Tag: Banggood Review

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Astrolux MF01 Mini (5500 Lumens, 7x SST20 LED, USB-C Recharging (Kind of))

Astrolux has gotten into the multiple LED flood and secondary LED’s with the MF01 Mini I have before me here. It’s available in 5 body colors, 3 material choices, and 3 LED tints with a high CRI option I have here. Thanks to Banggood for sending this to me and providing my viewers a discount. Make sure you check the description below if you are interested in this 5500 lumen light.

 

YouTube Version of this Review:

Get the Astrolux MF01 Mini at Banggood for $45.99 with Coupon code BGMF01Mini at http://bit.ly/340Nczj 

 

Packaging & Accessories

Packaging is consistent with other recent Astrolux lights. A white box with minimal info on the outside other then the lights name and a silver line drawing of the light. Inside things are packed nicely with foam for protection. Accessories on this one include the light itself, A basic lanyard, and 2 adapter tubes for 21700 and 18650 batteries. No charging cable is included here which is disappointing considering this light requires USB-A to USB-C. 

 

Construction

My MF01 Mini is made from Aluminium and has clear anodizing. They offer a variety of colors including black, olive green, a tan/gold, and gray. They also offer a special edition in Brass, copper and an aluminum copper combo. Machining is average, a few tool marks can be found on flat surfaces, they are smooth to touch and nothing wrong for a light in this price category.

The light tail stands well with the flat base, and the lanyard hole is at the base. Inside it has large stiff dual springs, this allows it to accept 26650, 21700, and 18650 batteries with the included adapters. Rattling was a small problem with the 18650’s but not an issue with the larger cells. The body tube has a crosshatch knurling patterning put on.

The head grows in diameter some, it has 4 gills milled in on either side for cooling. The switch is domed and sits prowd. It’s a silicone button and has texture on top. It has LED’s underneath to indicate charge status like other Astrolux lights. Opposite the button is the USB-C charge port. It’s covered by a silicon port cover and includes an area for the tab to sit. It’s out of the way no issues. The bezel on my light is aluminium however a stainless steel one is available for extra durability. There is a glass lens on top of the 7 LED optic. Underneath the optic you have the daughter board with the secondary LED’s. The light is IPX7 water rated, and I had no issues running it under a stream of water. 

Size & Weight Comparison

This is primarily a 26650 light, but other similar sized batteries can be run. I measured length at 112mm, Minimum diameter on the body at 33mm, and maximum diameter on the head at 44mm. Weight with a 21700 battery installed was 254.6g.

The Fireflies E07 is a similar light also with 7 emitters and secondary LED. It’s smaller in diameter and lighter then the MF01 Mini, but the MF01 Mini does a better job of dissipating heat. That said the Mini can run 3 different battery types which is handy. 

 

LED | Beam | Runtime

The MF01 Mini is using 7X SST20 LED’s. My example is using the 4000k tint, but 5000k and 6500k are also available. With the 4000k tint, the CRI is 95, less so on the cooler tints. The SST20’s have a bit of a reputation for having a bit of a green tint, especially at lower powers and that’s pretty apparent here. Andril firmware is great but it also means the LED’s can be driven very low and this is where the green comes out. At higher powers the tint is pleasing to me, it’s no Nichia 219 but not bad either. The beam is floody, with ever so slight hot spot in the center. For a floody light it throws decently well. 

The light also has secondary LED’s in 3 colors, under the optic. Green on the outside, blue in the middle, and purple/pink in the center. These LED’s are on all the time the light has electrical contact.They are somewhat adjustable if you take the bezel and optic off there are 3 pots where you can adjust the brightness of each up to a point. There is a current limit so it’s better if 2 of the 3 are bright.

Runtime

I did my long duration runtime test with a Keeppower 5200mAh 26650 battery since that’s really what this light was originally designed for. It does fit 18650 batteries and 21700 with the included adapters. Total runtime here with this battery was just shy of 400 minutes. 99% of this time was at about 15% relative output.  Turbo output is good for under a minute on this light and it continues ramping down fairly quickly.

Heat on this light surprised me, I expected it to get quite hot based on other lights I have that are similar hot rods but that isn’t the case in my example and it’s a bit of a problem. So heat at 1 minute was 81F, at 5 minutes was 83F, and at 10 minutes 82F. The problem with this the light will start stepping down pretty quick. After I calibrate the light this should improve and allow the light to stay brighter for longer with the byproduct being heat. Low voltage protection kicked in at 3V. 

 

UI

This light is using Toykeeper’s Anduril UI. It’s currently one of my favorites available as it has a ton of options and neat little easter eggs that commercial UI’s don’t include. By default the light comes in ramping UI which is where I left it. The ramping is fast and logical. A stepped mode is available that you can configure as well if you prefer. 

