[NMD] Starfish Z7 with Anduril 2 driver and Yinding 6500k 95 CRI

2 Comments

1. fweep 10 months ago

   TL;DR – This is a heavily modded Starfish Z7 with de-lensed Yinding 6500k 95 CRI LEDs and Anduril 2 FET+1 driver. Blue AR lens, orange-peel reflector, 26800 extension tube. Super-awesome-franken-light.

   I have occasionally seen reference to Starfish being a niche Chinese flashlight brand in the vein of Convoy. The only place I found to buy their lights is on Taobao (where I go through Superbuy as an agent to avoid going insane dealing with Taobao directly).

   I noticed their newer lights like the Z4 and Z7 use Anduril FET drivers, but only Anduril 1… I got a Z7 in the SFT40 6500k config (because of orange-peel reflector, other LEDs ship with glossy reflector). It’s a cool stock light, but Anduril 1 bugs me because I like some of the options and shortcuts on Anduril 2 better.

   Simultaneously, I also read a lot about these new Yinding 6500K 95 CRI LEDs people found on Aliexpress. I took a risk and bought them, and lo and behold, these things are really just that, put out comparable lumens and throw to SFT40 3000k, while still being cool white – I really do like cool white better than ultra warm tints, honest, just I hate that it usually means low CRI and greenish tints, so this seemed awesome… Cool white, high CRI, well below BBL, respectable lumens and throw, I honestly like these more than the SFT40 3000k.

   I took off the SFT40 from the MCPCB, and put in the Yindings. These LEDs are super-annoying to work with because of the lens on them. The lens is not air-tight and has two holes where air, rosin, solder, dirt, etc. can easily get in. And not all of the lenses are glued on well. I accidentally grazed a couple of them when screwing on the bezel after reflowing the LEDs, and some of the lenses just came right off. Because it looked stupid to have some with lens and some not, I de-lensed all of them, which is probably for the best anyway. The LEDs work fine without them. The lenses use green AR and look a bit weird (or nifty, depending on taste), but I am not entirely sure what the point of them being there in the first place is…

   Also, I had a Mateminco MT04 sitting around, which was flashed to Anduril 2. It uses a similar-sized FET driver that is almost the exact same size as the Starfish driver, if not for a couple little notches I had to shave off. This was almost a drop-in replacement but for that and having to solder the switch wires back on. Win. Notable that the Starfish driver has no flashing pads, and it looks like 20 gauge wire, vs 18 gauge on the Mateminco and flashing pads.

   I doubled up the spring a bit to make it longer since with the Mateminco driver using a button instead of a spring, the battery wouldn’t make contact otherwise. The stock spring already came bypassed, but the solder on it was broken off somehow. I also had to use the Mateminco driver’s retaining ring instead of the Starfish’s so the battery would touch the button, but luckily the threading matched and it screwed right in just fine.

   I replaced the stock purple AR lens with a blue AR lens from Kaidomain. It not only makes the LEDs a little less green-ish, but it also matches the blue light of the switch on the Mateminco driver, so it satisfied my OCD-ness nicely.

   The light has a variety of tubes, 26650 tube, optional 26800 extension, and a 21700 tube option. The 26650 tube is just much easier to hold, and doubly so with the 26800 extension.

   Some turbo beamshots vs my Noctigon DM11 SBT90 and my Firefly E12C 519A 5000K DD. It seems like the 7x Yindings throw further than the 12x 519A DDs, but not quite as far as the SBT90, so guessing somewhere in the 500m-ish range on turbo. As for total lumens, Yinding seems like more than the SBT90, while comparable to the 519As, so maybe guessing 8000-ish lumens on turbo. While not necessarily a throw monster or lumen monster, this seems to be a super balanced light.

   Compared to the SBT90, these Yindings are a way cleaner tint and higher CRI; the SBT90 looks positive green by comparison. They are obviously much colder than the 519As, but for me that is a plus. The only downside, like with all multi-emitter reflector lights, is the petals, love them or hate them, but the orange-peel reflector goes a long way towards muting those.

   White wall shots and Opple data towards the end of the pics.

2. bigboyjak 10 months ago

   These Yindings are a 5050 footprint then? Maybe I’m wrong but I think that’s what the SFT-40 is?