Hello everybody,
I'm back to give you my impressions on this flashlight after owning one for a few weeks.
Body
I'll start by saying that this is not the slimmest 1*AA/14500 flashlight on the market but that's not necessarily a bad thing: instead, being a little bit wider and heavier than other flashlights in this category actually has two advantages:
- it's easier to handle since it fills the hand more comfortably;
- there is more mass to handle the heat generated by the LED on turbo (more on that later).
Of course it's way too big for keychain carry and in case of small/already stuffed pants' pockets.
The 2 way clip is sturdy, comes pre-attached to the flashlight (very tightly) and allows for quite a deep carry into the pocket. The flashlight does not tailstand.
The head can be partially unscrewed (it cannot be removed) to reveal a USB-C charging port to charge the internal, non removable 14500 cell. On the side of the flashlight there is an LED indicator to let the user know when the charging is done.
Output
The Archer Pro V2 let's you use multiple light levels:
- Firefly (0.5 lumens);
- Infinity (this can be anything from 13 lumens to 430 lumens);
- Turbo (950 lumens).
The numbers above are taken directly from the manufacturer and are based on the Cool White version. There is also a Warm White version but I've not found any details about it in the specs.
Firefly is kind of a "bright" low, if that makes sense: it's not like half a tenth of a lumen, you can light things up quite well with it.
The Infinity brightness range is very clever and convenient to use. The selected output gets memorized and you will need to use the ramping feature to change it.
Turbo is really bright, I don't have a lot of flashlights to make accurate statements but this thing is really really bright. This, together with the TIR lens makes this flashlight throw light quite far. But, of course, from great power (literally, Watts from the cell in this case) comes great heat to be dissipated, as I mentioned earlier. For this reason both Turbo (950 lumens) and Infinity High (430 lumens) will step down to a more manageable 190 lumens to prevent overheating.
At first I wasn't a fan of the modes spacing, I couldn't understand why the Infinity brightness range didn't start from the Firefly brightness all the way up to 430 lumens, but given the uses this flashlight might be intended for (ie: a medium powered flashlight with Firefly being there "just in case it's needed" and not an ultra low power, sublumen oriented kind of flashlight) I now find the modes actually make sense the way they are.
UI
You can access several levels directly from both OFF and ON by using clicks (which I'll refer to using "C") and push-hold-release (which I'll refer to using "PHR"):
- From OFF:
- 1PHR -> Firefly;
- 1C -> Infinity;
- 2C -> Turbo;
- From Firefly:
- 1PHR -> Lock-out;
- 1C -> OFF;
- 2C -> Turbo;
- From Infinity:
- 1PHR -> Ramps up/down the brightness smoothly (ie: it's not a stepped ramping);
- 1C -> OFF;
- 2C -> Turbo;
- From Turbo:
- 1PHR -> Ramps down/up the brightness smoothly (ie: it's not a stepped ramping) entering the Infinity brightness range;
- 1C -> OFF;
- 2C -> Turbo;
A triple click let's you activate strobe (I don't remember if that works both from OFF and ON, but since I don't have the flashlight on me at the moment - I lent it to a good friend of mine to let him try it out - I cannot check).
Beam
White wall hunter here, so please forgive me for this: there's a a dark ring in the beam, right between the hotspot and the spill. It's there. Just know it.
Since the flashlight uses a TIR lens the hotspot and spill are not your usual reflector style beam hotspot and spill, they are way more concentrated.
Also, the tint is a standard cool white tint, it's not awful (like green or blue) but it is definitely lacking in CRI.
My final opinions
I like this flashlight and will probably buy another one with the Warm White emitter, but there are some things I hope Thrunite will consider to implement/change in the next version:
- I understand that 1000ish lumens is nice to have, but it would also be nice to have a high CRI option available (my opinion may change if the Warm White version I'm about to buy will be good enough at rendering colors);
- tailstanding may be an interesting feature to have and maybe it could be possibile to have that without sacrificing the super easy activation of the tail button currently implemented;
- this one is a major point: the non removable cell. I understand it's a design choice and it's not necessarily worst than removable cells, but being able to swap cells on the fly would be nice, considering the same convenience given by the USB-C charging feature can be had on the cell itself;
- in case it were possible to swap cells, support for both 14500 and standard 1.5V AAs would be a huge plus (with lower maximum brightness of course).
Disclaimer
This is not a review, this is just my opinion on a flashlight I bought myself. I've not been paid to write any of this by anyone.
I'm in no way associated with Thrunite or any other flashlight brand in any form.
Let me know if you'd like more info on this flashlight.
, today I'm here because I've been looking into AA/14500 lights lately and I've found quite a few videos and reviews about the Thrunite Archer Pro V2 on the web, but I was surprised there's been no talk about it here, so I was wondering: why? Is there a reason this light has not been discussed here?