The light has thermal controls, you can configure beacon mode, as well as 5 types of strobe including candle mode, party strobe, and lightning storm. You access these with 2 taps and a hold, and then two taps to change modes inside this group. Candle and lighting mode are my personal favorite. How practical these are could be a point where one could argue, but I like that they are present and it just makes things fun. Due to how you access these strobe modes I would not call the light a tactical UI or tactical light as you have to remember a series of presses and pauses to get there. 

 

Personally I find the UI to be easy to use for what you want to do most often, but a little more complex to get to those modes you don’t use very often. This is a UI where you should take a look at the manual or at least the graphical manual for the UI and spend some time playing with your light to get the most out of it.

 

Recharging

This light has an onboard USB-C port for recharging, however it doesn’t support USB-C to USB-C cables, meaning you have to use a USB-A to C cable for recharging. For me this kind of defeats the purpose of having USB-C. Charging was reasonably fast, I charged my 5200mAh Keeppower 26650 battery in 3 hours and 30 minutes at a max rate of 1.85A. The battery stopped charging at 4.19V.

 

Pro’s

  • 5 colors, 3 tint’s available in Aluminum, Copper, Brass options are also available
  • High CRI (95)  available with the 4000k tint option
  • Versatile battery options with this light (21700, 26650, 18650 all work and the light includes spacer tubes

 

Con’s

  • Only support for USB-A to USB-C Charging. Doesn’t work for C to C.
  • With great power and lumens comes heat! 
  • The SST20 LED’s in my example have a pretty green tint at lower outputs

 

Conclusion

Good competition for the Fireflies E07, Pretty good value at around the $60 mark normally or about $46 with my coupon in the description at the time of this video release. I enjoy secondaries on lights like this. They use minimal power and make them different from the competition. Overall a pretty good value light, hopefully Astrolux and other flashlight manufacturers will soon allow their USB-C lights to use C-C cables! Make sure if you decided to pick this one up, to take advantage of the color options here both in body color and tint. Let’s support one less black flashlight! 

 

Get the Astrolux MF01 Mini at Banggood for $45.99 with Coupon code BGMF01Mini at http://bit.ly/340Nczj 

Full image gallery can be found at https://imgur.com/a/AGU2g8L

Banggood is also having some other #BGBlackFriday sales you may be interested in below.

 

From Nov 27th – 30th

Black Friday:  http://bit.ly/2OnCmwJ

Saving Tips:  http://bit.ly/37cNPYB

Carve up $1,000,000 Bonus:  http://bit.ly/2rT3aNz 

Home Garden Outdoor:  http://bit.ly/32TftGE

 

Groupbuy link: 

XANES® 1282 XHP70: http://bit.ly/35czCZM

Amount: Need 20 persons

Groupbuy price: $14

 

XANES 1102 L2 5Modes: http://bit.ly/3415AYQ

Amount: Need 2 persons 

Groupbuy price: $6.99

 

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FiTorch ER16 Review (1000 Lumens XP-L2, 16340,18350,USB Recharging)

FiTorch is a newer brand to me and this is the first light I have looked at from them. It’s designed for EDC use, has onboard charging via micro USB, magnetic tail cap, and a deep carry pocket clip.Thanks to Banggood for sending this to me to take a look at.

Full Image Gallery https://imgur.com/a/vswz9

YouTube Version of this Review:

Packaging
Packaging is a black orange retail style box complete with a hanger. On the rear you get lots of details such as lumens, runtime, battery, and other ratings. Inside you get the light itself in a plastic try along with the accessories including the deep carry clip, lanyard, branded belt holster, and one oring. The holster is made of black nylon, is branded with a sewn in flag. It’s belt loop is fixed, and it doesn’t have an oring. It’s sides are elastic so it fits the light well. You will need to be careful with button placement so you don’t accidently turn it on.




Construction
This light is made from aluminum that’s hard anodized black. Machine is above average quality and inline with the price of the light. The tail cap has circular groves running around it as knurling with 4 pockets milled in to provide extra grip This light unscrews in the middle which is a little different from many. There isn’t any knurling on the body tube but it has enough cuts to provide grip. Threads were nicely greased and fairly fine. For a light of this size it has quite a few threads.


The front end of the light a hexagonal area milled out that contains the button and USB charging port opposite the button. This are is milled out to act as a heat sync The button itself is flat and metal, it’s a floating style button. I do recommend using lockout with this light if your going to carry it in a front pocket. Around it is a small clear bezel with multicolor LED’s under that acts status indicator for power level and onboard battery charging. Further forward is a smoothly milled area where the emitter and lens are.

