Are you a fan of the FW3X series of lights but ever wished there was a right angle version you could use as a headlamp and had a magnetic tail? If so, your light has arrived, with the Lumintop HL3A, in a nutshell it’s a right angle version of the FW3A. Thanks to Lumintop for sending this to me to review. Since I have reviewed several other FW series of lights I will try to keep this review a bit shorter.
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Packaging and Accessories
Packaging of the HL3A is similar to the other FWXX series of lights, but larger because of the additional accessories. It’s a brown retail box with a line drawing of the light on the front but limited technical info. Inside accessories include an extra o’ring, pocket clip, and a nice headband. The headband here is nice, it’s a 3 piece design and the elastic has the silicon grip material around the inside.I especially like the orange accents, it really brightens up the light and helps with visibility too.
Construction
The light is made from aluminum and is hard anodized in a fairly flat black. Machining here is good, what I expect from Lumintop. The tailcap here is magnetic and quite strong. It’s a one piece design with the body tube and features a small lanyard hole. The body piece has a square stubbled knurling that looks almost milled in place, it’s fairly aggressive for a headlamp. The threads are long on this model, raw, and square cut.
The head is kind of large to accommodate the 3 LED’s. It sticks out a ways from the body, more then most of your typical right angle lights. There are very shallow reliefs milled into the sides and tops, more for style then heat dissipation I think. Inside there are springs on either side of the battery. The button is large, and flat on the top of the light. It’s an electronic switch and presses easily and it should work with gloves well too.
Size & Weight
I measured the length of the light at 81mm, diameter of the body at 23.4mm, and length of the head at 34mm. Weight for the light with a battery without the clip is 102g.
For an 18650 headlamp the HL3A is quite short and small yet the head still has a decent amount of thermal mass. However this makes it less suited for pocket EDC in my opinion. The head just sticks out further then I want. That said the magnetic tail here is a nice addition and it’s quite strong.
The headband is good as mentioned before, it has an orange silicone mount for the light. While you can unthread the head while on the mount to change the battery it’s more difficult than removing the light itself.
LED & Beamshot
My example of the HL3A here is running three Cree XPL-Hi Cool White at 6500k. I like the XPL-Hi emitter but Cool White isnt my favorite tint. Thankfully there are other LED’s and tints available including Cree XP-L HI 5000k, Nichia 219C 4000k, and SST20 at 4000k. The XP-L Hi’s produce the most peak lumens at 2800, the Nichia’s about 1600 lumens.
The beam is using a Carclo style optic here, the specific part number isn’t mentioned but it does a good job of creating a flood. Good for even diffused light up close and decent amount of distance too at higher outputs. No complaints here.
Runtime
For my runtimes I used a Sony VTC6 battery. The light will accept button tops or flat top cells but for max output I would recommend a non protected battery and the light is using factory calibration. On turbo the HL3A instantly starts stepping down in output, possibly quicker then any other light I have measured. At the 30 second mark where the FL1 standard is, it’s making significantly less light than it does when you turn it on, but here is where I set the 100% of relative output. At 1 minute it’s making 50% of this value and at 2 minutes it’s making 20%. Here it remains stable for 7 hours of runtime before stepping down a few more times and running at its lowest mode. LVP here isn’t a defined value, just the lowest output. If you decide to purchase this light just expect the bulk of the output to be about 20% of it’s claimed peak value. That said this is more than enough for most close up headlamp tasks.
Maximum temps I saw during my runtime was 35.2 (95F) degrees celsius at the 35 second mark.
UI
The UI here is standard Andruil, and I think it ‘s pretty well suited to a headlamp. I will link to my FW3A review in case this is your first time seeing Andruil and include the diagram below. It looks a little complicated but once you get a hang of it, it works pretty well
Mechanical lockout here isn’t an option due to those exposed threads and single tube design.
Pro’s
- Small and Compact
- Andril firmware allows you to really set the light level where you want and need it for optimal runtime.
- Several LED’s and tints to pick from.
- Magnetic Tail
\Con’s
- Max output starts decreasing almost instantly
Conclusion
If you need a headlamp with a lot of output for a very short amount of time with a good UI and good build quality the HL3A is a good choice. To me it’s disappointing how quickly it starts to ramp down in output that’s true of most of the FWXX series of lights, so it’s not surprising. That said I like the rest of the light quite a bit. Andril adapts itself well to a headlamp with either the ramping mode or stepped modes.
The Carclo style optic gives you a nice even beam that you can even customize if you wish by swapping it out. Modding potential here is pretty good as you can get easy access to the LED’s through the front. Other emitter mods, turboglow are all options here too. I think the reliability here should be pretty good too due to the design changes vs the FW3A. It has a single tube design, and no tail cap issues because there isn’t a tail cap. The head also has retaining rings inside so there is less to move around and cause an issue.
So if you love the FW3A and wished there was a right angle version to use it as a headlamp, this is your light. Go check it out.
Full Image Gallery: https://imgur.com/a/8namuJR
Pickup the Lumintop HL3A at http://www.lumintop.com/hl3a.html