Yes. Patent protection. Sorry for the poor choice of wording
Any idea of when the SF patent expires? The old interface (head tightened = turbo; Head loosened = L-M-H) was the best flashlight UI ever conceived. SF should really live in infamy in this community for a) suing to have this feature removed b) then not using this UI in any of their lights. Its been a tremendous setback for the development of flashlights, resulting in a regression in the industry to increasingly baroque UI's that require flowcharts to understand.
I've been carrying my Foursevens QuarkX for nearly 10 years now, and much as I look I have still not found a better flashlight. I've even purchased a number of NOS Quark's should my trusty companion ever ware out.
That said, I'm intrigued by the new Quark. Can you better explain the UI of this model?
It seems that its set to "3" from the factory:
Medium (100lm) - High (400lm) - Burst (700lm)
1. Is 'Burst' like the previous Quarks, where it produces 700lm, then steps down to 400 after ~30 seconds?
2. How fast does this double click have to be to activate burst vs accidentally swapping to another mode?
3. Given that there is almost no difference in runtime between Burst (1.5hrs) and High (1.75hrs), why include a "High" mode at all? Would it not be simpler to have it just be Medium/Max?
4. I noticed that the ad copy warns against the use of 2xCR123's. CR123's were the staple of the previous Quarks, and were sued safely for the lifetime of the older company. What about this new design makes them unsafe?
5. If rechargeable batteries are required, why use the 16650 vs the 18650 battery, which is becoming the industry standard? The difference in diameter is only 2mm.
6. I notice runtimes and brightnesses do not seem to have noticeably improved over the previous Quark QP2L-X, what is the reason for this?:
Quark QP2L-X
- Burst: 780 lumens / 1 minute; then 390 lumens /1.9 hours
- High: 300 lumens / 3.2 hours
- Medium: 55 lumens / 14 hours
- Low: 5 lumens / 96hrs
- Moonlight: 0.5 lumens / 600hrs
Vs the new Quark:
Brightness Levels:
[FONT="] Low (Moonlight): 1 lumens, 270 hrs[/FONT]
[FONT="] Medium: 100 lumens, 9.5 hrs[/FONT]
[FONT="] High 400 lumens 1.75 hrs[/FONT]
[FONT="] Max/Burst 700 lumens, 1.5 hrs
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