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What does an ordinary person do when he wants to buy a bright flashlight? He goes to aliexpress, drives in “ powerful bright lantern» and gets such a coprophilic selection in the search results.
See how many lanterns with lenses are here? And in the distance here you can sort of shine, and close. Like. And the brightness usually for such flashlights in the specification just rolls over (together with the accompanying capacity of the complete battery). The buyer unpacks such a silumin baby and thinks “I took 20,000 lumens for 10 bucks! oh yes me, not like all sorts of fools who pay as much as $ 30 for Sophirn Convoy ”(not to mention the more famous brands). What am I for. Structurally and in terms of light, almost everything (there are a couple of rare exceptions like the Falcon F20 or Fenix FD) all lensed lights are frank rubbish, the purchase of which can only be justified by a penny price and the use of the type of light once a month on the counter to check if the magnet has fallen off there or not.
In detail about what accompanies flashlights with a lens, I told and showed in lamp selection guide And Comparative review of Convoy C8 and Convoy C8+ Xpl-Hi. I will not dwell on the details chewed there, I will only say that the zooms only deceptively promise the universality of light for a penny. Up close, they lose to ordinary flashlights, but in the distance they shine foully, at best, at the level of a simple medium-sized shot.
Unexpectedly, Convoy has added such a flashlight to its assortment. A sort of pull — the zoom head pulls it into the primitive swamp of the 2200mah 18650 times, and quite a fresh and peppy bunch of SST40 LEDs and 21700 power supply inspires cautious optimism in a potential buyer. What will win in the end? Poor-sighted cyclopian eye lenses or the most fashionable giblets? And if it doesn’t win, then what is better to buy?
Characteristics
- LED: 1 * luminus SST40 (65005000K)
- FLUX: max 2000lm
- Mode: 4 modes 0.1%-3%-30%-100% / 12groups
- Mode memory: yes
- Battery: 1 * 21700 / 18650 (not included)
- Material: aluminum alloy
- Color: Black
- Switch type: reverse
- Lens: Convex lens (high borosilicate glass)
- Diameter: head 52mm /tail 28.2mm
- Length: 135.8mm(zoom in)/149.5mm(zoom out)
Packaging and appearance
By the standards of Convoy, the packaging is top-notch. Namely, the well-known beige thick-walled cardboard with a sticker indicating the model name and color temperature.
Inside is a generous scattering of everything: that is, a lantern and a lanyard.
Lanyard, though cheap, but not bad.
The lamp itself looks pretty good too. That’s quite right. I especially liked the matte anodizing. The design is really simple, here the convoy does not change itself, but this is a pleasant simplicity.
And even such a simple design looks like baroque Versailles luxury against the background of a purebred freak, the most popular under-flashlight — Ultrafire LED T6 Zoom. Here, by the way, you can estimate the dimensions in both focal lengths, where the length of the Convoy Z1 varies from 135 to 150mm.
The eyelet for the lanyard is only on one side, the button is very nice, metal. The move is soft with a slight click.
Shunted spring on the reverse side of medium thickness. By the way, there are many complaints about the quality of the soldering of the shunt. If there is interest, it is better to solder it yourself so that it does not fall off.
The thread is medium, well missed
The grip is very tenacious. Not a rasp, but in the hand sits like a glove. And the grip itself is quite comfortable.
Cooling fins are very good. Although, as you will see below, they should not be overestimated.
Then the most interesting begins. The only way I know to achieve at the very least a normal light distribution in a zoom lens is a movable TIR lens.
This is how it looks like in a cheap analogue — Sofirn S11
The convoy Z1 has the simplest possible one — the usual aspherical one. As a result, a kind of rounded bubbling sticks out of the head of the lantern.
A SST40 LED shines through it.
The bezel can be easily removed to reveal the said SST40
As for the lens movement mechanism itself, here it goes along the thread. Separately, it is worth noting that although the lensed lights are very bad in terms of water protection, everything is smart in this model — there are o-rings in the appropriate places.
At this stage, there is nothing to complain about, except that I already understand that the use of aspherics will give light that is obviously losing compared to TIR optics.
Control
Well known biscotti interface. In general, a quite flexible and convenient control system for everyday purposes. As a rule, all you need is to see which group of modes will be optimal for you, select it and score.
