on 3/23/2010
Involvement:
Expert (understands the inner workings)
- Ownership:
more than 1 month
Pros: * Very good build quality, very solid, massive metal.
* High light output even with standard driver
* Good heat dissipation because of the metal case and good heat transfer by having enough thermal grease already applied to the LED
* Metal doesn't scratch nor does show fingerprints
* Glass lens
* 5-Mode (well, 4 without the SOS would be better...)
* Haven't verified it yet, but it looks like it is attachable to a camera mount
Cons: * Not very easy to disassemble (see below)
* Driver board (nearly) dies when connection to the LED module gets loose
Other Thoughts: Had to disassemble the flashlight because of very low light output someday. One connection to the LED module got loose, so a transistor was about to release magic smoke ;) Still delivers ~20mA...
I replaced it by sku 07612 which is about one millimeter too large to fit in, but as it offers enough space around its components, you are able to make it fit.
Disassembling is tricky, though. As there was no manual and the Tank007 support was not very supportive, I had to do some trial and error. You need to open it by the front - removing lens, o-rings, reflector, and then screw it open by using the two small pits in the inner aluminium case, which is very strong glued to the outer case. Be careful, the LED is still attached in the middle ;)
Bottomline: As already posted in the discussions below, power <draw> when using an 18650 cell from an old laptop battery and the original circuit board is:
0.65 Amps at Hi
0.15A at Mid
0.04A at Low
SOS and Strobe uses amperage from Hi setting.
Guess that's not the exact 1000mA output as stated in the article description, but that could be a result from using old batteries...(which still last for many weeks of usage!)