Blatant "marketing hype"

Quickbeam

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Blatant \"marketing hype\"

Just thought I would share another case of blatant "marketing hype" with everyone regarding a 3 Luxeon Star LED dive light. Got an e-mail asking about this little critter:

http://www.fa-mi.com/ecommerce2/prodotti2_1/inscar_var.asp?KeyPro=157

3 x 3 watt Luxeon dive light. 4 AA batteries. 8 hours runitime (3 hours high, 3 hours med, 2 hours low). Note however, the output claim:

40 WATTS

Hmmmm..... Last time I checked, 3 x 3 Watt Luxeons = 9 Watts

Price? 269 Euro or 332 US$ OUCH!

Guess they had to come up with SOME way to justify that price tag. 40 Watts... yea, right.
 

raggie33

*the raggedier*
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Aug 11, 2003
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13,546
Re: Blatant \"marketing hype\"

rofl.even beter 40 watts on 4 aa batts and 8 hour runtime
 

gessner17

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Dec 29, 2003
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Re: Blatant \"marketing hype\"

one of the CPF ers has one and reviewd it, about a month ago.
 

Kiessling

Flashaholic
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Nov 26, 2002
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Old World
Re: Blatant \"marketing hype\"

it was nobbe. hope he'll chime in, would be interesting.
bernhard
 

pyro

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Aug 22, 2003
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Location
Germany
Re: Blatant \"marketing hype\"

i think they claimed to have output aequivalent to
40 watts incandescent lightning...

still way to optimistic, as the LEDs are even not
driven to spec.
 

KevinL

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Jun 10, 2004
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At World's End
Re: Blatant \"marketing hype\"

I was looking through the specsheets of two manufacturers recently and I was amazed at some of the ratings they assigned to their lights. These are some of the more decent manufacturers too.

Case #1 was a 1x123 lithium powered light, that they said would produce 35 lumens for 90 minutes. I'm a big fan of the Surefire E1e and that only produces 15 lumens for 90 minutes, so I'm wondering how they got so much more out of the light. It seems extremely unlikely for SF to 'depower' a light, knowing them their motto is hardcore brightness, runtime be damned (from the people who brought you 500 lumens for 20 minutes). So how come this light seems to be able to produce so much more light at the same runtime? There are ways to get this kind of output from a 1x123, most involve Luxeons, BB step-up converters and they will pound a cell to death in very much less than 90 minutes. One of the numbers is definitely wrong.

Case #2 was a 4xAA light that I saw for myself. Specsheet says 38 lumens. In a shootout under real power outage blackout conditions with fresh cells on both that and my E1e Exec, it was hard to tell who had the brighter light while we were trying to get power restored. This was many months before I read the spec sheet, but I remember being quite impressed that the tiny little light could keep up with this bigger light. Now I've seen the claims, I'm wondering how accurate can they be.

It casts a shadow on the rest of their lumen ratings too - it makes me ask, how many of their other lights are mis-rated?
 

kongfuchicken

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Dec 21, 2003
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Santa Cruz, CA
Re: Blatant \"marketing hype\"

[ QUOTE ]
Quickbeam said:
8 hours runtime (3 hours high, 3 hours med, 2 hours low).


[/ QUOTE ]
Mmmh... /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/jpshakehead.gif
 
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