- Joined
- May 15, 2012
- Messages
- 1,877
Oh, yeah — that’s a real unicorn light for me, in the sense of a nearly mythical light that I am always looking for, have never seen in the flesh.Zebralight SC80. AA/CR123/16340. Shoulda kept this and just updated the LED
It was made so long ago now that we would not find its performance very noteworthy by today’s standards. And I can see why ZL dropped it, because their design philosophy has evolved so that one of their leading objectives is making the smallest possible package for the cell size — smallest possible 18650 light, smallest possible AA light, etc.
The SC80, by contrast, is longer than a 16340 light should be, and fatter than a 14500 light should be. So, it violates their current design esthetic.
Still, a very cool light.
Among modern lights, I think the Streamlight Sidewinder X and Compact are some of the few that handle AA and 16340 cells with equal ease. I love my Sidewinder Compact for that reason — single AA, alkaline or NiMH, or a 4.2v Li-ion 14500, or any kind of 16340- format cell, from 3.0v to 4.2v.
ETA: The Compact actually does multi-fuel better than the SC80 did. The SC80 required you to unscrew the head, flip around the brass spacer, and reattach the head every time you switched between 14500 and 16340 cell. The Compact just has a spring-loaded floor that moves up for the shorter cell and down for the longer cell, as well as a recess in the tail-cap that centers the narrower cell.
Unfortunately, the Compact is not really pocketable (despite its name) -- it's a headlamp or a helmet lamp, but not really a pocket-carry EDC.
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