Reylight has a new Pineapple Mini available in Raw copper with a Nichia 219B R9080 LED. This light has the same milling profile as found on the brass Pineapple that Reylight may be best known for, but is an entirely new design from the Previous Copper Pineapple Mini made several years ago. That light was a twist design, where as the new Copper Pineapple Mini is a tail click design. Full disclosure, Rey at Reylight is a friend and sent me this light to evaluate and review. I will do my best to remain impartial and give an honest review.
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Packaging and Accessories
The arrives in a clear plastic bifold box. The light itself is vacuum sealed in plastic to prevent a patina to form on the raw copper during shipping. ReyLight offers the light for sale with a 320mAh 10440 battery preinstalled if your country allows such a thing. The only other accessory that comes with the light is the pocket clip which is preinstalled. No manual is shipped with the light, but some directions are available on the ReyLight website.
Construction
The light is made from Copper and is delivered raw, with no coatings to inhibit or slow the natural patina from forming. The surface texture of the copper is what I will call a machined finish. It’s not perfectly smooth or a mirror polish and there is a slight feel of tool paths on the light if you drag your fingernail across the surface. I think I will probably end up hand polishing mine up after this review and then letting it patina naturally.
Starting at the tail cap you have an extended button with a place milled in the middle for a 1.5 x 6mm tritium tube. Tolerances on this button are quite a bit better then other Reylight Lan/Pineapple lights. There is no rattle and much less side to side movement when pressed. The tail is removable and inside you will find a rubber boot for waterproofing the switch action. Inside the switch/spring assembly itself is fixed in place in the body.
The body itself is milled to look like a smaller version of the Reylight Pineapple. If the light is standing up the horizontal edges have been chamfered a bit much like on the Pineapple, but the vertical milled reliefs are more 90 degrees. These give the light more purchase in your hands and but not so much that it will cut you or damage clothing. It’s a nice way to give the light more grip without being too aggressive.
The head here is fairly basic, with some horizontal groves milled in similar to but a smaller and shallower version of what’s on the body. The front bezel is smooth, and the lens is recessed with a GITD oring. The reflector is relatively deep for it’s size and has a very light orange peel on it.
Retention
The Pineapple Mini 2019 is using a generic pocket clip not specifically engineered for this light and as a result I think that retention is a little compromised here. The pocket clip is not reversible and only attaches at back end of the body tube. It’s a clip on style and seems very tight. It doesn’t easily rotate and is stiff to pull off. For me the clip on the new Copper Pineapple Mini isn’t perfect. I wish it had more space at the top for thicker pocket material, and a little deeper carry. I think both of these combined with possibly a little more stiff button or forward clicky switch would help with it not coming on in my pocket accidentally. That said it’s only happened twice in the week plus of carry. That said a few people have been trying various other clips on the Reylight Facebook group and the best I have seen is the clip from FreeLux on the Synergy 1 flashlight.
Size & Weight
I measured overall length at 89mm, maximum diameter at the head 15mm, Minimum diameter at the body at 12mm. Weight with a 10440 battery and clip came in at 60.7g.
Peer Comparisons
When I initially saw the light on the Reylight Facebook page I thought it was a bit long for a AAA light given the size of the old Reylight Mini Pineapple but the action of operations were different on the two lights. That said after getting it in hand it’s nearly identical to my copper Olight i3T which is also a tail switch light. Clip location relative to the top of the tail is super similar too. The olight is about 10 grams heavier. The older Reylight Copper Mini Pineapple is similar in diameter due to it’s different mode of operation.
LED | BeamShots | Heat
The LED here in use is the Nichia 219B R9080 at 4500k and it’s a tint snob’s and high CRI fan boys dream LED. Output isn’t up to modern standards but what it lacks in output it makes up for in quality! These are fairly difficult LED’s to get a hold of in a decent quantity as I believe they are no longer produced. The tint here is a good mix between neutral white and warm, but it’s a little rosy pink in color. CRI measures roughly at 97. I think I am going to see if I can get my hands on a few more of these to swap into some other lights as it’s just a fantastic LED in my opinion. Reylights the maximum output with a 10440 battery at 300 lumens.
The beam is well suited to EDC use, it has a traditional beam profile, with a slight hotspot of higher intensity and then some spill. Cut off is fairly hard here. Good for general use of a light of this size and output.
Runtimes
The light can run with a AAA or 10440. From my runtime here you can see that performance is much better from a 10440 since with a AAA you get a very brief amount of bright light before a large step down for a long time. I used the 320mAh that Reylight makes available as an optional purchase with the light for my tests. I was running in mode 2 (Factory Default) at 100% output and the highest output was good for 1 minute before the light stepped down to about 30% relative output. From here it was a pretty linear decline decline making me think it most likely has an unregulated driver. Total runtime was just over 80 minutes on the 320mAh battery. Heat is a non issue with this light due to it’s rapid step down.
With the 750mAh AmazonBasics NiHM battery maximum output was only good for 1 minute and then it stepped down to about 18% relative output. It ran for longer then I expected and I ended up stopping the test at the 220 minute mark before I went to bed. Outputt here was a good deal less. My recommendation would be to run the light with a 10440 as your primary power source and use a AAA or NiHM as a backup power source only.
I measured LVP on the 10440 coming in at 3.116V and on the NiHM at 1.04V.
There is a little bit of PWM in the light but’s quite minimal and only something that’s showing up in my scope.
UI
The Reylight Copper Pineapple Mini is using a reverse clicky switch for it’s operation with 4 available operating modes and then a variety of options. The driver also features high temp protection, LVP, memory, mode progression options (LMH, HML), Moonlight On or Off, Memory on or off, and the ability to set it back to default.
The light doesn’t come with a manual, but Reylight Facebook group member Kevin Manley created this programming guide and said I could republish it here as well. A big thanks goes out to him.
For me I turned on memory mode and moonlight mode. I will throw a link to a PDF I created to make this a little more better visually formatted as it looks complicated but with the light in hand and a little practice it’s not too bad.
Pro’s
- The LED tint is just really nice here.
- Raw Copper!
- Small narrow profile and good purchase in the hand.
- Better tolerances in the tail switch assembly.
- Several output options, and pretty programmable especially for a small light.
Con’s
- I have had some minor issues with the proud tail button coming on in low mode in my pocket.
- I wish the pocket clip allowed for deeper carry and a bit of a thicker pocket material.
- Driver seems to be very conservative on temps and is really more optimized for use with 10440 batteries as opposed to NiHM or Alkaline.
- Driver is glued in place.
Conclusion
If you are a raw copper fan or tint CRI/Tint snob you can buy this light and enjoy it just for these reasons alone. The LED here in use is relatively rare outside the custom or modified flashlight world, they are hard to come by in large quantities but are absolutely lovely in terms of tint (a slightly rosy 4500k) and super high CRI at 97. It really makes plants and other colors pop.
The original Mini was a fun light with it’s small size and raw copper but it’s driver had some issues. The new one here fixes those issues and adds a tail button instead of twist operation. For me the clip on the new Copper Pineapple Mini isn’t perfect. I do hope Reylight offers a custom clip for this light in the future.
It’s nice to see a light with so many mode options on a small light. For me the default Mode 2 option works pretty well and I think this is where I will leave it. Overall this is a fun little light and one I am enjoying quite a bit. If your interested in checking it out I will have a link to where you can get it from the Reylight website down in the description below.
Full Image Gallery: https://imgur.com/a/bMkQal3
Purchase the Reylight Copper Pineapple Mini from Reylight Direct: http://bit.ly/2UDFFok
