Tag: best keychain flashlight

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Wuben G2 Review (500 Lumen, P9 LED, Flat Keychain Light)

Wuben has a new flat keychain style light out with the G2. It’s a little different with the LED being on the flat side, with a wide large reflector, USB-C rechargeable, and can crank out up to 500 lumens in turbo.

 

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Pickup the Wuben G2 at https://www.wubenlight.com/products/wuben-g2-mini-flashlight

Use code “LRG220” to save 20%

 

Packaging  & Accessories

The packaging is a nice clear box, with the product labels being stickers on the top and bottom. Inside the box includes the light, USB-A to C charging cable, a gray plastic clip, and manual. 

 

Construction & Design

The G2 is flat light, with the reflector on the flat side. Its body is made from aluminum and is available in 3 colors currently, black, Blue, and Green which I have here. The ends are both plastics. At the bottom end there is a plastic keychain ring that twists on and off, it can be a little tricky to put back on. Under this is a magnet that is strong enough to hold the light vertically on a painted metal surface without an issue. 

In the middle is the P9 LED and TIR optic. On the sides there is the connection point for the pocket clip which I will talk about more in a minute. 

 

At the top is the USB-C charging port. It has a silicone flap covering it. It’s not a very tight fit. The light doesn’t have a dust or water rating as a result. This is an area for improvement in future versions. Next to the charging port is the switch. It sits nearly flush and I had no issues with accidentally activating it.

 

Retention & Size

Size here is 2.3” x 1” x 0.36” thick without the clip. Weight is 1 ounce without clip. There is no water or dust rating officially for the light. With that flap I think it would probably struggle to meet the standard specs.

Retention options include a plastic clip that clips on the rear of the light in some indentions. This isn’t necessarily a light or clip designed for front pants pocket EDC but more to strap on to a bag, hat, etc. The clip is stiff. It also has a split ring attachment that twists off to reveal a magnet underneath too. 

 

UI

The UI on the G2 requires a Long press to turn on when the light is off. This really mitigates accidental activations in my experience. The light has a memory mode to the last previously used setting. To adjust between the 4 modes when turned on, just press the button. The double press goes to turbo.

 

LED & Beam

The LED being used here is an OSRAM P9 LED. My Opple meter measured 6050k at 68 CRI as well as some PWM on high. The beam is mostly flood with a small hot center thanks to the TRI style optic. A good beam profile for up-close work for a light this size. 

 

Outputs, runtimes, temps

Official outputs on Turbo were 500 lumens, and I measured 437 lumens initially, with a fast decline in under a minute to around 190. High is rated at 200 lumens, I measured 190. Medium is rated at 65 lumens I measured 61 at 30 seconds. Max heat I saw on the body of the light was 36C near the end of the runtime. Total runtime starting in Turbo was 40 minutes as well as in High mode. Medium lasted out to 2 hours of runtime which is longer than quoted. 

 

Recharging

Internally the light contains a 280mAh lithium polymer battery. When I tested the capacity I got slightly more than this at about 314mAh. The total charge time here via USB-C was 1 hour. The light is USB-C PD compatible but you don’t get any benefits of the charging speed here with such a small battery. There is a small LED near the button that goes red when charging, and blue when charged. 

 

Final Thoughts

At less than $20 with my discount coupon, the G2 is a decent keychain light. I like the small thin nature, it’s smaller and thinner than most car key fobs and produces a good amount of light for its size. It’s smaller than some of the Nitecore lights I have like the TIP which is similar but larger than some of the Royvon lights. 

I don’t like that the silicone port covering the USB-C port is more of a flap. It’s not really a seal, and the light carries no water rating as a result. I did pour some water on it in the sink and it was ok, but it definitely won’t survive a full submersion. Hopefully, they can come up with a better cover in the future. 

 

It has a really broad floody beam but with a super small center hots spot, thanks to its TIR optic. It works for the close-range tasks it’s designed for pretty well. The cool white LED isn’t my favorite but it works. Overall a decent keychain light for the money.

 

Pickup the Wuben G2 at https://www.wubenlight.com/products/wuben-g2-mini-flashlight

Use code “LRG220” to save 20% 

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Lumintop GT Nano (Worlds Smallest Thrower?)

The Lumintop GT Nano is tiny, it’s modeled off the big BLF GT thrower that took 8 18650 batteries and came with a shoulder strap, the GT Nano looks similar but is smaller than your thumb. So you might be thinking something this small can’t possibly be functional right? Think again. 

This light was provided for me for free by Flashlightbrand.com a newer reseller based out of China. 

 

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Pickup the GT Nano from FlashlightBrand.com at https://www.flashlightbrand.com/lumintop-gt-nano-brass-everyday-carry-lights-450-lumen-keychain-flashlight-p3822334.html

 

10440 Tube https://www.flashlightbrand.com/lumintop-gt-nano-10440-tube-copper-brass-p3958893.html

Use Coupon Code LR10 for 10% off

 

Packaging & Accessories

Packaging here is a nice high quality box, and you get a number of accessories. Obviously the light itself, an 80mah button top 10180 battery, the recharger, a very short MicroUSB charging cable, split ring, lanyard and carabiner. There is an optional 10440 tube that you can purchase to run larger battery and more runtime but mine didn’t come with that. The light does come in black aluminum, titanium, and copper version too. 

