Tag: everyday carry items

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Folomov EDC C2 Review (2022 Version, Cree XT-E, 14300)

Folomov is back on the channel after a few years break with their new EDC C2. It’s a very small “EDC” style light running a 14300 battery, and a Cree XT-E LED producing 525 lumens. I am going to try and keep this one short but still through. Thanks to Folomov for sending this to me to take a look at. 

 

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Pick up the Folomov EDC C2 (2022 Version) at  Amazon: https://amzn.to/36y3fdP 

 

Packaging & Accessories

The name of this light is confusing. So to understand this you have to understand that in 2019 Folmov released a small light called the EDC C2. The new light is has printed on it “EDC” however the marketing material and manual say it’s the C2. I asked Folmov about this and they said it’s the same name as the old but a different design, LED, UI, with a similar battery. A real head scratcher why they would call the two the same when they are similar but quite different. So prepare for confusion in the market place for the purposes of this review I am going to call it the EDC.

 

Packaging is a small retail box in orange and gray will all the relevant info on the outside. Included accessories are the pocket clip, the 520mA 14300 battery, 2 extra orings, manual and USB-A  to MicroUSB charging cable.

 

Construction and Design

The light is made from aluminum, anodized black, with no construction or anodizing issues. The overall design is basic, the tail is flat and non magnetic. There is no knurling on the light and all the surfaces are smooth. Only the rear tail cap is removable and it’s not interchangeable with the previous model. Internally only the rear has a short spring, the front is a brass post. 

The button is an eswitch, with a silicone/plastic cover, with no LED under. The front bezel is brass, very flat and holds in the diffused TIR style optic. 

 

Retention

Your main retention is the pocket clip on this light. It’s a captured snap on style clip, and is in a tip up configuration only. The clip has plenty of room for pocket material. Mine is secure however its slightly away from the body. The very end of the clip is flared out and this makes it easier to snag on things like a seat belt.

The you could attach a lanyard (Not included), although there isn’t a dedicated mounting place on the light itself, I think the idea is to attach via the hold in the clip. Not the most secure design. You could put a split ring here to attach as a keychain light but again not the most secure option.

 

Size & Weight

Length is 42.4mm, minimum diameter on the body is 16.1g, maximum diameter is 17mm at the head. Weight with battery and clip is 24.2g. The light is IPX 8 water rated and drop rated to 2 meters.

 

LED & Beam

The LED being used here is a Cree XT-E LED in a very cool white behind a TIR style reflector to diffuse the light. My Opple meter measured between 5400 and 6100k with a 77 CRI but to my eye it’s cooler then that, probably closer to 6500k. The beam coming out of the TIR reflector is fairly diffused with a huge hot spot creating the flood and minors spill. A good beam for EDC. PWM is very minimal on all modes and fast.

Parasitic Drain was measured at 135uA which is pretty significant. This was a problem with the previous model and this light actually has a slightly higher drain rate. That said Folomov says this light is still good for 166 days of standby, but my recommendation would be to mechanically lock out the light instead to avoid the drain issue. There is a pretty big jump between high and turbo here, other then that mode spacing is good. 

 

Official Output numbers

  • Turbo – 525 Lumens
  • High – 150 Lumens
  • Medium – 50 Lumens
  • Low – 10 Lumens
  • Moon – 1 Lumen

 

Heat & Runtime

For my Runtime tests I did my usual tests of comparing the percentage of relative output of the light while measuring runtimes here. Starting in Turbo it lasts a good 3 minutes before it starts dropping all while heat climes to 45C  out at the 4ish minute mark. Turbo steps down considerably and then starts a very linear decline starting at about 30 minutes. Runtime out to FL1 at 10% is roughly 1:20:00 however the light still produces light out to 5 hours, just very very little between 0-1% of relative output. LVP Kicks in at 2.806v.

I did the same comparison test but with Turbo compared to high output. High on this light is only 150 lumens so it was able to sustain this for longer, the output here is very linear so possibly not regulated or it didn’t make enough heat to actually regulate itself. FL1 is out to 3:20:00, but again it keeps running just making very little light out to 7 hours. 

 

UI

The light has a low, medium, high, turbo mode progression. It has a memorized mode feature as well. Double click unfortunately takes you to strobe instead of turbo. Once in strobe you can double click again to cycle between Strobe, SOS, and beacon modes. Personally I find these blinking modes unnecessary on a light this small and would have preferred a shortcut to turbo. 

