18650 interest here too
Anyway, Aod, I have a bone to pick with you!
The duo turned up today, superb! But my bone picking is in relation to the claim you made that I would be blown away by the
prodigious amount of light of the XP-G and having played around all evening so far I can confirm it is brighter than the C8 with Q5 but only a bit brighter in general.
What I am finding is the XP-G's pattern has no centre spot beam and instead spreads the otherwise centre beam through the whole pattern which is great for normal torch boshing around but I was hoping it would have had a centre beam as well as the throw like on the C8 but as you say, the reflector is smaller so this is why it isn't possible.
I am 100% confident that if I were to put the C8's emitter in the L2 with the same reflector then the power of light output would be exactly the same.
As it stands, the C8 has excellent throw and a tighter centre beam for spotlighting, you will get the idea from the pics below. The XP-G has a "void" in the middle when lighting stuff up close. From all the reviews I was expecting it to be considerably better than the C8 but I can live with both so this isn't a bother
I've ditched the zoomable one now as the output is laughable compared to the XP-G and C8
The SolarForce L2 HAIII build quality is excellent too. I find it as good as the C8 while the grooves on the grip grip are a bit in the hand. The tail tip is of a different build material than the rest of the body.
The tail button on the L2 is different to what I'm used to. Where on the C8 you turn it on then depress lightly to switch power modes, on the L2/XP-G you depress lightly to switch modes then press fully to turn on, you cannot depress and adjust mode while it is on, this could be an issue in a tight bag where something presses against the tail and accidentally activates the torch in the bag and you'd never know until you went to use it and the battery was dead!
Weight and length wise they're both about the same while the C8 is quite a big wider at the head (obvious
![Stick Out Tongue :p :p](/styles/default/xenforo/vbSmilies/Normal/tongue.gif)
).
Pics:
(XP-G above, C8 below).
Now that I have the L2, is there another Drop in that would give a similar result (or better) than the C8 pattern? I prefer the cleaner pattern and beam of the C8 emitter compared to the XP-G.
Edit*
Scratch the above question, I will keep both as is, they both serve different uses
The lowest power setting on the L2/XP-G gives a rated 45 hours and it's bright enough so that will come in very handy.