I'm still a relative newbie to the HDS discussions around here but I recently had the privilege to review a special light, a custom EDC Rotary with the Nichia 219B emitter that was provided by OVEREADY. This was my first experience with an HDS and I have come away very impressed. Most people reading this thread already know a lot of what makes these lights special so I won't bore you with all the details, I will just try to highlight a few of the things that really stood out to me. If you want to see the long version, you can read the review
here.
To begin with, the design is simply great. Small enough to be easily carried but just large enough to be used effectively. There's a lot of times I don't like small lights because I tend to "lose" them in my hand but I had no such problem with the Rotary. The 1" diameter is comfortable to hold and the narrow waist and plentiful knurling provide a nice grip, no matter how the light is held.
Construction is solid and I was really impressed with the bezel. It sounds like a simple thing but I've reviewed tons of lights that just have a comparatively thin ring around the bezel. On the HDS it actually houses a good portion of the reflector and is a fairly substantial chunk of steel. Using the Rotary control is an absolute delight and I have given up on restraining myself from "testing it" at random times. It provides the smoothness and precision of a quality tool, which is what I consider this light to be. I never thought I would appreciate sub-lumen output but this light has proven me very wrong.
I won't lie to you guys, I was a little intimidated by the user interface and programming options available but it turns out I was worried for nothing. Operation of the Rotary is as easy and intuitive as it gets. I complicated matters for myself by trying to take in all of the programming options at once, but when I sat down to do it, I just concentrated on one at a time and had no issues.
This was also my first experience with the Nichia 219B emitter. I wasn't sure what to expect as I wasn't terribly impressed with the 219A that I had used before. While the tint was nice, I didn't really consider it to be very neutral due to the pink cast to its beam (regardless of its CRI). I'm still not a pro at describing beam tints (please forgive any indiscretions) but the 219B seems to present a very neutral beam and has what I consider to be very good color rendition.
I don't have many suitable lights to make beamshot comparisons to as most of them have cool white beams. Of all the ones I tested, I would say it's closest to the Malkoff MDC in beam profile and the little Elzetta Alpha in terms of tint (of course they are not exact matches).
Additional beamshots and side-by-side comparisons can be found in the review linked at the beginning of this post.
The runtime plot is interesting and reflects the sophisticated control circuitry used to regulate output. It's not the gradually tapering decline I see with so many lights I review but instead provides excellent feedback to the user when the battery isn't able to sustain the current output level. The thoughtful spacing of the output modes has given me a new appreciation for how our eyes perceive brightness. Although the idea wasn't new to me, I have never experienced it in such an easy to test fashion as with the Rotary.
The following chart shows runtime at the maximum output level, with the burst feature enabled and disabled.
OK, that's the end of the objective reviewer talk . . . I'm a full-fledged HDS convert now and I'm already wanting to try some more 219B equipped lights! :twothumbs
Purely by coincidence I had already decided to jump on the HDS bandwagon prior to receiving this review sample and ordered a 250 Tactical from Hogo. I ended up receiving the Rotary first and haven't started working on the Tactical review yet. Unfortunately I don't have any beamshot comparisons between the two (yet) but I will soon!
Since I'm so new to these lights, if any of you HDS experts spot me leaving something important out (or getting it wrong!) I hope you will gently correct me! :wave:
