INRETECH AA MiniMag Adapter review

I received 2 deep blue minimag adapters from INRETECH the other day, and all I can say is that these things are DEFINITELY worth the 20 bucks apiece I paid for 'em! I ordered the deep blue because I thought they'd have a pretty good "wow" factor...and I was right. First of all, each of them has a distinctly different color from the other. One of them is about the same color blue as a PAL Survival blue I own. The other one is so deep blue that it appears to be more purple than blue...FAR more! It's so purple in fact, that it makes a lot of the fluoresceable items in my house fluoresce as well as a black light. I'm not complaining about the color variances, mind you, because it actually worked out perfect...the bluer one went in my wife's blue minimag, and the purplish one went in my purple minimag...kinda neat! But that may be something for the folks at INRETECH to look into. I may in fact have gotten a regular blue one and a deep blue one instead of two deep blue ones. Anyway, these things are BRIGHT!!! Since they're luxeons, I expected them to be pretty bright, but for as deep as the colors are they're MUCH brighter than I expected them to be. The collimater used in the mod kit provides a much tighter focus than I would have expected. At a distance of about 15 feet, it makes a VERY bright spot about 3 feet in diameter with excellent peripheral light. When I first put the module in the lights, I used a set of nearly dead alkalines per the included instructions. Even with the weak alkalines, they were pretty bright. After I finished putting the rest of it together (the entire mod took all of 2 minutes...) I loaded it with lithium AA"s, and KABLAAAM!!!! They were brighter than my highest expectations! As with any colored LED, the beam was a little splotchy, but a little WriteRight fixed this right up. I had debated for a while as to whether I wanted an INRETECH drop-in or an Opalec for my minimag. Since I already owned 3 3-LED lights, I opted for the INRETECH, because I only have 1 luxeon flashlight (ArcLS1 rev2). From a light-producing standpoint, I'm glad I did. The INRETECH blows away any 3 LED light I own. I know that comparing a luxeon to 3 5mm Nichias is "apples and oranges", but even with the deep color of this thing, it's even WAY brighter than my Inova X5.

Anyway, to wrap this up I just want to say "KUDOS!" to Mr. Boyd and the folks at INRETECH. They have an AWESOME product, especially for the $$$ tag...and I WILL be doing more buisness with them in the future!

PJD

I'd like to add that Inretech offer the highest standard of customer services.
Very professional.

COOOOOOL!

I have a deep blue InReTECH module on the way and I was having second thoughts about ordering it.
Looks like I have nothing to worry about.

Thanks for the review.

I was thinking about the red InReTECH drop in kit myself, would use it as a tail light on my bike at night. My BB500 mag will eat the batteries (regulated) and I can use the half-dead ones for the rear red lights.

Then again, a white InReTECH would be nice to have with lithiums to throw in the car... would last a long time and deal with cold better. Now to figure out what I would do with a blue one.

Thank you for your kind words

The Blue and the Deep-Blue are VERY close in color

Blue 460nm
Deep-Blue 440nm

And I guess we were off by 20nm when we shipped your product, but it seems that it worked out for the best

Everytime we show off our products, people seem to point them directly into their eyes and we have to quickly say "no, don't do that" - since most of them are used to a dimmer light output

Even while "playing" with our products; we get exposed to the "Dalmation Effect" (You see spots)

We are shipping as fast as we can; we will be shut down during the Christmas Holiday week thou

Happy Holidays and safe travels

Mike

nice. Should be moved to Reviews forum

PJD

If you are pleased with it now, I can imagine you'll be even happier with it in a months time when it's been used every day and it's still bright on the same set of batteries! (Lithiums)

The Inretech 2 aa white has been my EDC since I got it just over a month ago, it's been used every day and is still brighter than my Black Diamond 4 LED headlamp with fresh batts by a long shot.

Definitely not a light you have to worry about wasting batteries, if it's bright when you go out at night, it will be bright when you come back in the morning.

BentHeadTX,

The Red Adapter is remarkably bright. I would avoid using the Cyan in traffic though, the color is an almost exact match for traffic signal "green" lights. I don't want to think about the confusion that could be caused.

Mine came today but I'm not impressed.
Looks to be blue and not a "deep" blue. My X5 and Arc AAA 5mm blues are the same color. The X5 is about three times as bright as the InReTECH.
I'm using alkalines because there looks like little or no heatsinking.

You happy folks must be using Lithium AAs.

There was some mixup at the production house, since the two LEDs are very very close in color.

Let me send you a replacement
email me your information to

[email protected]

And I will make it right

InReTech,
Thanks for the heads up on using Cyan lights, never thought of the "green light effect" Any idea when Luxeon will get the white ones working past 500 hours? Maybe I should just go with the 500 hour jobs and use them until the "real" ones are released in a year.

Mike,

How does the 2AA minimag in green work with alkalines vs lithium? I like green lights, but don't want to be running at half steam, either.

also happy with my 2 white adapters. one is fed lithiums, one alkalines. tried the 2ncell and 1 aaa and got brightness comparable to my arcls1, but read this was not recommended. also my replacement collimators came with the "o" rings and made a huge improvement as far as being a solid unit. the little black snap top case that the collimators came in make a perfect holder for my arc ls 123 pack with battery in place! i love my inretech's !!!

The normal traffic lights are Incandescent 66w bulbs and are routinely changed every 6 months

The LED replacement is approx 120 LEDs

The GREEN ones have 95% Green LEDs and 5% Blue LEDs in them to give them that "bluish tint"

Portland has just about changed over all the Red/Green Lights to LEDs now

JohnG, Alkalines, huh?? That's the problem, unless the info warns you not use lithium AAs.

Originally posted by BentHeadTX:
Any idea when Luxeon will get the white ones working past 500 hours? Maybe I should just go with the 500 hour jobs and use them until the "real" ones are released in a year.

Click to expand...

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">If you're talking about just a 1W luxeon, then no need to worry. Various sources put the longevity of the 1W whites at 100k and 10k hours of life. Even the 5 watters have been upgraded to 1k hours.

And remember, we're not talking about emitter failure here. I believe that the number is the number of hours the emitter is at least 85% of it's initial brightness, so it's not like your light will suddenly explode or anything.

--Scrimmy

Anyone tried using 2/3 AA Nimhs in those minimags with this adapter?

JohnG...USE LITHIUMS!!! Heat will NOT be a problem. I've used lithiums in mine from the time I got them...I've used them a LOT and there's been no problem with heat. The difference in mine between alkalines and lithiums (in terms of brightness...) was significant!

PJD

I suspect that if you had a stack of fresh lithium batteries and kept changing batteries every 30 minutes while isolating the adapter away from any way of shedding heat, the adapter would probably pop after spending only $100 on batteries. Or you could just get some jumper cables and hook it up to your car battery if you are impatient. So far, lithium batteries have not caused a failure. In all likelihood, someday this failure will occur when a particularly strong set of lithium battery starts pushing a particularly weak emitter. When that happens, please let us know. We have a lot of experience in failure analysis and are intrested in improving our products. We can also spot jumper cable burn marks a mile off.

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