Tag: 18650 headlamp review

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Skilhunt H04 RC Review (Nichia 519a, Headlamp, 96CRI)

The Skilhunt H04 RC has been out for a few years, but what’s new here is the LED that’s fairly new being offered, and that’s the Nichia 519a. You know I’m a fan of that LED and I can tell you it makes a great choice in a headlamp for close-up work with it’s neutral tint and high CRI. Thanks to Skilhunt for sending this to me to look at. 

 

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Get the H04RC at https://www.skilhunt.com/product/h04-rc-usb-magnetic-rechargeable-led-headlamp/ 

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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, 3500mAh 18650 buttons top battery, proprietary magnetic charging cable, Skilhunt branded 3 piece head strap, lanyard, extra o’rings , mesh bag, and the manual. 

 

UI

The UI on this version of the Skilhunt H04 RC has been updated from previous versions. It’s similar to what I saw on the M150 V3. 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.

 

Construction

The light is made from aluminum and hard anodized black in a semi-gloss shine. The tail is magnetic, strong enough to hold the light in the horizontal position on a painted/powder-coated surface with the strap attached, but barely. The tail itself is mostly smooth. The light comes into 2 pieces, tail and body/head. The body has shallow milling for texture. 

The head itself is pretty typical of other right-angle flashlights. The lens is round however there is a flush metal bezel that’s square. The lens has texture over top to somewhat diffuse the light. On top you have the recharging contact for the proprietary charging system. On the left you have the button which sits slightly raised. It’s a silicone button surface, semi-transparent and is used as a power level indicator and recharging status indicator.

 

Retention

You have 3 main retention options with the H04 RC, a lanyard, pocket clip and the 3 piece headband. 

The pocket clip itself is press fit and is designed to fit, just under the head. It is pretty tight but can rotate. It’s a good clip as far as tension goes but not what I would consider deep carry as a little over 1.5cm sticks up beyond the clip.

The headband comes unassembled on the H04 RC and no directions were included on how exactly to assemble it. I did find a video on Skilhunt’s YouTube page showing how to do this and it was very helpful. The headband itself is made of good quality elastic, on the inside, it has a silicone band to help it stay put, on the outside it has some reflective pieces The plastic mount itself has no padding like you see on some other brands but I didn’t find this uncomfortable during use working on my car. What I really liked was that the mount is designed to work with the pocket clip still attached to the light. This is the way it should be done. There is also a lanyard that comes with the light, and it threads at the back of the light.

 

Size & Weight

I measured the length at 101.5mm, the diameter of the body at 21.2mm, largest diameter of the head at 24mm. The weight of the headlamp with clip, and without the head strap came in at 3.69oz, and with the strap, it grows to 5.45oz. The light is IPX 8 water-rated and impact resistant to 1 meter. 

 

LED & Beam Shots

This Skilhunt H04 RC is running a Nichia 519a which is best known for it’s pleasing tint and high CRI. On my Opple meter, I measured the tint at 4211k, and 97.5Ra (CRI) with no DUV shift. This is pretty much perfect for my preferences. I would also call it a constant current driver, without PWM on the multiple modes tested. 

The headlamp here is using a TIR optic with texture on the outside and the resulting beam pattern is a large even beam without a pronounced hotspot. The spill is minimal. In the use of the headlamp, I found the beam to be maybe slightly too narrow for the automotive work I was doing, and I found myself manually adjusting the angle of the light a few times more than I would have expected. 

 

Runtime

I will let the graphs do the speaking here, but in general, the outputs are less than Skilhunt claims and I think this is due to them not updating their runtime charts for this new Nichia 519a LED that’s inside. The result is turbo can last to nearly 3 minutes, but you’re starting at about 620 lumens.  Peak heat was about 43C so very reasonable temps. Turbo 1 and Turbo 2 runtimes were in the 3:30:00 runtime range, High out to 5:22:00, and Medium one all the way out to 14:30:00. 

 

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 18650 batteries which is great for longevity and future replacements or spares. My tested capacity of the included cell was 3455mAh of a rated 3500mAh. 

I charged the light from LVP at 3.074V to Full at 4.185V in just shy of 5 hours. This is pretty slow for a 3500mAh 18650 battery. The peak charging speed was 0.95A but this was a peak, and most of the charging speed was well under that as you can see by the graph. The button on the light does give a power indicator when in use in 4 different states with 2 different colors. 

 

Conclusion

This is a great little headlamp when you are prioritizing light quality over quantity. Skilhunt really should publish official numbers when they put different LED’s in their lights, because they claim 1000 lumens, but this is clearly for a different LED than the example I have in this review that I measured at approximately 620 lumens. It also creates the mode spacing that isn’t ideal. 

That said I really enjoyed using this headlamp, and I suspect it will become my new default when i’m doing closer-up work or something where CRI is important. This isn’t the headlamp ill pick to snowblow in because I likely want more output for longer periods of time. It’s a headlamp I can definitely recommend if you don’t have one already.

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Lumintop HL3A Headlamp Review (2800 Lumen, 18650, Multiple LED)

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