 

I will note my light didn’t come sealed in a vacuum bag to prevent patina like Lumintop does normally. I asked FlashlightBrand about this and they said they open them up to make sure they are working…… I let them know this is not normal and my light arrived with fingerprints on it and scratches on the tail. All of the studio shots of the lights in the video were taken as the light came out of the box. Hopefully they stop this behavior.

 

Construction & Design

The Lumintop GT Nano is basically an exact clone as the larger BLF GT but just scaled down here significantly. I am not going into extensive descriptions here as the video and pictures will do it justice. There is a bunny logo on the tail inside the recessed area on the tail. The button here does seem large but that’s just because it’s such a small light. The front bezel does unscrew by hand easily it does have a AR glass lens and smooth deep reflector. Internally the head has just a center post, and the tail has reasonably long spring for the overall size of the light.

 

Retention

For retention you do have a small lanyard attachment point at the tail. A lanyard and split ring as well as a small keychain carabiner is included here. 

 

Size & Weight

I measured the length at 54mm, max diameter at the head at 24m, and diameter of the body tube at 14mm. 

Weight with the battery installed is 1.74oz or 49.4g. The light is IPX8 water rated.

 

LED & Beam

The GT Nano is running an Osram Flat White emitter the actual model is a CSLNM1.TG quite a mouthful. It’s a great choice here. On my Opple meter measured a CCT of 7289 and CRI of 71. Neither are very surprising. 

The beam pattern here isn’t the most beautiful but for what it is it’s ok. You have that very hot small center, and then in the spill there is a notable ring and some minor artifacts further out. It’s no surprise there is PWM here it’s pretty fast, here are some visualizations. 

The driver here appears to be unregulated with the manual warning not to exceed 2.4A of draw. With the 10140 battery this isn’t an issue, but if you do buy the 10440 tube make sure you throw a battery of the proper maximum output in or you risk damaging the driver. With the LED under the switch and such a small battery it would be best if you mechanically locked the light out when not in use. 

Official Outputs are listed at 450 lumens with a throw up to 300 meters;. 

 

Night Shots can be found in the video version of this review.

 

Runtime & Heat

With an 80mAh battery in this configuration runtime were never going to be anything super impressive. That said I feel like a maximum useable runtime from turbo of 24 minutes is decent. The brightest of that output lasts for the first 8 minutes as you can see in the graph. The peak in temp was about 38C after about 8 minutes. The brass here does a good job of holding heat. . 

I did a second runtime test in stepped mode 3 of 5 so a medium output and it was able to hold the brightest of that mode for 17 minutes before stepping down and ending at about 28 minutes. 

 

UI

The GT Nano is running Narsil M version 1.3. Narsil is kind of old firmware at this point and something I haven’t seen on a light in a few years. It’s nice firmware but kind of complicated with all it’s different configuration options. I won’t go into those but I will link to a chart that explains it. 

http://bit.ly/narsil-cs

What you need to know for the GT Nano is it ships in ramping mode. Ramping mode is good, and fast. You can change it to stepped mode if you wish which is how I tested in my runtime graphs but for general operation I prefer ramping. Switching between them is easy, with the light on press and hold for about 3 seconds the light will flash twice pause, and then blink once. It’s easiest to then just let the light exit programming by putting it down for about 45 seconds. 

 

Recharging

The light comes with it’s own charger and it’s neat how it works here. It looks like a lanyard bead with a MicroUSB port on the inside but upon further investigation the end with hole unscrews and you actually unscrew the tail of the light that holds the battery and then screw the side with the USB port into the tail of the light with the battery and your in business. The white plastic dome is the charge indicator here, red charging, green charged. This only works with the 10180 battery, if your running a 10440 you need your own charger. I am using my Vapcell S4 Plus because I can manually select a low charge speed of 250mA. 

For an 80mAh battery, you want to charge very slowly, and it does this at 0.09A, so charging here takes about 90 minutes. LVP was measured at 3.33v and full at 4.14V. 

 

Final Thoughts

A lot of tiny flashlights are gimmicks but the Lumintop GT Nano is the real deal. I am frankly quite amazed at how well this actually works. It throws an impressive distance especially for it’s size. Most of the time throwers are larger because that larger head works better for throwers, but here its quite small. That said with an 80ma battery your run times are very short and for that reason it kind of is a gimmick, so for that reason spend the few extra dollars and make sure you get yourself the 10440 tube too so you can increase that runtime. 

Pickup the GT Nano from FlashlightBrand.com at https://www.flashlightbrand.com/lumintop-gt-nano-brass-everyday-carry-lights-450-lumen-keychain-flashlight-p3822334.html

 

10440 Tube https://www.flashlightbrand.com/lumintop-gt-nano-10440-tube-copper-brass-p3958893.html

Use Coupon Code LR10 for 10% off