gteague
Newly Enlightened
the grey tup i got doesn't seem to have the blue backlights on the keys as described. perhaps because they're ?metal? compared to the black plastic looking ones on the black model pictured? pretty sure my tini light has button backlights although it's hard to tell if it's not just spillover light. i just went into a dark room with both and confirmed this.
i dislike non-removable batteries in general--it means the life of flashlights is so crippled it will always be years shorter than ones with replaceable batteries which is a shame. and they will deteriorate in light output over time while you can do nothing about it. but then again, i'm an enthusiast and (with exceptions for exceptional lights) usually replace lights once a year to get desirable features.
i've been away from nitecore and onto olight for several years now and the last nitecore i had was the tm35 which put out what? 3500 lumens? no, surely too low but 35k lumens sounds too high. at any rate it was a breakthrough flashlight for the time, but was lacking in form factor and weight and charging. it was just too big and heavy to hold comfortably for any length of time and would rip out the bottom of any pocket it was placed in. it got hot pretty fast and battery life wasn't great and it took a proprietary charger although i'd simply take out the 18650 batteries and charge them separately. can't deny it was dammed impressive to show the neighbors though! it finally got so bad i trashed it with full honors.
which brings me to why i abandoned olight. they put out a light which i thought would replace the tm35 ?tm36?, the r50 pro which was 3200 lumens on a battery bigger than a 18650. the pro model was for emergency workers and fire and police with a rapid charger and was easily handheld, unlike the tm35.
but the first one died within two weeks with little use. the rapid charger had a mode where you kept the light in the charger and if power was lost the light would come on as an emergency light. olight blamed me for this but sent another battery. this new battery died in a week. i bought two batteries with my own money and stopped keeping the light in the charger in that emergency mode, but the first time i charged a battery in their charger, it died. i wrote olight and called olight over and over and they finally said they had gotten a bad batch of batteries and actually sent me two. these met the same death as soon as they were charged in the light and they were such large batteries i had no other way to charge them.
but here's the stupid part--i liked the form factor of the light so much that about six months after i bought the first one, i bought a second one. olight stubbornly refused to replace my first light under warranty despite going gear weighing in on my side since i bought it from them. by this time more people had joined me on candlepower with reports of identical failures of the first batch of lights, but i hoped they'd corrected the issue by this time. after all, this was a light they flogged to the law enforcement and emergency community and where tolerance for such failures was below zero. but you know the ending to the story--the second light was the same as the first although by then i had acquired a slow charger and i now have only one battery left and just keep the light by the door for emergencies--i don't use it routinely. but olight lied to all of us over and over again and i abandoned them entirely.
i know i'm all over the place on this review thread, sorry. but i wanted to say that i now have the nitecore tini, tup, and the tm10k and it's very nice that all the ui's work nearly the same. the tup is nearly exactly the size of the olight s1 and s1r and i still have several of those deployed in various places. i like that it's square and won't roll. and i like the deep and wide belt clip. i have the tini for the keychain, so i don't need the tup for that. i do feel that the tm10k is obscenely overpriced, the tup is overpriced, and the tini is slightly overpriced. i think you are paying for the geek factor and the innovation of nitecore putting so much power into such tiny lights. but i'm not bitter at that--after all, i'm the target audience!
/guy
i dislike non-removable batteries in general--it means the life of flashlights is so crippled it will always be years shorter than ones with replaceable batteries which is a shame. and they will deteriorate in light output over time while you can do nothing about it. but then again, i'm an enthusiast and (with exceptions for exceptional lights) usually replace lights once a year to get desirable features.
i've been away from nitecore and onto olight for several years now and the last nitecore i had was the tm35 which put out what? 3500 lumens? no, surely too low but 35k lumens sounds too high. at any rate it was a breakthrough flashlight for the time, but was lacking in form factor and weight and charging. it was just too big and heavy to hold comfortably for any length of time and would rip out the bottom of any pocket it was placed in. it got hot pretty fast and battery life wasn't great and it took a proprietary charger although i'd simply take out the 18650 batteries and charge them separately. can't deny it was dammed impressive to show the neighbors though! it finally got so bad i trashed it with full honors.
which brings me to why i abandoned olight. they put out a light which i thought would replace the tm35 ?tm36?, the r50 pro which was 3200 lumens on a battery bigger than a 18650. the pro model was for emergency workers and fire and police with a rapid charger and was easily handheld, unlike the tm35.
but the first one died within two weeks with little use. the rapid charger had a mode where you kept the light in the charger and if power was lost the light would come on as an emergency light. olight blamed me for this but sent another battery. this new battery died in a week. i bought two batteries with my own money and stopped keeping the light in the charger in that emergency mode, but the first time i charged a battery in their charger, it died. i wrote olight and called olight over and over and they finally said they had gotten a bad batch of batteries and actually sent me two. these met the same death as soon as they were charged in the light and they were such large batteries i had no other way to charge them.
but here's the stupid part--i liked the form factor of the light so much that about six months after i bought the first one, i bought a second one. olight stubbornly refused to replace my first light under warranty despite going gear weighing in on my side since i bought it from them. by this time more people had joined me on candlepower with reports of identical failures of the first batch of lights, but i hoped they'd corrected the issue by this time. after all, this was a light they flogged to the law enforcement and emergency community and where tolerance for such failures was below zero. but you know the ending to the story--the second light was the same as the first although by then i had acquired a slow charger and i now have only one battery left and just keep the light by the door for emergencies--i don't use it routinely. but olight lied to all of us over and over again and i abandoned them entirely.
i know i'm all over the place on this review thread, sorry. but i wanted to say that i now have the nitecore tini, tup, and the tm10k and it's very nice that all the ui's work nearly the same. the tup is nearly exactly the size of the olight s1 and s1r and i still have several of those deployed in various places. i like that it's square and won't roll. and i like the deep and wide belt clip. i have the tini for the keychain, so i don't need the tup for that. i do feel that the tm10k is obscenely overpriced, the tup is overpriced, and the tini is slightly overpriced. i think you are paying for the geek factor and the innovation of nitecore putting so much power into such tiny lights. but i'm not bitter at that--after all, i'm the target audience!
/guy
