Lets discuss the drawbacks and pitfalls of this particular light and get that out of the way. Firstly, being produced in China you would think that this is a knockoff of some higher priced light like a Surefire, but it isn't. If I remember correctly, Ultrafire designed this light from the ground up a few years back and since then every other Chinese company has produced a sub par version of this light and either rebranding it or even going as far as to copy Ultrafire's own labeling... This has caused the market to be flooded with very crappy versions and untrustworthy vendors online. I picked mine up from www.lightmalls.com (a trusted website in the flashlight community) and at the time I paid about $17 for this light you see below (as of 02-14-2013 it is on sale for$15.50). Try to not pay attention to the inflated lumenous output figures as that is a common tendency among Chinese flashlight vendors and manufacturers.
$17 buys a LOT of light for the money! Unlike the $25-$50 gun show special knockoffs pushing out maybe 250 lumens from their poorly driven XRE emitters, this C8 comes equipped with Cree Industries' great, very well driven XML emitter in either T6 (neutral white) or U2 (cool white) color bins. For those that may not be flashaholics like myself let me explain this a little more in detail: Cree's older XRE emitter maxes out at around 300-350 lumens from being driven with perfectly by about 3 amps from the battery. Their newer and much more efficient XML series of emitters can be driven exceptionally hard, and although I am unsure as to their limits off the top of my head, The Ultrafire C8 XML U2 pushes about 3.7 amps through my best batteries (UR18650FM Panasonic cells) to the tune of just over 1,000 lumens out the front of the light.
Yes, 1,000 lumens! That's enough to light up just about anything at night let alone cause temporary blindness if shined in someone's face. But pushing 3.7 amps has a two major disadvantages; run time and heat. My super awesome Panasonic 18650 sized batteries with a capacity of 2600mAh that provide amazing output in this light will only last about 45 minutes on a full charge. In that 45 minutes, this light will get uncomfortably warm unless adequate airflow is cooling the heatsink just below the bezel in the picture above. Mounting this light to a bike for night time rides is more than sufficient for keeping the light nice and cool, with the added benefit of being brighter than most cars' headlights (even fancy HID headlights!)
The reflector design on this light is more than adequate as it is machined from aluminum and with a size of 1-1/4" in depth and 1-1/2" in width with a smooth (SMO) finish, this light has plenty of flood light to wash your surroundings with light and a very hot hotspot in the middle of the beam that is great for long distance spotlighting.
The Pill (receiver specifically for a given light that houses the Emitter, Star (what the emitter mounts to), wiring, and Circuit bard) is made of solid aluminum with plenty of surface area toughing the inside of the body of the light allowing for great heat dissipation (this is why the light gets hot) the star is mounted to the pill with adequate thermal epoxy helping to further increase heat conductivity. On top of the star board, there is a shield that prevents the exposed solder points on the star from shorting out on the aluminum reflector once the light is assembled.
Here is what the assembled pill looks like. notice the star board behind the sticker and the white thermal epoxy poking out behind the star.
The overall construction of the light is very solid and robust with great machining. The threads are square cut with all body sections screwing together smoothly and there are o-rings in every location that is necessary to provide adequate waterproofing. My example was delivered with some marring on the inside of the tail cap most likely due to the tool slipping off of the switch as it was being installed into the tail cap body (see picture below). The sizes of this light are about 6" in length, 1-1/4" diameter in the tail cap, 1" diameter in the body, and 1-3/4" in diameter in the head/bezel. Without a battery, this flashlight weighs about 5.5oz.
There are five modes of operation on this flashlight activated by either a soft press of the switch while the light is on or by turning the light off then back on quickly. These are the modes of operation are in order;
High - 3.7 amps
Medium - 1.45 amps
Low - 0.14 amps
Strobe
S.O.S.
The strobe and S.O.S. modes are another downside of Chinese lights as almost all lights produced contain these blinky modes. Personally I do not like them and I would prefer the light to just have the fixed modes but in the order of Low>Medium>High so that the used could ramp up the output to what is needed at the time, but for $17 I suppose I cannot complain.
Go grab you one or for the price go ahead and grab a spare as well! You will be glad that you did and your friends will not believe their eyes once they see the amount of light that pours out of this thing!
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