NLD Superfire M12 10,000lm very nice cheap light – full option in comments

1 Comment

1. Kevin80970 1 year ago

   I’ve owned their M20 for about 8 months now, i really liked it especially for 30$ it was a solid 7,000 lumen light so when i saw they released a new even brighter one i just had to get it

   Here is my opinion

   Pros: nice design

   Updated emmeters:

   Which in my opinion are a lot better than M20’s emmeters as they tend to emmit some blue light also not noticeable until you put it against something with pure white light

   They also look identical to the CREE XHP50.3 hi LED however they have absolutely no markings on them unlike the real ones

   To be clear superfire never advertises using real XHP50.3 hi’s neither do they advertise CREE anywhere for this light nor the M20

   It’s still a possibility that they are real just unmarked for some reason, maybe factory rejects but i hope that isn’t the case, they just look too identical that there is quite a possibility that they are in fact real XHP50.3 hi

   Not to mention the flashlight runs a lot cooler while consuming almost double the power than the original M20 which is using Chinese XHP50.2 clone named “P50”

   Battery cells:

   Seem to be better quality then those found in the M20 as dictated by a significant weight difference between the 2 even though M12’s batteries are 2000mAh each vs 2600mAh on M20

   Cons:

   Plastic lens

   Absolutely no thermal paste between the LED’S heatsink and the outer metal casing, exactly the same findings as with the M20

   UI is simply terrible:

   You gotta press and hold the power button for 3 seconds for the light to turn on or off, you can’t even go to turbo by double clicking from off which is possible on the M20! Not to mention every other light I’ve owned with a turbo function allowed that.

   Another annoyance with the UI is that just like the very cheap zoomable Chinese lights if you want to turn the light off by going through all the modes the last 2 settings are strobe and SOS so it’s basically low medium high strobe and SOS then off, unless you hold down the power button while is another way to turn it off

   I find this annoying because i personally never use those settings and if you are going to implement it do it like the M20 where you had yo go into turbo by double clicking then double clicking again for strobe

   I really think superfire should do a firmware revision on this light and do something similar as the M20 as that has a much better user interface in my opinion.

   8,000mAh battery vs 10,400mAh on M20

   Honestly this is not a huge deal but considering the light is more than double the price of M20 i would’ve been expecting at least 10k

   Final verdict;

   Flashlight overall is solid minus the no thermal paste problem which is present on both models & superfire should definitely look into fixing this, however if you have the original M20 i see absolutely no point in upgrading especially since the new M12 is more than double the price

   I also wouldn’t bother with this light neither with the M20 if you don’t know how to or cannot take the flashlight apart to add thermal paste (it is absolutely mandatory step for the longevity of the LED’S and so that the flashlight can run longer on higher settings without stepping down) This is the biggest flaw in the M20 and M12 that superfire should definitely consider resolving.

   Overall it’s not a bad light at all but I think if superfire was to lower the price a bit this would be a nice option over the M20 however with it’s current price i just cannot recommend it if you already have the M20