I saw a cheap 12x XHP70 flashlight mentioned on BLF, the Shuolide SLD-12C. I risked buying one through an agent, which ran me about $170 plus an expensive $50 to ship from the agent due to the giant package size plus the included battery pack… Still much cheaper than a comparable Acebeam or Imalent light for what it is.
Out of the box, it is pretty much what it seems. Bulky, but not obnoxiously more than a comparable light. But it dwarfs my Amutorch DM80 in size.
It has two active cooling fans that only seem to activate in the higher modes, and not active in the lower modes. It has both e-switches on the side of the light and on the handle, so easy to operate with the handle on. The UI is hold for off, double click shortcut to turbo, and no shortcut to moonlight, but serviceable for a light like this. It has a four click lockout which seems to work okay.
The tail cap is captive, and unscrews to expose a USB-C charging port in the battery pack. It is easy to partially unscrew the battery pack for mechanical lockout. The battery pack is closed, and if you unscrew it looks like there is a 4×21700 shrink-wrapped battery setup that has wires soldered to the charging circuit. It would not be fun to replace, but maybe is doable “in theory” if you reeeeeally wanted to, so maybe more accurate call it non-replaceable… At least it is not soldered shut like the newer Amutorch battery packs.
It came with XHP70.2 6500k (domed), which while bright, give the usual yellow-green tint shift. I decided to go ahead and void any chance of a warranty by swapping those out with FFL707A in a mix of 4000k / 5000k, and I have zero regrets. It was a bit of a pain to pry out the MCPCB, as they used a ridiculous amount of thermal paste – more than I have even seen in a single light, practically a swimming pool of it. But otherwise the reflow was uneventful. The MCPCB seemed to require 12V from my bench power supply to light up (which FFL707A will happily take), so I am guessing the 4 batteries in the pack are in series.
While there was a loss of max brightness, the tint came in at an amazing rosy, high CRI 45000k. If I had to guess, I would say it is no brighter than about 40,000 lumens, but looks way prettier than the XHP70s.
No idea if this driver is actually constant current or not… But I can’t complain for the price and the amount of light.
There was the SLD-24C which was 24x XHP70s, but I wasn’t brave enough to try that one…
by fweep
