Hi. I’m looking for recommendations for a dedicated reading headlamp which would be easy on the eyes - even flood light, warmer light temp, relatively low output. So mostly the reverse of typical headlamp, I think :)

Im thinking about purchasing 3x21c lhp531 with batteries included. This model: "Amprius INR21700-5000Q 5000mAh" seems to be the best balance in capacity, power output and price. Is there some kind of drawback? Im seeing everyone buy molicel p45b or p50b but Its much more expensive

Looking for a rechargeable lantern for my parents. Folks are in their 70's so nothing with a complicated UI. A couple brightness settings would be good. I'd like something they can just leave plugged in until they need it. I'm pretty flexible on price.

Thanks!

Proper happy with all of these, I’ve seen people complaining about ReyLight’s QC but these seem beautiful. The Seeker and the M21B are already favourites and I’ve not had them long!

Does anyone think this torch is saveable with a vinegar bath or another method to remove the corrosion? The torch has been out of action for a couple years and would love to get it working again.
Would also need a new battery, I have heard the battery is proprietary on the magnetic chargers, could I use a standard 18650 and charge out of the torch?

Banana for scale.

My first thrower! Fun!

This Wurkkos tripod works fine with the tiny CL01 lantern but is at its limit with the TS27.

Just recent purchase of Wurkkos TS27 and HD03, totally different sizes and fun to use.

Full disclosure: I bought this light with my own money because I thought it would be good and I was right. I wrote this because I want to share my experience.

Correction: The emitter in this X1S is the FFL5009R, not the FFL5009D as stated in the title. Reddit doesn't allow title edits. Thanks to u/macomako for catching the mistake.

About a month ago I bought a Fireflies Lights Z1 Artemis with the FFL5009R 3500K Rosy emitter, and overall I've been incredibly impressed with it.

I've been a Nichia/high-CRI guy for a long time, and the emitter in the Z1 is painfully gorgeous. More importantly, despite being a full enthusiast Andúril light, Firefly absolutely nails the two things that matter underneath all the flashlight-nerd stuff:

This is a solid object.

This is a great flashlight.

So naturally, I immediately bought another one.

This time: an X1S Pharos with the FFL5009R 5000K NW.

Unfortunately, I am an obsessive person.

I noticed that the X1S comes in both TIR and reflector versions. Then I noticed Firefly sells the parts separately. Then I discovered there was also an LLC25R super-narrow TIR.

Well, obviously I needed all three.

So I ordered the TIR X1S, the reflector, and the last LLC25R they had in stock. One host, every optical configuration. This seemed completely reasonable.

Then a day passed and my order hadn't been processed.

This was unacceptable, because I had also noticed something important: I had apparently ordered the last LLC25R.

So I emailed Fiona and begged her to please make sure I got the last one. I explained that it was my birthday (which it actually was) and asked her to please send me the last French optic.

Three hours later, I had a shipping confirmation.

The LLC25R was mine.

And that is how an X1S Pharos review became an optics test.

First Impressions

I received the X1S Pharos in Firefly's new hardshell case, along with my collection of additional optics.

The first thing that struck me about the X1S was the size.

For a 21700 light, this thing is compact. At approximately 119.5 mm long and 122 g dry, it feels substantial without feeling oversized. The 6063 aluminum body and excellent machining give it that wonderful solid object quality I liked so much about the Z1.

It feels like a piece of equipment.

And visually, the X1S in matte black HAIII with the stainless PVD-coated bezel looks like a piece of military equipment from the future.

Not modern tacticool. Future military.

The Colonial Marines have issued you the MX1S ILLUMINATION DEVICE, TIR.

REPORT TO DROP BAY AT 05:00Z.

It's a very good-looking flashlight.

If someone had shown me this thing 25 years ago and said, "In 25 years, this is what SureFire will be making," I probably would have looked at it and said:

"Sure."

The Optics

Here's where the X1S gets particularly interesting.

I have three optical configurations for the same light:

• Standard TIR
• LLC25R super-narrow TIR
• Orange-peel reflector

And remarkably, all three are good.

They just turn the X1S into three slightly different flashlights.

Standard TIR

The standard TIR gives the X1S something like a pocket-thrower personality without making it a dedicated thrower.

There's a defined, useful hotspot with real reach, but enough surrounding light that you can still walk around with it. You aren't looking through a pencil beam at the world.

That makes it an excellent general-purpose field configuration: a personal light that happens to have some legs.

