and it's already more or less in focus.

What the Terralux is good at is being a candle. Sometimes, you need an area light, and once you take the reflector off, candle mode looks really good. I bought it primarily because I needed an AA-powered light, and a long-runtime light, so the candle mode is an unexpected bonus. This is what the SE Luxeons are useful for.

I haven't had time to perform runtime tests, but I've measured current with the DMM and I'm looking at 310-320mA on alkaline cells. Since I don't feel like burning alkalines, I'll be doing the tests with 1800mAh NiMHs. Hope the Terralux doesn't overheat. I've popped the NiMHs in and there is virtually no difference from the Duracells. With the normal Mag bulb you'd already see a dimmer light due to the voltage, but not with the regulated Terralux. At a nominal 300mA drain, I should probably be looking at around six hours of runtime which is pretty decent.

Lastly, I've tried looking at the beam with and without the plastic window in place trying to determine whether I want a Borofloat lens by flashlightlens.com, and I'm not sure I can tell that much of a difference in light output. What I did notice, of course, was the lack of scratches and swirl marks. I may just buy the lens anyway since the existing one is scratched. What do you all think?

Pictures and more updates coming soon, if there is a need.

Which TerraLux are you using and which MagLite are you using?

That would be the Minimag 2AA and the Ministar2 I think.

...and still, no one wants to chance the maxistar 2...

Ooops, I can't believe I forgot to say which Terralux and which mag it was (edited to reflect that).

The MaxStar2 is interesting, but my big 4D Mag is still with Energizer (wonder when their tests will be done.. it's quite an open and shut case that the batteries messed up and the light is toast), and besides I suspect many here are thinking why bother with two 1W LS emitters when you can have a brilliant bright white 3W LS high dome S or T emitter on a Hotlips-D? I'll be doing that mod to mine when it gets back.

Still can't get over the fact how green this Luxeon is. With a pure white LED like the KL1, color rendering is absolutely great. With this shade of green, it's still ok, but colors don't come out as crisp and sharp as they otherwise would. Maybe when my soldering skills improve I'll think about voiding some warranties /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif the most important thing is that I can actually USE the Mag again, it's good for a loaner light and to make people go "why's the beam so bright?" (compared to the Mag incan). Just a couple of nights ago there was a power outage which thankfully stopped just one street away from me (how's that for luck?) and last night there was a big thunderstorm. Runtime would be good.

It amazes me that people can easily discern tint in luxeons.

Every luxeon I've seen (around a half-dozen) is a brilliant, pure white relative to the obvious blue-green tint of a low-power "commodity" white LED. There are some variations between luxeons, but those are only noticable side-to-side.

Hey Idleprocess, wanna do a swap? I'm sure I can find a greenie in my collection for one of your white ones... /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon15.gif

Kevin, while the output is whiter, but I don't suppose it outthrows the incan bulb, does it? This seems to be a good alternative to the Opalec in terms of price/brightness, but definitely not price/runtime though. But then again, we put brightness above all else anyway, don't we?

KevinL1
When you get around to voiding warranties, you might want to try putting a hi dome Lux 1 or Lux 3 in your ministar2 instead of the side emitter. The beam focuses quite nicely. Not quite the needle fine beam of the stock incan minimag, but a nice even hot spot with a side spill that works nicely for close up work. It also de-focuses for close work without hurting your night vision. Just my two cent's worth.
Fester

idleprocess: Yup, when I shine it at white walls or white sheets of paper, it has a noticeably greenish tint. I keep thinking paper doesn't look like that. But certainly, any Luxeon is definitely preferable to commodity LEDs.

stanley: Output does out-throw the original incan, but not in the way you'd expect. The original incan is so dim that the LED still wins because of sheer light output. However, throw is terrible, agreed. The light tends to spread out so much that it's hard to see a hotspot at more than 10ft.

The Opalec datasheets note 10 hours runtime in regulation, so it definitely is the runtime champ. On the other end of the scale is the brightness king - the sandwich. I was looking for something with both runtime and brightness because the Opalec seems very dim, perhaps only about as powerful as my keychain lights. I haven't yet burned down the NiMHs on the Terralux, more updates about runtime when I do. It's not implausible that they can get 6-7 hours of runtime, with current drain metered at ~300mA, and assuming it always stays constant (it doesn't. It drops, but this is a worst-case estimating), a 1800mAh NiMH should be able to hang on for at least six hours.

unclefester: thanks for the suggestion. I was thinking of doing something along those lines, and a Lux3 HD would definitely improve both the beam color and the throw. I was looking at my Q4H on the bench (destined for some kind of lantern) and thinking that they might be better off exchanged. I'm waiting for my soldering skills to improve with practice before I destroy some hardware /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Update: 5 hours 30 minutes on NiMH rechargeables in regulation before it drops into moon mode and gets really dim. I notice that my two regulated Luxeons (KL1 and Terralux) are about equally bright in moon mode, and compared to a Photon 1, about half as bright. It's enough to see keys on a keyboard, find stuff at very short range, and move around (kinda slowly), but that's about it.

