this seems cheap

50 hour burn with 28 leds??

http://cgi.msn.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=16037&item=5148373106

Remember that it might be exactly what its worth.

Also remember that advertising hype may not be worth the paper its written on.

If you look at other lights with big groups of LED's, many of them do have long runtime. With standard LED's like this it appears that of the total runtime, the first 10% might be bright and the other 90% might be real dim. It seems to me that those LED's will suck those little AAA's dry relatively quickly. Compare this to a Petzl Tikka with 3 LED's that runs 150 hours total on 3AAA's. Nine times as many LED's won't run just 1/3 as long.

To me these real cheap lights should be viewed as an experiment or as an adventure and not with the expectation of receiving a quality light.

Don't forget to look at the shipping charge...$12 in your example.

I see the same seller is also selling a two set for just $9.99 like the first example. But the shipping charge is now $24. In a roundabout way you are saving some money here on a gamble of a light.

Like bjn70 says, using 3AAA batteries will be 10% bright and 90% unworthy of your eyes. It could be regulated then you would have a 100% mediocre beam for less time.

For the same price, you can get a 3watt 3aaa Luxeon torch
with a reflector, I got on at ebay, I was quite suprised
at how bright and white it was. There a quite a few floating around ebay

I bought an XNova from an eBay user and added a 19 LED 3xAAA light just to check out... It was surprisingly bright... It will light up a room considerably more than an Inova X5T. And the clickie is very strong. Can't say much more than that but I was impressed for the price.

As others have said, with these kinds of lights, just assume you're going to get a piece of junk that barely works... Anything beyond that is gravy.

/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif

Assuming about 900mah avaliable from alkaline AAA batteries, 28 LEDs at 20ma (~560ma) means about 1.5 hours of full output. It's not regulated, so you won't maintain full output for long. It's going to be very dim after 50 hours. Think of 900mah/50 hours/28 leds = .64ma per LED, not enough for usable light, IMO. And it won't be that good since it is highly non linear (about like the 10% bright, 90% dim mentioned by others.

Did I read XNOVA AA here? /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

It is still one of my favorite lights. I'm having another batch sent from China. I found using only the electronics in the lights, a little Dremel cutting and the addition of a Lux emitter makes the Xnova electronics great drop-ins for 1,2 or 14500 Li-ion MiniMag lights.

OK, back to your regularly scheduled thread now.