If I could only have one optic for the X1S, the stock TIR makes an extremely strong argument for simply leaving the damn thing alone.

LLC25R Super-Narrow TIR

But I didn't leave the damn thing alone.

I begged a woman for the last French optic on my birthday.

The LLC25R takes the existing personality of the X1S and turns the throw knob considerably farther to the right.

The beam almost looks projected. It's extremely defined, extremely clean, and I don't see the weird artifacts or distortions that can sometimes appear when you start pushing a TIR toward this kind of narrow beam.

It's still recognizably the X1S.

It just wants to see what's over there.

Way over there.

Orange-Peel Reflector

The OP reflector may actually be the most interesting alternative because it turns the X1S back into something resembling a traditional high-performance flashlight.

It appears to give excellent candela and throw while producing considerably more spill than either TIR.

Firefly also did something clever here: the reflector uses a transparent centering gasket, so the auxiliary LEDs remain visible and functional.

The result may be the best configuration for someone who wants a conventional flashlight beam—strong hotspot, useful throw, and lots of surrounding illumination.

I don't think there's a bad choice among the three.

That's unusual.

More importantly, Firefly letting you buy the parts and change the personality of the light yourself is exactly the kind of enthusiast-friendly design I want to see.

The Beam: FFL5009R 5000K

The FFL5009R 5000K was a deliberate choice.

My Z1 Artemis uses the FFL5009R 3500K Rosy, and that emitter is almost offensively pretty. It's warm, rosy, high CRI, and makes everything look good. It's exactly the kind of emitter that makes flashlight people shine lights at walls and then nod approvingly at them.

The X1S is doing something different.

The FFL5009R 5000K is a neutral-white, hig5h-CRI emitter in a light that I intend to actually use as a field light. I wanted good color rendering and a clean tint, but I didn't necessarily want the heavily rosy character of the Z1.

And that's what I got.

The beam is clean, mostly neutral, and extremely usable. The FFL5009R does have a slight rosy bias, but it is hard to notice. Colors look like colors. Browns, greens, reds, wiring, painted surfaces, dirt, vegetation—you aren't fighting an ugly green cast or having everything washed into the same low-CRI approximation of reality.

At 5000K, it also feels appropriately daylight without becoming the cold blue-white that used to define high-output tactical lights.

This matters more in the X1S than it does in something I carry primarily as an EDC light.

The X1S has enough output and enough reach that I can realistically use it to examine something at distance. At that point, color rendering stops being an enthusiast checkbox and starts becoming useful information.

What am I actually looking at?

The FFL5009R lets the optical system do the dramatic stuff while the emitter mostly gets out of the way.

That's exactly what I wanted.

Three Optics, One Light

This is the part I really like.

These aren't three slightly different pieces of plastic that only a flashlight nerd could distinguish while shining them at a white wall.

They materially change the light.

Stock TIR: general-purpose field light with reach.

LLC25R: compact thrower.

OP reflector: hotspot-and-spill thrower.

And all three work.

That's useful information.

It's also exactly the sort of modularity I want from an enthusiast light.

Aux Lights and Andúril

The auxiliary LEDs are noticeably dimmer through the X1S optics than they are on my Z1 Artemis.

I'm completely fine with that.

The Z1 Artemis is EDC jewelry.

The X1S Pharos is, at heart, a field tool.

And this is where some of the things I used to consider Andúril toys suddenly become remarkably useful.

A bright 21700 light with configurable signaling modes isn't just amusing. It's equipment.

The beacon mode, for example, has configurable intensity and interval. I can configure the X1S to emit a bright flash roughly every ten seconds and have a perfectly serviceable location beacon.

Or I can shorten the interval to roughly 1.5–2 seconds and lower the intensity, producing something much more suitable for maintaining visual contact from a distance or potentially from the air.

There's also the pulsing beacon, which immediately struck me as useful for marking a dock, landing point, campsite, rendezvous point, or other fixed location.

These aren't hypothetical flashlight-party tricks anymore.

Put them in a compact, efficient 21700 field light and they become capabilities.

Then there's Power-Off Voltage Display.

Lock the light out and the auxiliary LEDs can indicate battery state while the light is sitting in your gear. No meter, no clicking through menus, no wondering how much cell you burned the previous night.

Look at the light.

You know.

That's good equipment design.

And, yes, it can still do candle mode.

Correct Design

That's what keeps standing out to me about the X1S.

