I have a new brand here for the channel with the Skilhunt M150 V3 Flashlight. This one surprised me how small but good it is. The optional Nichia 519a, and dual fuel battery ability is what initially attracted me to taking a look at it, but I was pleasantly surprised by lots of other aspects. It’s a well-thought-out light for a fair price. Thanks to Skilhunt for reaching out and sending this to me to review. Links to where you can find it and more info will be below.
Watch this review on YouTube:
Follow me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/liquidretro/
Join the Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/LiquidretroReviews/
Follow me on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@liquidretro1
Enjoy this review? Buy me a Coffee/Beer: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/Liquidretro
Find all my social media at https://linktr.ee/liquidretro
See my Amazon Store with my gear recommendations https://www.amazon.com/shop/liquidretro
Get the Skilhunt M150 V3 at https://shrsl.com/3vf4o
Or get it on Amazon at https://amzn.to/3vS7Row
Packaging & Accessories
The light came in a retail hanging box with lots of good information on the outside. Accessories included were the light, pocket clip, 800mAh 14500 button top battery, proprietary magnetic charging cable, Skilhunt branded lanyard, extra orings and the manual.
Construction and Design
The light is made from aluminum and anodized in 2 colors, a black and a dark gunmetal gray that I have here. The tail is magnetic and is the only part that unscrews from the body tube. The body tube has milled-in grip that’s effective and attractive. There are multiple retention options which I will cover in my next section.
The switch button and magnetic charging point are opposite each other on the head, and that’s a slight problem here, only because they feel very similar to each other. I found myself picking up the light and trying to press the charging point, not the button several times. You can of course press both at the same time and while this fixes the problem it not how I use any other light. I think instead it would be better if they added some to the cover on the switch so it felt different in your hand. The front has the smooth blue bezel, and recessed lens and light orange peel reflector.
Retention
There are multiple retention options for the light here. Starting with a lanyard you can mount it on the tail cap itself, or on the pocket clip. The pocket clip here is really what’s worth talking about. First you can mount it in two places on the light and it’s a dual direction pocket clip. It’s very deep cary when the clip is mounted at the rear, and allows you to easily clip it to a hat without a problem. The tip flares just slightly, so it’s not as likely to catch, and what I will call the front of the clip is angled nicely to assist in getting it over the material of your pants. This is one of the best clips I have seen on a flashlight in some time if you are ok with a non-captured clip.
Size & Weight
One of the things that surprised me about the light is the size. This is one of the smaller 14500 sized lights in my collection, especially considering it has recharging capabilities. With the included battery, and clip it came in at 2.08oz or 59g. Here are some comparison photos, as you can see it’s even shorter than some of the AAA sized lights I have.
LED & Beam
Subscribers (and I hope you are one) will know the Nichia 519a is my favorite LED of the moment. I was delighted to learn that it’s an option in this light and that’s what I went with in this example. Your other LED option is a Cree XP-L2. They mention a Samsung LH351D being available but it seems that was replaced with the 519a maybe?
On my Opple meter, I measured the light M150 V3 at 4127k, 98Ra (CRI). The tint is smack dab in the middle with no unexpected tint shifts. In the main modes and turbo modes on a 14500 battery, the light is constant current. There is some mild PWM on the lowest outputs. On the tactical strobe, I could visibly see the PWM, and it looked like a rolling shutter to my eye. The beam has a fairly large hotspot, and a medium amount of spill. I have no issue with it but wonder what it would be like with a TIR lens.
Outputs
A quick note on outputs here. The tables that Skillhunt show in the manual and on the website don’t mention the LED option that was tested but I can say with high confidence that it wasn’t the Nichia 519a because the output differences are substantial. In Turbo 1 the chart says the light should make 750 lumens, but what tested with this LED was about 410 lumens. Other reviewers measured similar numbers. This is something Skilhunt should really publish at least on their website. I don’t think it will cost them sales as most enthusiasts that are buying high CRI realize it’s not going to be the brightest LED available, and they are ok with sacrificing some output quanity for light quality.
Heat & Runtime
I’m finishing up my runtime testing here so I will insert graphs that you can pause and draw your own conclusions. My testing did show turbo outputs both T1 and T2 were good for the claimed 3 minutes before stepping down. High was able to sustain it’s output for a solid 50 minutes. You really do get the best performance here with the 14500 battery, output is 4X more, and the bulk of the output is over double the output. Tubo lasts about 1:24:00 with the 14500, and the maximum output with NiMH battery output was 2:45:00 but most of that runtime is sub 100 lumens. The highest temp I saw was about 36C.
User Interface
Being my first Skilhunt light, the UI here was unknown, and I typically like to just pickup a light and see if I can get it to work and while I did it, it didn’t work like I thought it should. But after looking at the manual which can be a little confusing I was able to figure it out and begin to like the UI. It’s a customizable UI with memory that’s not too extreme like Anduril.
So a few basics. Turning the light on with a single press will bring you into the main mode group in the last mode you used. Long pressing from off brings you into the ultra-low mode group. Within ultra-low you have 2 brightness options, that you can toggle between by long pressing. This same sub-mode group works with Turbo too, so turbo high, and turbo low if you will. So once you have the low end and the top end set you effectively have a 5 mode light that works like most others. Long press from Off to ultra-low, single press for your main mode groups where you long press to go up in modes in a 3 mode group, and then double press for turbo. Strobe is triple press from on, and it also has 3 strobe modes, tactical, SOS, and Beacon. Lastly, there is electronic lockout which is 4 clicks from off. The mechanical lockout also works well here at the tail cap..
Recharging
The light has built in recharging via a proprietary magnetic charging cable the light comes with. The contact on the light itself has a weak magnet on it, so I don’t think there will be as many problems on this design as other similar ones on the market. While the light does have the proprietary charging cable it uses standard button top protected 14500 batteries which is great for longevity. It’s also worth noting that recharging only works for liion 14500 batteries, not NiMH which the light can also run on.
I recharged the light from LVP at 3.253V to Full at 4.127V using the magnetic charging cable in right at 1 hour. Charging started off fairly strong at .8A not the usual ramp on, and peak charge was 0.95A, so just slightly over 1C in charging rate. The button on the light does give a power indicator when in use in 4 different states with 2 different colors.
It is worth noting that the charging cable that came with my light was defective. I emailed Skilhunt about this and they offered to replace it free of charge. Just bad luck I think on my part. I charged the battery externally without issue while I waited for it to arrive.
Conclusion
I’m impressed with the Skilhunt M150 V3, and it’s going to become one of my recommended 14500 lights. It ticks a lot of the boxes, with a great emitter option with high CRI, Nice build quality, compact size, the ability to use 14500 or NIMH or alkaline batteries, a great clip, magnetic tail and a UI that’s pretty good once it clicks for you.
I’m not the biggest fan of the proprietary recharging cable here, but I think the trade off of being more water and dirt resistant along with using standard batteries is a good trade off in my opinion. I would rather have a light I can buy batteries for easily in the future, and charge externally if I had to rather then proprietary batteries and cables that some brands with a similar color scheme have typically.
Overall this is a light I can and will be recommending. I’m curious to if you guys might have one, or one of the older versions, and if this is something you might add to your list of flashlights to pick up in 2023? Let me know in the comments below.
Get the Skilhunt M150 V3 at https://shrsl.com/3vf4o
Or get it on Amazon at https://amzn.to/3vS7Row