Usually I choose #2 or #10. Immediately (reasons below) — I would take a limited 50% No. 8.
for the same hunt, #12 is suitable with the only working maximum mode.
How the Convoy Z1 shines
Regarding ultrafire, there are 2 advantages: color temperature and significantly great brightness.
Whatever they say in the specifications, the maximum that you can count on in the latter is 300 lumens, and the photo below shows that at maximum brightness Ultrafire is only symbolically brighter than 10%
The Convoy Z1 has a thermal cut-off at 55 degrees. Thanks to it, the 100% mode here works like a classic turbo — the brightness lasts for about a minute, then it rapidly dives to half. So there is no reason to count on constant 100%. I’m clarifying specifically for fans of flashlights with zooms, who, as a rule, have a very superficial understanding of how flashlights work.
measurements are made for 4000mah battery.
The working maximum modes here will be either 50% or 35%. But they will be completely stabilized and significantly brighter than the same Ultrafire, whose brightness will still systematically fall into nowhere.
currents: 100% 4.4A (it’s not possible to measure normally, you must be in the area 6A) | 35% 2.1A | 10% 0.6A | 1% 0.047A | 0.1% 0.001A
As for the light distribution, then everything is also vile. To be fair, people alternative Tastefully find both a uniformly filled circle that breaks into darkness and a square with veins delightfully convenient.
There are two important clarifications about Ultrfire and similar freaks:
1) at a short focus, lower modes are useless, they will not be able to achieve practical brightness over the entire area of the circle. Get ready for more battery drain.
2) due to specific optics, at the far «long-range» focus, most of the light flux is lost. EMNIP dear fnksb somehow measured in the field, the shortage there reached almost 70%! Well, the veined square itself also does not add joy.
Therefore, it turned out that a completely ordinary and purely close-range S + in its most budgetary version on xml-2 4 × 7135 gave almost the same range as smelly ultrafire. Only they, at the same time, can also be used close to with unparalleled great comfort.
As a result, if we take the near and far focus as 0 and 100, then you can more or less use it in the range of + 15-85. That is, all versatility comes to naught, and the flashlight already works as a medium-sized one, where there are a lot of competitors that are much more convenient in terms of light.
In the case of the Convoy Z1, the situation has become much better and the flashlight can be used normally already at 10%, at 35% it becomes generally quite acceptable. With regard to zoom, of course.
But, nevertheless, a more or less acceptable picture becomes if you extend the trunk somewhere by 4/5. The lantern in this case becomes a kind of medium-range weapon.
Range, by the way, is quite good. This is unexpected, I was expecting a little worse. I think that you can safely count on a couple of hundred meters.
General impressions.
Of course, the Convoy Z1 is two heads taller than the Ultrafire. It has a modern bright SST40 LED with a normal color temperature, full stabilization and good control. Yes, and it looks much better.
True, speaking of brightness, it is worth clarifying that in reality you have to rely on a maximum of 50% — the maximum is quite good, but falls after a minute. The light distribution at both ends is as poor as that of the unnamed ultrafires. 21700 power is not an advantage here, since g * nofires are also sharpened for 3 * AAA cassettes, which means they can fit 21700 batteries, even the gap remains.
What remains in the dry residue? If you basically need to buy an LED flashlight with a lens from aliexpress, then yes, Convoy Z1 will be the most normal option. The question is that fans of this kind of flashlights in the exceptional majority of cases are not morally ready to pay more than 10 bucks for a flashlight, and no matter what advantages the Z1 has, they will still most likely buy a notorious race purely because it’s cheap. Buyers of any game with incomprehensible LEDs marked XHP90 XHP100 (they have only letters in common with the original Cree) anyway, I’m sure they will continue to buy all this slag purely because sellers draw frankly insane brightness indicators there.
In short so. The Convoy Z1 is about as good as it gets for a lensed flashlight with an aspherical lens.
It shines well into the distance and in higher modes gives a wide bright circle for close-up work. But I still think that it is more justified to take some kind of average type Convoy S11 Sofirn SP33. They are much more convenient and practical up close, and, if they do, they will be able, even if somehow, to break through 150 meters that way.
Where to buy and how to save
buy Convoy Z1 on Aliexpress Yandex Market SBERMEGAMARKET
Save on the purchase of this or any other product, you can use coupons and promotional codes from the discount channel in telegram, see the link to it below in the block «about the author».
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