Today I am taking a quick look at the Wurkkos FC13 a 18650 light running an SFT40 LED and Anduril 2 firmware. It features a colored bezel and RGB button on the side as well as onboard USB-C charging. Thanks to Wurkkos for sending this to me to look at and review.
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Get the Wurkkos FC13 at Amazon at https://amzn.to/3zloXwQ
Use code 6ZXGKK9W to save 20% off either the SFT40 or XHP50 version. Valid until April 10 2023
Packaging & Accessories
Much like Sofirn, Wurkkos has recently gone through a packaging quality upgrade. Now you have a nice white magnetic fold-out box with a full-color photo of the light on the front, a description and spec chart on the back and the specs of the exact model you ordered on the end cap. Inside you have an Olight-style yellow card with first-time startup instructions telling you to remove the insulator inside the battery compartment.
Accessories that are included are the light itself, a 3000mAh button top 18650 (Standard), USB-A to C charging cable, Pocket clip, Lanyard, bag of extra orings, and a manual.
Construction
A few notes on construction, the light is made from aluminum and hard anodized in black. At the current time that’s the only color that’s being offered. The light comes into 3 pieces, the tail is flat and nonmagnetic. The tail cap has minimal milling, the clip is designed to attach at one point, and the body tube has some milling for style and weight reduction over anything else. Threads are anodized, square cut and nicely greased.
The head features a large relief cut for the silicone button that stands slightly proud. The button is smooth in texture and has areas where it’s thinner to allow the LED underneath to shine through and display it’s many colors. The USB port cover stays out of the way. The bezel is flat, and there is an orange aluminum accent piece holding the glass lens and a heavy orange peel reflector in place.
UI
The light is running Anduril 2 which I won’t go into depth about as I have covered it in the past and it’s pretty complicated. If you don’t know the firmware you will want the diagram to help you learn. It does have ramping UI by default or you can switch it into a 7 step stepped UI.
The only thing I can say is I have had quite a bit of difficulty getting the standby LED color to change, but I can replicate what that should look like by locking out the light and showing you what that looks like.
For more info and the firmware diagram check out https://ivanthinking.net/thoughts/anduril2-manual/
Retention
The pocket clip appears to be nearly the same model as what was on the TS21, with the only difference being mainly where the hole is for a lanyard attachment. On the FC13, I would call this a good clip, it’s fairly deep carry, dual direction and didn’t hang up on my jeans pocket in any way. I do recommend you use mechanical lockout though so there are no accidents. You can attach a lanyard on the flat nonmagnetic tail cap or on the clip itself.
Size & Weight
I measured the length at 114mm, the minimum diameter on the body at 22mm, and the maximum diameter at the head at 27mm. Weight with the clip and battery came in at 121.9g or 4.3oz. When I compare it to a few other Wurkkos lights I have the FC13 is right in the middle length-wise between the TS21, and the FC11. The head is more on the size of the TS21 though.
LED & Beam
The FC13 is available with Two LED currently, a Cree XHP50.2 at 5000k and a SFT40 at 6000k which is what I have. On my Opple meter I measured the tint on a medium output power at 5783k, and 66CRI. Tint was just ever so slightly green very hard to notice in my eyes. There is PWM here as it’s an Anduril 2 light. The beam here is a small hotspot with minimal spill. This is what we would expect from the flat-top SFT40 LED in my example.
I measured the parasitic drain when the LED is on in high mode at 5.50mA, (Milliamps) and on low the button pulled 156uA (microAmps) and with the button off 46.2uA (Microamps). So as cool as the RGB button LED is, on it’s brightest mode it will drain the light in less than a month, so I would recommend turning it to low or off (or mechanical lockout by unscrewing the head or tail a ¼ turn).
Outputs
Since the light runs Anduril 2, you don’t have normal stepped modes like most other lights have, instead you have ramping and 7 different stepped modes plus Turbo, so for output testing, I only tested a few. For the SFT40 version of the light which I have on my Texas Ace Lumen tube, I came up with 1640 Lumens on Turbo and 640 on what I will call high. On it’s lowest output it’s sub lumen.
Heat & Runtime
Turbo on my light ran for about 3 minutes before stabilizing with a few steps to get there from the nearly 1800 peak starting lumens. During this time heat peaked at about 46C on an uncalibrated light at the 90 second mark. With the longer runtime graph you can see as heat dissipates the light does increase in brightness too. Total effective runtime is around 3 hours. With a runtime comparison of Turbo with lower modes we can see running at about half power gives far greater runtime lengths out to 13 hours or so.
Recharging
The light features onboard USB-C recharging. I found the port to be recessed a little deeper and access to be slightly tighter than average. The result was the light was pickier about the cable being used to charge it. Charging from LVP at 2.834v to Full at 4.150v came in at 2:11:00 with max charging speed being 1.2A. It’s a very flat charging curve that tapers down at the end. The LED in default mode starts orange and blinks when charging and goes solid when charged but remains orange. You can use the light when it’s charging, but you will only be able to use it in it’s lower modes.
The light also works as a powerbank for your USB-C Devices. I didn’t test any runtimes on this other than to verify it worked with my Samsung S22 Ultra smartphone.
Conclusion
I wouldn’t call the Wurkkos FC13 a successor to the well respected and often recommended FC11 for a few reasons. While the price is very favorable, and the performance is good, the Anduril 2 UI isn’t as easy to use for a lot of people as the FC11’s more standard UI. What I would say the FC13 is, is a good choice for enthusiasts who want Anduril 2, and more throw than the FC11 has in situations where a high CRI isn’t important. The RGB LED in the button is fun, despite being a bit difficult to change in my example. Overall a good light for the right application, but maybe not quite a universal across the board recommendation like the FC11.
Get the Wurkkos FC13 at Amazon at https://amzn.to/3zloXwQ
Use code 6ZXGKK9W to save 20% off either the SFT40 or XHP50 version. Valid until April 10 2023