 

Moonlight mode can be activated by long pressing when the light is off. To turn the light off from any mode you have hold the button for half a second. 


Recharging

The light runs off of a 14300 battery with a capacity of 525mAh. It has onboard microUSB charging built into the battery. 14300 batteries are not common, a quick google search doesn’t bring up any listings for them and Folomov doesn’t sell replacements direct but mentions their resellers may in the future.

Charging is slow here which is what you want. It took 1:53:00 to charge from LVP at 2.806v to full at 4.128v. Max changing speed I saw was about 0.26A. No problems detected with the charging curve. 

 

Final Thoughts

My final thoughts on the EDC C2 (2022 Version) is that it’s an interesting space to be in due to it’s size. It’s small enough yet functional that this would make a great keychain light, but it doesn’t have a solid keychain attachment point.

 

Unfortunately what I loved about the older Folomov EDC C2 was the warm (3000k)  high CRI (98 CRI) Nichia 21A LED. The new light however uses a far inferior LED in my opinion, as it’s low CRI and very cool white. It’s user interface is less useful for a light this size, with a double click going to strobe instead of turbo. This is a small enough light your not going to use it to blind someone and practically I don’t know anyone that actually uses strobe for signaling. 

 

The new light is smaller, has a better pocket clip, and a nice TIR reflector, while not giving up any battery capacity. It’s still plagued by the high parasitic drain though that the older model had. So I have mixed feelings on the new EDC C2, it’s not bad but I don’t think the sum of the parts are an improvement for me over the outgoing model, mainly due to the LED being used here. However I am a tint snob and prefer warmer tinted lights to cooler tint lights and that’s a personal preference and your opinion may vary. 

Pick up the Folomov EDC C2 (2022 Version) at  Amazon: https://amzn.to/36y3fdP 

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Nitecore HC35 Review (2700 Lumens, Quad LED, 21700 Battery, Headlamp)

Nitecore has a new large format headlamp on the market, with 4 LED, and a diffused lens. It runs a 21700 battery, and has onboard microUSB for recharging. While designed as a headlamp I am going to come at this one from the angle of a worklight too. Thanks to Nitecore Store for sending this to me to look at and review. I will have a link to them in the description below. 

 

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Packaging and Accessories

Packaging is a large yellow retail hanging box, with photos of the lights and lots of stats throughout. Inside the light and accessories site in a plastic shell.

Accessories include the HC35 with the Nitecore button top 21700 4000mAH battery (NL2140HP), pocket clip, Nitecore branded headband, spare o-rings, micro USB cable, manual, warranty, 18650 adapter. Somewhat strangely no extra USB port cover was included and I actually broke mine during testing. (My fault, not Nitecore’s)

 

Construction

The light is made from anodized aluminum, and machining here is pretty good. Starting at the tail cap, it’s flat, magnetic and labeled accordingly. The tailcap has shallow diamond knurling on it that doesn’t add a ton of texture but enough. 

The body tube features the same knurling and is not reversible. The clip only attaches at the head of the light. 

The light is attached to the headband on one side via a spring steel clip, similar to how a clip on clip works. It’s easy to take on and off and allows for the light to be attached without taking off the pocket clip (Nice) which makes charging easier but it doesn’t take a ton to make the heavy light come loose from an accidental smack or bump. For hiking or house work it’s ok, but I want to see something more secure ideally especially if you were caving/climbing with the light. That said when using this more as a work light rather then a headlamp it’s a handy feature to be able to remove it easily. I used it to change some brakes on a car recently and it was nice to pull off and use as an area flood light. For heavier duty situations a zip tie or even rubber band on the other end of the light would make it more secure.

The head features a fairly large lens, with the 4 LED’s under it. It has a optic sitting on top of the LED with a textured diffuser on top to really even out that beam pattern. Everything is surrounded by a silver aluminum bezel. On top there is a textured rubber button, with a pround silver bezel to help locate it. This does allow the light head stand. This button is a little hard to push if you have on larger gloves. On the back there are 3 deeply milled groves for heat dissipation. Lastly the microUSB port is on the light covered with a gray silicone rubber cover. The head has minimal labeling of just the serial number, model number and various regulatory symbols.

Size and Weight

I measured the length at 128mm, minimum diameter on the body was 26mm, maximum diameter at the head was 30mm. Weight with the battery, came in at 172.3g. The headstrap alone weighs in at 41g. This is fairly heavy. It’s a big headlamp, especially when you put it next it’s 18650 counterparts kind of like the Olight Perun I recently reviewed. 

