BuckeyeChuck
Member
I like flashlights and I have since a very early age. Over the years I've read off and on at sites like CandlePowerForums but I've never indulged more than a single 3-D LED Maglite and a few Dorcy Cool Blue #1's that I bought in 2004. Recently I decided I wanted a real EDC flashlight, so I started searching again.
My goodness. There is a lumens war going on right now among the higher-end flashlight manufacturers. I'm not talking about Maglite; I'm talking about Surefire, Four Sevens, Fenix, etc.
I settled on the Zebralight SC600 Mk II. SC600 Mk II 18650 XM-L 900Lm Flashlight It started shipping March 22 and I found a distributor with some in stock and a coupon code. I had to buy batteries and a charger too since the light uses a single 18650 and you can't charge lithium batteries in a dv/dt charger.
The SC600 is 4" long and just over 1.25" wide. Photon cannon? Oh yes. It's rated at 900 lumens in turbo mode and it's every bit of that. It runs for five minutes on turbo and then powers down to a mere 500 lumens, at which point it is between 135F and 150F. The power consumption in turbo is over 10W and the battery has a capacity of over 12 watt-hours, a magnificent quantity of energy in a small package.
The light is a deliberate compromise between throw and spill. It has a 10 degree hotspot and an 80 degree spill, and this compromise makes it useful as a general tool. It will easily illluminate objects 100 yards away, but it is sufficiently floody that if you take it into your yard and turn it on in the dark, you're going to see... everything.
The light has 11 modes. Of those 11, six (three pairs of two) are accessible at any one time. (I'll skip the details of what this means.) This light also has something that is becoming more and more prevalent in these types of lights: sub-lumen mode. In turbo it blasts 900 lumens. But its lowest level is around 0.02 lumens. This means that turbo mode produces 45,000 times as much light as the lowest low. More and more people want the sub-lumen intensities so the market is responding. I have come to appreciate the versatility of the human eye, that it can see well in broad daylight but also adapt so well to darkness that even 0.02 lumens is sufficient to illuminate one's path in total darkness.
The only thing I don't like about the light is its tint. I get a considerable green hue around the hotspot that morphs into a purple tint toward the edges of the spill. This seems to be a characteristic of the LED emitter. I may not like the tint (and I really don't) but when I'm actually using the light I never seem to notice it. So I don't really care.
I've never seen anything like this light and I've certainly never owned anything like it. I clip it inside my front pocket and there it stays until I need it. There are lights that are brighter, that have more throw, that handle heat better. There are lights that are smaller, cheaper, and use less expensive batteries. But this light is on the outer edges of the envelope for total output, features, UI, build quality, and efficiency. It'll take a whopper of a light to replace it in my pocket.
I'm thinking now about the Fenix TK75 or the Zebralight SC6330. Or I could go cheaper and get a Sky Ray King. If you like flashlights, this is a great time to be a buyer.
My goodness. There is a lumens war going on right now among the higher-end flashlight manufacturers. I'm not talking about Maglite; I'm talking about Surefire, Four Sevens, Fenix, etc.
I settled on the Zebralight SC600 Mk II. SC600 Mk II 18650 XM-L 900Lm Flashlight It started shipping March 22 and I found a distributor with some in stock and a coupon code. I had to buy batteries and a charger too since the light uses a single 18650 and you can't charge lithium batteries in a dv/dt charger.
The SC600 is 4" long and just over 1.25" wide. Photon cannon? Oh yes. It's rated at 900 lumens in turbo mode and it's every bit of that. It runs for five minutes on turbo and then powers down to a mere 500 lumens, at which point it is between 135F and 150F. The power consumption in turbo is over 10W and the battery has a capacity of over 12 watt-hours, a magnificent quantity of energy in a small package.
The light is a deliberate compromise between throw and spill. It has a 10 degree hotspot and an 80 degree spill, and this compromise makes it useful as a general tool. It will easily illluminate objects 100 yards away, but it is sufficiently floody that if you take it into your yard and turn it on in the dark, you're going to see... everything.
The light has 11 modes. Of those 11, six (three pairs of two) are accessible at any one time. (I'll skip the details of what this means.) This light also has something that is becoming more and more prevalent in these types of lights: sub-lumen mode. In turbo it blasts 900 lumens. But its lowest level is around 0.02 lumens. This means that turbo mode produces 45,000 times as much light as the lowest low. More and more people want the sub-lumen intensities so the market is responding. I have come to appreciate the versatility of the human eye, that it can see well in broad daylight but also adapt so well to darkness that even 0.02 lumens is sufficient to illuminate one's path in total darkness.
The only thing I don't like about the light is its tint. I get a considerable green hue around the hotspot that morphs into a purple tint toward the edges of the spill. This seems to be a characteristic of the LED emitter. I may not like the tint (and I really don't) but when I'm actually using the light I never seem to notice it. So I don't really care.
I've never seen anything like this light and I've certainly never owned anything like it. I clip it inside my front pocket and there it stays until I need it. There are lights that are brighter, that have more throw, that handle heat better. There are lights that are smaller, cheaper, and use less expensive batteries. But this light is on the outer edges of the envelope for total output, features, UI, build quality, and efficiency. It'll take a whopper of a light to replace it in my pocket.
I'm thinking now about the Fenix TK75 or the Zebralight SC6330. Or I could go cheaper and get a Sky Ray King. If you like flashlights, this is a great time to be a buyer.
Last edited:
