Until recently, Magicshine was produced only by cycle lights, which is why they were known only among cyclists. Recently, the manufacturer decided to try his hand at making conventional flashlights and headlamps. A couple of the latter fell into my hands, I propose to see if they succeeded or not.
Packaging and appearance
The packaging is quite good. Not something luxurious, but quite decent. From the perspective of a gift, there will be no shame.
Inside, the headband itself with a battery inside is attached to an intricately curved cardboard backing. The remaining complete parts (charging cable, head mount, o-ring and manual) are inside this carton.
Magishine hadn’t made headbands before, so they decided to take their own, untrodden path. And if at first Moh25 can attract the eye only by the presence of two LEDs, then it is worth taking a closer look at it to see that there is a lot of unusual things here.
Frankly, I think that the design of the forehead is rather primitive. Appearance, Moh25 does not justify its considerable price. Yes, of course, the forehead is needed to shine and the appearance is secondary here. But I can’t ignore this moment either.
In fairness, there is no feeling of some kind of basement and ultra-budget here either — just a neat facelessness. Just a rather faceless and primitive design that could be dramatically improved by adding some kind of beautiful knurling or color anodizing.
But I liked the headband. It’s lightweight, perforated, soft and has a gel strip on the inside and reflective elements on the outside. Better than many bindings I’ve seen.
It’s time to think about the size. The headband is smaller and lighter than the well-known compact and perhaps the most lightweight headband powered by 18650 Skilhunt H03
Moh25 — 71g total weight with 1400 battery 60g with 16340 versus 92g for the skilhunt. (block itself, no head mount) This makes the Magicshine a good lightweight option. It is clear that there are options and less, the same Petzl or some plastic headbands with a built-in battery.
And here there is a very ambiguous constructive solution. The fact is that the metal body of the forehead is a single unit with a plastic mount for the head mount. Sorry for the tautology, I don’t know how else to formulate. The reason is that it is in this plastic part that the power button and the charging connector located on the opposite side are located. All this is perfectly visible in the photographs. In the meantime, I note that the reliability of such a connection remains a question for me.
As I mentioned above, it is possible to install a 16340 battery, which, with a similar capacity, will
cardinally less than 14500. In this scenario, Moh25 becomes quite compact.
This is achieved due to the additional part of the body that lengthens it. To keep the 14500 from hanging around inside, the walls of this extension are thicker than the part reserved for the 16340 power supply.
Due to the ribbed knurling, the tailcap twists without problems
There is a spring on the side of the tail, and a pad on the side of the head. I am against the latter, but in this case I don’t see any disadvantages, except that the user will be the owner of rare 16340 flat-head batteries.
Both visually and to the touch, the thread is absolutely dry, but the tail cap moves smoothly on it.
The cover of the Micro-USB charging connector is thick, closes it securely. It’s all right here.
On the opposite side is a embossed soft button with backlight. The move is deep, with a noticeable click.
Since the housing is integral with the mount, the usual adjustment of the light direction is not possible. In the case of Magicshine Moh25, the solution is this — the head part with LEDs can rotate within 110 degrees. On the one hand, this is more convenient than scrolling the entire forehead, on the other hand, any mechanical unit is open to entropy. As part of the test, it is impossible to check how reliable and durable this solution is.
The cooling fins are deep enough for the overall size of the browband. I have nothing against it here.
As optics, there are two TIR lenses that hide the red and white light LED.
The result of this part is as follows: the packaging is not bad, the appearance is mediocre, it looks neat, but since the manufacturer is unknown to me, it is not clear what to expect.
Control
Quite mediocre, in my opinion.
Access to the minimum or maximum brightness only from memory. No access to red light from OFF. The headband is positioned as a hiking-tourist. And in a situation where you wake up in a tent and turn on the light, the chances of you going blind and / or waking up others are very high.
It could have been made much more convenient.
ON OFF by retention. There is a mode memory including red light and beacon.
mode switching on click
blocking two clicks from OFF
transition to red light and back two clicks from ON
toggle red brightness light at the click low-high-beacon.
However, for an undemanding user, it will do. Many use all sorts of boruites-zoomers without any problems, where even a strobe is included in the general line of modes.
Light
Cool white (or red), unexpectedly wide light. Further on the photographs it will be seen that the fill here is even wider than that of H03. By the way, the hero of the next review immediately flashes — Magicshine Moh15 with HiCRI light.
The maximum brightness is completely mediocre for full-size 18650 headbands, but for 1450016340 power it is completely expected.
The complete 800mah battery showed not only good stabilization, but also thermoregulation, which pleasantly surprised me.
With cooling it was possible to get a turbo even when the voltage on the battery dropped to 3.7v! It is clear that in such a forced mode, the battery will be discharged quite, so quickly. The latter, by the way, is charged with a current of 0.5A that is quite acceptable for such a capacity. Frankly, I expected everything to be much worse. By the way, yes, according to the results of my measurements, Moh25 turned out to be 10% brighter than declared, something about 550 lumens.
Special mention deserves the red light, which in the maximum mode Very bright. In the video version of the review below, this is clearly visible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wDFdUpPAYc
General impressions
It’s a very peculiar kind of bullshit. Initially, I was rather skeptical about the headband, so the impressions turned out to be equal, and after stabilization and thermoregulation tests, I tend to think that there is more good here than bad. If we evaluate the Magicshine Moh25 from the position of 14500 16340 headband, then it does what it should do in terms of light — it gives light that is sufficient in brightness and comfortable light distribution for camping purposes. Moreover, in the presence of cooling, one can count on the possibility of starting a turbo up to a sufficiently deep discharge. A big help will be the red light, which is exceptionally bright in maximum mode. And from the position of light, the headband is generally not bad. In this regard, it can actually fit as a relatively compact headband for walking.
And here is where the controversy begins. Built-in charging (which is good) is located in the plastic part of the case. I have never seen such a construct and one can only guess a little it will turn out to be reliable. As well as the rotating part of the head will show itself.
And to the eyeballs, two obvious minuses. The first is extremely primitive, a la Fenix, control without tabs to extreme modes (here the question is more about quick access to the minimum than to turbo). Well, the second minus is the price. On Ali, the headband costs about $50-55, which is comparable (or even more than) with full-size 18650 models. At 30-40 grams of difference in weight, they give dramatically superior runtime and brightness, and Moh25 has no competitive advantage here. Moreover, the same Sofirn SP40 with 18350, a jar will cost a third of it and still have a large capacity.
That’s all, in the next review I will talk about the second model, Moh15. If the topic of headbands is interesting to you, then I advise you to pay attention to the “about the author” block below, there is a good selection of headbands in the range of $ 5-30 with illustrative examples of light and work.
Where to buy and how to save
buy on Aliexpress ► YANDEX-MARKET ►SBERMEGAMARKET
You can save on purchases with coupons and promotional codes from the discount channel in telegram, see the link to it below in the “about the author” block