Comfort when used as a headlamp is ok for a couple of hours. Past that the weight kind of starts to get to you in the forehead. Nitecore could add a bit more padding on the back of the bracket to help with this. I do like that the headbands webbing has ventilation holes. 

Retention

For me this isn’t a light I want to EDC in my front pockets, it’s just too big for that. The pocket clip can mount on either end of the light. When mounted nearest the head about 25mm of the light sticks up, when mounted at the tail, the clip extends past the tail and renders the magnet less useful. The balance point of the light is nearer the head so to keep from having to move the clip each time you mount the light to the strap, it really should go at the tail. 

LED | Beam Shots | Heat

The light is using 4x Cree XP-G3 S3 LED. Tint is pretty cool white. The S3 varient has less green tint, but at lower powers it’s still noticeable. The optics and diffuser here do a very good job of making the 4 leds one uniform floody beam. Perfect for this type of application. I didn’t detect any PWM via eye or my scope. 

Official modes and spacing are listed at 

  • 1 Lumen – Ultra Low
  • 40 Lumens – Low
  • 270 Lumens – Mid
  • 800 Lumens – High
  • 2700 Lumens Turbo, Strobe, Beacon, SOS

 

Runtime

This is really a light designed for longer outputs. Turbo starts decreasing at the 30 second mark and it declines pretty rapidly down to high at 800 lumens. This is disappointing that it’s so short, I would have hoped to get a couple minutes out of turbo output here given the size of the light and relative conservative heat values. From here it mostly maintains this while sagging a little for about 140 minutes, then over the next 20 minutes or so you see 2 large stepdowns and the light runs in low and ultra low for the remainder of time about 475 minutes, till it LVP kicks in at 2.947v. Heat was fairly well controlled, at 1 minute I saw 95F, at 5 minutes 97.8F, and at 10 minutes 101F. 

 

UI

UI here is different different, with fewer shortcuts. It’s a quick press to turn on, and then quick single presses to go up in brightness, and all solid modes are available, ultra low through turbo. Long press to turn off. You have short cuts to low when the light is off, a short press gives you 1 lumen. To directly access turbo from off press the button for more then 1 second. When the light is on there is no way to access turbo directly. 

 

To access the blinking modes double press the button when the light is off, then short presses changes the mode. Long press to exit blinking modes. 

 

Recharging

Charge time from LVP at 2.947V to Full at 4.12V on the included Nitecore 4000mAh 21700 battery was 2 hours and 41 minutes at a maximum of 2.1A via MicroUSB. Charge curve here looked normal, and I have no complaints. It’s nice here that with the included cell adapter the light will also charge an 18650 battery. During charging the blue LED on top will flash, and when charged it goes solid. This LED is also used as a voltage indicator when the light is in use. 

I do wish the light came with an extra port cover (my first time needing one due to my mistake). Also being a new design and a large capacity battery the light would see a benefit from USB-C.

 

Pro’s

  • Blinking modes are not part of the normal operating modes.
  • Very even diffused light but quite cool tint.
  • Direct access to low from off
  • Nice it can run off of 21700, 18650 and 2x CR123 with the included adapters. 
  • No proprietary cables or batteries needed, but it’s still MicroUSB 🙁

 

Con’s

  • Cree XP-G3 emitters isn’t what I would expect to find on something in this price range and I am not a fan of the tint.
  • Turbos 2700 lumen output has a very short duration, only 30 seconds.
  • Long press to turn off keeps tricking my brain. 
  • Wish it had an additional clip to secure the light in the headband for added security
  • Anodizing doesn’t seem to be the most durable, especially around the clip.

 

Conclusion

The Nitecore HC35 is a big bright light. I tend to think of it more as a worklight then a headlamp but it does both jobs fairly well. It’s a bit heavier than I want to use as a headlamp longer term, but what you pay for in weight you get in runtime. With the strong magnet and very floody beam it works good as a work light to stick onto a metal object or tail stand on it’s flat base. 

 

UI here is easy but different from a lot of other lights so I can see people fumbling a little around on this one initially. It’s different having turbo as part of your main mode. I do wish turbo could sustain itself for longer, 30 seconds just isn’t very long. Overall this is an interesting combination of headlamp and worklight. Let me know what you think of the HC35 in the comments. 

 

Full Image Gallery https://imgur.com/a/HWZh9yX

To purchase the Nitecore HC35 Headlamp, visit Nitecore Store at http://bit.ly/2HGp8rP