There are a tremendous number of things going on here: Andúril, auxiliary LEDs, interchangeable optics, a high-CRI FFL emitter, a boost driver, USB-C charging, configurable signaling modes, a 21700 cell.

It would be very easy for this flashlight to become a pile of enthusiast features looking for a purpose.

Instead, they built a flashlight.

A compact one.

A very good one.

The enthusiast features are layered on top of a fundamentally sound field light instead of compensating for one that isn't.

And that's why I keep coming back to the same phrase:

Correct design.

The X1S feels like somebody started with the question, "What should a modern general-purpose 21700 flashlight actually be capable of?" and then kept going.

So, Colonial Marine:

Your illumination device has a high-CRI emitter, regulated driver, interchangeable optical system, onboard charging, programmable visual signaling, battery-state indication, and enough runtime to make all of those things genuinely useful.

Dropship loads in ten mikes.

Are you ready?

I bought an Acebeam L35 2.0 from the official AliExpress page and want to check if the beam pattern is supposed to be like this? Very noticeable in rotating the torch and in all modes.

None of my other torches have the “tendrils” emanating but then again, this is the only one I have with the same cree LED.

Also; yes, the film has been removed from the top!

All the Amazon red lights are plastic, so I had an idea to order one off Convoy with the SST-20-DR LED. But I don't see any S2+ with that option. I think I only saw S3 and S21 with that LED option.

Any opinions on which one to get or which model? I was looking for something that is rugged, can take abuse, around the S2 sizing.

I recently got a new UV torch from UltraFire, and it came with a pair of free "UV Safety Goggles." When I tried using them with the flashlight, I didn't really notice any difference at all with or without the goggles on. Meanwhile, my normal polycarbonate prescription eyeglasses cut almost all of the UV from the flashlight.

I don't really see why they even included the glasses as a freebie - since they barely do anything, I feel like in the end they might give users a false sense of security in wearing them while using the torch. It's literally more effective for me to wear my default glasses (left) than whatever they provided (right). Looking at the photo, it's obvious the UV passes right through.

This leaves the question: is working with 365nm UV really that dangerous for eyesight? And if so, why didn't the guys at UltraFire test their own products together with the safety gear they're pushing? It feels irresponsible to me.

I already made a post about the Wuben X4 itself, so this time I want to focus on the accessories.

In my previous post, I complained about how difficult it was to get these accessories in Poland. Someone from Wuben actually reached out to me and helped me get them. They ended up sending me the accessories free of charge, without asking for anything in return. I really appreciate that, and since the accessories turned out to be genuinely good, I thought I'd give each of them a proper look.

1. Kydex holster

Honestly, I don't think I've come across a flashlight holster this well thought out before.

The fit is great, and the cutouts are designed to let you operate the flashlight while it's still in the holster. You can switch the light on, and the side RGB lights remain fully accessible too.

The holster is also rotatable, so you can adjust the angle to your preference. With a 90-degree rotation, you can even illuminate the area in front of you while the flashlight remains in the holster.

You can also adjust the retention by tightening or loosening the screws to get the fit you prefer.

It's a small accessory, but the design feels genuinely practical rather than just something made to look good.

1. Bike mount

This is a solid metal mount featuring a locking rotation mechanism and a quick-release system for attaching and removing the flashlight.

To use it, you just need to screw a small plastic adapter onto the flashlight's clip. The mounting solution isn't absolutely perfect, but the clip remains fully usable. I can still carry the X4 in my pocket as usual and, whenever needed, attach it to my bike.

I often ride my bike in the evenings, and since getting this mount, the X4 has become my main bike light. I no longer have to remember to bring my dedicated bike lights or mount anything in advance. The flashlight is already in my pocket, so I can simply attach it when I need it.

One minor downside: with the adapter installed, the flashlight still fits inside the Kydex holster, but the fit is noticeably tighter. It's not a major issue for me, though.

1. Orange diffuser

What can I say? It's a cool, purpose-designed accessory that looks quite different from the usual diffusers I've seen from other brands.

It fits perfectly without having to stretch it or force it into place, and its shape complements the overall design of the X4 really well.

It's a simple accessory, but it works exactly as you'd hope.

The bigger picture

There are still a few things I'd change about the flashlight itself, but when you look at the X4 as a complete system, it becomes a surprisingly versatile tool.

I always carry a flashlight anyway, but with the X4, that one flashlight can cover several different roles throughout the day:

EDC: It stays in my pocket, ready whenever I need it.