I cut off the test after it dropped into moon mode, and I'm pretty sure it will continue to bleed the cells for whatever they are worth for many more hours. As for the question about the Opalec, yup - about half the runtime.

These are the datasheets of the NIMH I am using. It's about right for them. My bad, they are 1900mAH minimum/1950 nominal.

I have a thermal probe that has seen better days clocking temperatures on CPUs, and I managed to get it to give a couple of readings before I think it quit on me for good. A reading taken just after I took the head off the Mag and put the probe on the TL base which the Luxeon rests on showed 55degC, but no higher. When exposed to the air in candle mode, it drops to just 40degC. Overall, no problems sustaining extended runtimes.

"However, throw is terrible, agreed. The light tends to spread out so much that it's hard to see a hotspot at more than 10ft. "

Of course at greater than 10' the minimag is pretty useless anyway, regardless of how tight you can get the beam...

The Terralux is a great option, easy to install and easy to use. I am a bit disapponted they didn't use a high dome, but it does a good job.

I am sooooo tempted to fix the high dome problem by ordering up a nice Lux3 emitter.. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif oh, that and the horrible green color. Now I understand what they mean by "green Luxeon". I'd like this light a lot better if it was a pure white one. Now, I don't mind a slightly bluish tint (the "HID look"), but the puke green is another thing altogether. I suppose the light could pass for "white" in the eyes of someone who is not used to looking at Luxeons (perhaps the non-flashaholics).

BTW, nice review of the MiniSTAR2 on your site, I read it while making the purchasing decision. The only thing we can't control is the Luxeon Lottery.

Having a "puke green" side emitter seems pretty rare, but I imagine it could happen. I just got a new version low dome that is distinctly aqua.

If my memory still serves correctly, don't the white luxeons shift green when they get too hot?

Curious, do you see a color shift from time zero to the first five minutes as it runs, when comparing against another light?

I think Luxeons will shift to a light sky blue color when overheated, not green.
But I've never tried to deliberately overdrive one of these LEDs to see what color it turns when it gets hot, so I cannot confirm this for myself.

I bought two of the $24.95ish 1AA Terralux promo lights, I found the output to be far less than I assumed I'd get [I've seen quite a few Luxeons and have the eyeball burns to prove it], the beams had star-like rays [not round]. I tried to perk up the lil' Terralux 1AA light with a 3V AA [1/2 a Duracell CR-V3] but stopped doing that after a few seconds of burning smell; the insert in the 1AA light has no heat-sinking to anything that I can see and was not engineered to be driven at 3V. Worse yet I'd told my brother-in-law about the light [before getting mine] and he bought one, oh well, he said it was fine to read by on their last camping trip [so was his Eternalight]. Today I traded with him, I handed him my recently modified 1AA Terralux w/ 1 watt red-orange Luxeon high-domed emitter, MUCH BETTER. [I'll find some home for the SE Lux eventually, maybe in a home-lighting project]. I sanded the rear of the Terralux-reflector until the HD R/O Lux would reach the focal point. The R/O Lux's lower Vf and theoretical 57 lumen output at 350ma...derated in the 1AA Terralux is still *quite* useful and bright. Frankly, I could have saved the Terralux 1AA insert for something else altogether and mod'ed the Terralux promo light to 3V AA direct-driving a red-orange Lux, I was in a hurry I guess.

Not trying to bad-mouth Terralux, I think all the manufacturers of drop-in LED modules will be hurting if they don't have other irons/innovations in the fire -- we're starting to see whole 2AA Luxeon flashlights under $30 that work great and dissipate heat better by design. Upgrading a few year old $10 M@g with a $25 item? Yah, the bulb won't blow when you drop it. The cheapest drop-in LED inserts I've seen "out there" cost about as much as a whole ~4-8LED voltage-boosted or direct-driven flashlight. Worse for drop-in makers, I've yet to see a drop-in on any hardware-store or WallyWorld/Target racks.. When I heard of Terralux I was excited that I could get a module that wasn't $40-$50 but rather 1/2 that. Now I'm thinking... yah but you get less light too. Terralux HAS gotten the Lux drop-in price down, and if you're hell-bent on buying a drop-in it's certainly brighter than the 5mm drop-ins. Now if they were in the Sharper Image catalog eh?
[I DO wish them luck]!!

I've heard about the blue shift from Luxeons, but not the green shift. Anyway, this Terralux SE is green from the get go, compared against my Surefire KL1 and another Q4H (supposed 'greenie') Luxeon, and it looks the greenest of the lot. The Q4H looks positively white next to it. Doesn't get any greener a few hours later during the runtime test.

And for $25, it's not likely to find a lot of followers. Heatsinking is poor, even in the 2AA MiniMag. The aluminium of the light isn't even warm, whereas the PCB the LED is mounted on is enough to cause some pain if held for more than a second. But then again we're flashaholics, gotta collect them all /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif