Pelican M1, M3 LED very disapointing

Received my M1 and M3 Pelican leds today.

First the good news, fit and finish and build quality are relatively good. The anodize is evenly applied, and no blemishes anywhere. Thread fit is a little sloppy though, as it grinds when tightening the battery holder.


Now, on to my major disapointment, beam quality. This has the same diameter head as the M6 LED as far as I can tell, but they only texturized the lower half of the reflector. The first clue was when I shined the lights on the wall, artifacts in the corona, outer hotspot, and hotspot. Rings in the center of the beam (hotspot region), and concentric lines and irregularities in the corona. My standard M6 LEDs are artifact free, so this is a big shocker to me. I feel that this is a fatal mistake on Pelican's part. The appeal of the M6 LED to me is the Surefire-like beam quality (in terms of no artifacts). This new setup is like having a 3-watt Maglite--good overall build quality but really bad beam.

The other disapointment is the switch. Its NOT momentary. Even more annoying, it doesn't feel particular sturdy or able to withstand lots of use.

I hope to goodness this new reflector change does not appear in the M6 LED too, especially in the HA-3 version. If it does, I'll be terribly disapointed.

Do the M1 and M3 throw as well as the M6?

How dissapointing! And I was expecting these to be good. So they both are bad? Even the single celled one?

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Mags said:
How dissapointing! And I was expecting these to be good. So they both are bad? Even the single celled one?

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Throw is good, its just beam quality that suffers. Its hard to compare throw to the M6 LED since they all have different cell counts and thus output. M1 says "26 lumens", M6 LED says "41 lumens", and M3 says "56 lumens". Having said this, they all throw well given their size.


The M1 is regulated according to the literature:

"DC-DC regulator maintains maximum light output throughout the entire battery life"

The M3 is NOT regulated, as it doesn't say this in the instruction manual. The M1 uses a "1-watt" led, and the M3 uses a "3-watt" led. Pelican does not state whether these are Lux I or Lux III.


They're not "bad" lights, but instead good lights that my opinion says are disapointing. I expected these to be M6 LED variants, but with weak switch and bad beam quality too important areas I feel are wasted.

Tint on both M1 and M3 are very good. White to my eyes.

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thesurefire said:
Do the M1 and M3 throw as well as the M6?

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Both throw well for their size. Given the different outputs, its hard to know if they match the M6 LED precisely. Overall, good throw my opinion says. Hard to say for sure if they throw as well as the M6 LED given each has different output (26 lumens, 41 lumens, 56 lumens). I think if the M1 and M3 were both running off 2-cells, it would be close (throw).

One other thing to note: both holsters come with spare battery pouch, which I find useful.

the switch is rubbing against the holster constantly and has come on in the holster. Why Pelican put the switch in an area that rubs against the holster is beyond my understanding. I fixed this by putting the light in the holster in just the right spot where it can't rub, but to do this requires careful attention and time.

I just received my M3. The beam has a slight green tint to it and the beam has a doughtnut hole in it. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon23.gif
Overall the build quality is excellent.

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ernsanada said:
I just received my M3. The beam has a slight green tint to it and the beam has a doughtnut hole in it. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon23.gif
Overall the build quality is excellent.

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I was lucky with the tint, all of my M1 and M3s have top notch tint. No donut holes either. Just lots of Maglite-ish artifacts (rings, blotches, voids, lines, etc). If the reflector was tailored to better beam quality, and the switch was a tail switch, I'd love these lights!

Does the M1 reflector appear to be the same size as the older M6 reflector? I have one of these coming my way also and I have an extra Pelican reflector from my M6 I could change out for the M1. I also thought this little M1 would be the same as the M6 in every way other than size. Any Idea why Pelican would do this?...I mean is there some advantage to having a half and half reflector?

I personally think that t was a mistake, I am in contact wth Pelican and I know that the have absolutely top-notch lights, great quality too. I think that the poster may have been unlucky. also, PELICAN USES THE HIGHEST QUALITY BINS, THEIR LIGHT IS AS WHITE AS PAPER. And I will contact Pelican to see why you guys are complaining.