Cycling: I attach it to the bike mount and use it to illuminate the road ahead.

Outdoor tasks: I put it in the Kydex holster, where it's easily accessible and ready to use.

Nightstand light: At the end of the day, I put the orange diffuser on it and have a handy light beside my bed.

Normally, these roles would require three separate lights: a dedicated bike light, a regular EDC flashlight, and a night light. With the X4 and its accessories, everything fits into one compact system.

I honestly can't think of many other flashlights with such a well-developed ecosystem of genuinely useful accessories.

And just to be clear, Wuben sent me these accessories for free, but they didn't ask me to make this post or expect anything in return. These are my own impressions after using them.

What do you guys think? Do you prefer one versatile flashlight with a proper accessory ecosystem, or would you rather carry separate lights designed for each specific purpose?

This is an excellent flashlight featuring an XHP50.2 NW 4000K LED, combining high output with a pleasant light quality. It is, without a doubt, a very good flashlight.

i did it guys

Currently using an exposure diablo as a helmet light for mtb. It's 2100ish lumens with a nice flood. It's not quite managing 2 hours on a low to medium setting now, and is only going to get worse. I like the flood and light colour when used on high, but would like more rjn time. Have looked though a few of the convoy options online, and am honestly a bit lost. I have a charger for 18650/21700? So that's a possibility, but ideally would like USB c charging built in. Upto £60/70 if possible, happy to order Ali xpress or direct.

TIA

Closest I could find is the Armytek Elf C2 USB-C, but its CRI is <= 70 unfortunately.

Maybe the Convoy H2 with B35AM and 6V 2.2A boost driver? But its IPX4 rating worries me if it falls into a creek or I use it under heavy rain.

Usage will mostly be hiking and camping, with night hikes and doing stuff around camp in the dark being most of its use. Stable ~100 lumens for a long time is mostly what I need.

As a side note, this will be my 10th flashlight and damn I love this hobby lol. My friends whom I have gifted headlamps have gone from "bro you got ANOTHER flashlight?" to "I bring that headlamp you got me on every trip/hike" :)

Edit: ended up picking the Firefly L50 TIR with FFL5009R 4000K

Finally got my small and big light needs covered, for now 🥸

14500 lights
T6 – SFT-25R 5000K
T7 – Nichia 519A 5000K
T8 – SFT-40 3000K High CRI

21700 lights
S21D – Nichia 519A 5000K, half-dedomed
M21B – LHP73B 5000K
L21B – SFT-42R 5000K

Until the next Convoy order!

Hello, I work in sanitation. Recently I’ve been working in an oven , I’m required to go inside where it’s hot and dark. I’m looking for a good water proof headlamp, that way I don’t have both my hands full when crawling in there(I use a water hose inside). Any suggestions?

I love this set up. Not happy with the photos. My phone is auto enhancing the image despite disabling this feature.

The photos facing the vehicles were taken on high and turbo (20A). The difference is subtle to my eye.

I know there are better lights out there, but for what it is, this small AAA twisty 100 lumen keychain light works for me! Sorry for the crappy beamshot XD

SmilingShark TD-1007 motion activated

Cidianga WH-081 w/ bottle opener

Microcosm SS-D1 mini COB LED

Philips SFL1551 Mini Camera Detector

Alonefire EDC X81

Alonefire X66

Alonefire SK68 Mini Zoom Red Light

My black diamond storm headlamp wasn’t bright enough for some of the situations I found myself in so I wanted something bright. I used to have the old Cabela’s brand headlamps and they were bright but incredibly heavy with terrible wiring that wore out after a couple of years every time. I did my research but ignored the fine folks of this sub and bought a peax anyways, unfortunately I’m a sucker for marketing. It’s incredibly lightweight for its size which is nice. 18650 batteries are always a favorite of mine. The ability to charge with a cable is irrelevant to me because I only charge 18650’s on a dedicated charger. I hear that despite the charger being USB-C it only works with their cable, I don’t know if that’s true or not. The modes are mildly inconvenient to switch through but not quite an annoyance. The lockout feature is nice. I do not like that the light is detachable from the headband. Seems like a great way to lose either the light or the band. The plastic that the light clips into on the headband feels exceptionally cheap and I foresee it breaking. The band itself is lightweight and vented which is nice, but does not feel like it will last more than a few years. The light is bright and has great throw, including the green light, which I love. So far I give it an overall 4/5, however due to the price to apparent quality I’m lowering it to a 3/5.