The bezel is not removable as a front piece itself, itls a larger component and it’s lightly crenulated. The lens itself is anti reflective coated glass. The reflector smooth and fairly deep, and the emitter is nicely centered.


This light is rated for a 16340 battery but there is quite a bit of extra room in the tube when your using a 16340 so I decided to try a flat top 18350 that I had on hand. I had to add a magnet in the center of my flattop to make the light work again because of the physical reverse polarity protection built in but it will work and there is still a bit of extra space left in the tube. With the 16340 battery installed I didn’t have rattle because of the pretty strong spring in the tail.

The light has a strong magnet that very easily holds the light’s weight on a metal surface both horizontally and vertically. No weak magnets here, it’s the way it should be. It’s strong enough that it holds the battery in place too even though there is a spring in between.

93.3mm in length, 27.7mm at it’s thickest (Button) and 23.7mm at it’s thinnest.
Weight with my KeepPower 16340 is 91.3g
Water Rating is IPX8

For a 16340 EDC light it’s a little bigger than I expected. For a front pocket EDC the more lights I test the more I have determined diameter is one of the most important factors and the ER16’s is just a little bigger then I would like. If you have an Emisar D4, it’s pretty similar to that in diameter and length. Lengthwise the ER16 pretty decent. This being said it carried nicely in a couple pairs of jeans. I really liked the clip on the ER16. It’s sturdy and deep carry to where there is almost none of the light showing above your pocket, exactly like I like.

LED + Runtimes + Temps
The ER16 uses a Cree XP-L2 LED in cool white, defined hot center. Output on turbo is 1000 lumens. Medium is 340 lumens, medium is 100 lumens and low is 3 Lumens. I would like to see high be a bit higher and low be a bit lower under ideal circumstances. The beam has a definite hot spot with a decent amount of spill. The light throws better than I expected too. Easily out too 100 yard which is pretty good for this size of light.

Runtime
For my runtimes I used a Keeppower 800mah 16340 battery and an Aspire 1100mah 18350 for comparison. Turbo lasts for about 5 minutes on the 16340 decreasing as voltage drops. It’s more stable on the 18350. The light does step down as you can see from the graph. It’s making usable light out to about 90 minutes. With a 18350 medium lasts a bit longer but the biggest difference with is how much longer low runs for. It makes usesable light out to about 150 minutes before entering low mode at 3 lumens. If you can use an 18350 instead of a 16340 do it, because there is almost no penalty in doing so.

UI
The UI of this light goes as follows Turbo > High > Mid > Low > Turbo. It’s unfortunate it starts in turbo. I think this limits it’s practical EDC use because many times you don’t want to start off at 1000 lumens. There is memory but it’s pretty short in how long it remembers. You can double click to get to strobe and single click to exit that mode.

Lockout is accomplished when the light is off pressing and holding the switch and the indicator will briefly flash red letting you know its locked. Doing the same thing will unlock it and low mode will come on in the main beam.

Voltage check is well done on this light. From off triple click the button 3 times in a row. First you get green flashes showing the first number of the voltage so 3 would be 3 volts then you get red flashes showing the next digit. So 3 green 1 red would be 3.1V.

Charge Graph
This light has onboard USB charging via a micro USB port on the body. As I mentioned earlier the unfortunate thing is that this microUSB port is buried deep requiring a longer then average cable to recharge. For me this kind of defeats the purpose of MicroUSB recharging if I can’t use a standard cable. The light can charge at 1A but it didn’t hold there for to terribly long only about the first 30 minutes before it started slowing as the battery (800mah Keeppower 16340) reached capacity. Terminating voltage was 4.1V. Total charge time was 1 hour and 9 minutes.

Pro
*Quick charging for a 16340
*Fits 18350’s by surprise, nice for extra capacity
*Sturdy deep carry clip and a strong magnet
*Throws well for an EDC light

Con
*Extra deep micro USB connector means most standard cables won’t work for recharging.
*Wish the UI would start on low instead of Turbo.

Conclusion
The FiTorch ER16 has some pretty stiff competition in this size and use case. For me the ArmyTek Prime C1 probably wins out due to it’s slightly thinner profile and button that is less prone to accidental activation. However the ER16 throws further and has a smoother beam profile over the Prime C1 Pro. My recommendation for FiTorch is that they make the UI start on low, and not recess the microUSB connector quite so far so that you could use a standard cable to charge it. If you don’t mind these things the ER16 is a nice light that charges pretty quick and has a strong magnet. It will work well in an EDC application for you.

You can pickup the ER16 on Banggood if you have any questions please let me know below.