-David

I live about 20 minutes from Pelican's Torrance California location. I sent them an e mail to see if they can exchange ny light for another one.

can we get some BEAMSHOTS of the new lights next to the PM6 so we can compare please?

-David

I've already taken the initiative and complained to Pelican (nicely). If they are good with returning online complaints, I'll let you all know their reason for using a half-textured reflector. This is NOT a mistake (of I being unlucky), as all the M1s and M3s I received have this reflector.

357: Do these lights have side-emitting or lambertian LED's? I ask because my Pelican 2630 headlamp has a half-textured reflector like you described, with a 1W side-emitter... The beam quality was quite poor, but swapping in a lambertian emitter brought it up almost to the beam quality of the M6 LED (and that was still with the half-textured reflector). I sent a nice e-mail to Pelican too, about their poor choice of emitters for the 2630.

The emitter has a dome (glass or plastic bubble on top of the led), so I'm guessing high dome. I don't know enough about LEDs to tell for sure though. The only way I can tell for sure is by reading the packaging, which I'll do.


I think I know why they are using only partial texturing....throw. The M3 throws incredibly far--I took them out now that it is nightime and am hitting trees well accross the four line road (over 175 feet away). Pelican is gearing this for throw, and must be willing to sacrifice beam quality. This will make the throw junkies happy, which is likely the majority of users. The M3 LED has more throw than many of my incandescents. And at far ranges, the beam quality doesn't become an issue. I suspect Pelican intends the M3 to be for ranges where beam quality is not a concern. Being someone that uses mostly at short distances, I'm just not use to the ringingness, voids, lines, and blotches in the beam. For long range work, the M3s will work nicely though. The M1s could really use the fully textured reflector though. They don't have enough throw for long range, and the artifacts really distract me at short and medium range. Maybe Pelican would be willing to sell me fully textured ones? I'll ask them this tomorrow.

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cheapo said:
I personally think that t was a mistake, I am in contact wth Pelican and I know that the have absolutely top-notch lights, great quality too. I think that the poster may have been unlucky. also, PELICAN USES THE HIGHEST QUALITY BINS, THEIR LIGHT IS AS WHITE AS PAPER. And I will contact Pelican to see why you guys are complaining.

-David

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Pelican quality is good, but no where near "top notch" my opinion says. Compare a Pelican to a Surefire, and I think 90% of the people can tell you which one has superior quality. Pelican does a good job of offering fair to good quality at great prices...but they have never been top-notch lights my opinion says. As far as bins, yes the bins in the Pelican (M6 LED especiallY) are very good. I don't know if they use the best bins, but from my Pelican collection the bins are definitely whiter than most lights, including many Surefires. Pelican does a great job of having a good percentage of whiter-tinted bins my opinion says.

The M1s and M3s bins are excellent from what I can tell, very very white. There are other areas of bins to measure too though (efficiency, forward voltage, brightness, etc), which I can't measure with my very limited knowledge of leds.

By the way, the spare battery holder in the holsters is VERY VERY VERY handy. Allows one to carry a re-load with the light easily.

I wish all manufactures offered holsters with battery holders, or at least holsters that just held spare batteries (then I'd carry the light on one side, and spare batteries on the other side) of my belt.

This thread is worthless without pictures!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Mike..

These partially texturized reflectors are also used by Streamlight in their TaskLight 2-L LuxIII Led series.
I can`t complain about beam quality of my Streamlight. I like it a lot! (Especially since it`s modded by Klaus! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif)
Wolfgang

They're also used in some of the Nuwai Lux 3 and Lux 5 multiple level lights. The beam quality is excellent with those, but they are very deep and increase the size of the light.

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gl22man said:
This thread is worthless without pictures!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Mike..

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M1 Muzzle:



M3 LED:





There is a problem of a website(s) using pictures our members post without the permission of the photo taker, so I'm going to leave my pics up only a couple days...