Nitecore are big fans of experimentation, and this time their development department has clearly overeaten the inspiration-stimulating mushrooms. And if, in terms of range, the Nitecore MH40GTR is just very, very good, it shines for more than a kilometer, then the control here is complete seams.
Packaging and appearance
Technically, the flashlight should come in a standard Knightcore black and yellow box. But often the manufacturer sends me a flashlight for review immediately after the first samples leave the assembly line, and they come to me in their original industrial nudity, “as is”. Say, here’s a flashlight for you to review and our good wishes for a fruitful creation of the review in the appendage.
In short, we should expect the mentioned box, case / lanyard / tactical ring and a couple of 2600mah batteries. Oh yes, and the charger. In the absence of illustrations like “here is the packaging”, I propose to immediately move on to the part related to the appearance.
Here we are dealing with a classic long-range 2×18650 layout. And if the previous, relatively recent MT42 model was noticeably more compact, then the MH42GTR with a 6cm reflector looks like Mohammed Ali next to Pacquiao against its background. This, of course, is not something from the frankly monstrous category of 4×18650 long-range, with 12cm reflectors, but the combination of such an LED with such brightness in a reflector of this size allows us to expect a very, very decent range. Actually, the specification states 250 kilocandels, and this is definitely not a bad figure even now.
Of course, against the background of other flashlights of the usual size, the MH40GTR looks very overall.
But, in fact, I repeat, this size is common and quite convenient. Despite the rather large head for such a form factor, the balance is quite comfortable.
The tail is completely normal, with a power tail button. The “candle” flashlight is not worth it, the button sticks out for some fractions of a millimeter due to the sidewalls, but with such a length, this setting is generally meaningless.
The spring on the tail, as well as on the side of the head (hooray, a spring, not a pad!) is single, of medium thickness.
The thread is well lubricated.
The twist here is unusual. As such, it is present only at the head. Behind it, in the middle, the body is smooth and, due to a slightly smaller diameter, forms a “saddle” that positively affects the grip, the tail has a pair of concentric grooves (closer to the tail — under the tactical stop ring).
The head is quite long. Why? Yes, because the first 4 centimeters of the head are twisted, exposing the charging connector.
For some reason, the Knightcore developers decided to remember the good old days of pin connectors. In the current realities, this makes no sense, as for me, no one will carry the complete charger with them, this is purely a thing for storing at home. And at home, there is always a charger for batteries. Well, what prevented you from putting a regular micro-USB? I don’t see any reason other than “eat what they give”. No, everything is so neat, part of the head twists easily, twists securely and smoothly. Seals are present. But the very fact of my dislike for how charging is implemented here does not cancel this.
There are no complaints about the cooling fins here, they are numerous and deep here, everything is absolutely as it should, not
find fault.
For the sake of variety, the head is not sealed and you can at least look inside at this level.
Bezel with small teeth. If you wish, you can “bite” them, but the calculation is obviously to see whether the light is on there or not when the flashlight is upside down.
The reflector is smooth, with a dedominated XPL-Hi on the bottom, a good choice for long haul. Everything looks neat, they didn’t spoil the paste, the LED is centered, there are zero complaints.
So, well, in this part, in general, everything is fine. If you do not take into account the frankly incomprehensible curtsy towards the 5-year-old design (I’m talking about pin charging), then there are zero complaints, everything is neatly and decently executed.
Control
It can be described by Chernomyrdin’s well-known words. Or Lavrov.
Technically (although it took me a lot, a lot of time to figure out how it actually works) there is nothing complicated here.
ON / OFF by pressing the tail button.
All that remains then is to twist the head in one of two positions. And on one of these two, the extreme clockwise, Turbo is always hung.
If the flashlight is turned to turbo, then half-presses can give signals.
On the second one, you can throw any of HighMidLowStrobeSos (remember this order). You just need to turn your head counterclockwise a little to switch to it from Turbo. And then with half / full presses (and remember this) go through the mode to the desired one, shine a little light in it and it will be remembered. Then switch to turbo and turn off.
So convenient in theory, you can always almost instantly get to the turbo. And the second mode is to have some frequently used one.
What is in fact? You can turn your head with one hand no more than «somehow.» Well, maybe if you have a paw like a bear, then you don’t have to make much effort. For owners of a normal-sized palm, this will be a good workout for the muscles of the wrist. Yes, when using two hands, the problem is removed, no doubt. But the instant turbo and the option when a strobe is hung in the second mode suggest some kind of police-military situations when you have a faithful Mauser in one hand. Yes, the manufacturer himself emphasizes this on promotional photos.
Fuck it, they’ll shoot you a hundred times before you switch your head.
The second «wonderful» moment. There is a custom mode, and it seems like it’s very good. That is, so technically you can jump on the rest within it by simply switching with the tail button.
Remember, I talked about half-presses there? So, we have only one button, you can’t set the mode with the side button. What does it mean? This means that if you turn off the flashlight in LOW, and then do not turn your head to the TURBO mode, then the next time you turn it on, you will get the next mode after LOW — i.e. SOS. Those. to save the memorized mode, every time after turning off you need to move your head to TURBO, there is no way to turn it off in LOW and turn it on in LOW. Every time you need to turn on Turbo and switch from it to custom mode.
It would be necessary to make sure that he would also use the current at the same time, for complete happiness. Amazing neighborhood. But if dizziness took up this, well, they would put the strobe and SOS on the extreme left position of the head, which would scroll it to the end counterclockwise and that’s it. In the middle are normal modes, the extreme right position is turbo. It would be somehow acceptable.
No, if you have purely ordinary purposes for using a flashlight, and as you turned on one brightness, so shine it, then this obviously will not hit you. But I am sure that any non-civilian activity here will be of little convenience. Yes, you can put a STROBE there in pair with a turbo, only I am sure that in the steam the user will turn off the flashlight without first switching it to turbo, and the next time he will be in the same mode — i.e. SOS.
In short, management here is a complete failure.
In work
Of course, cold white light with no chance of neutral.
The light distribution of a typical «awl», in reality, the side illumination is dimmer, the hotspot is really bright. Here everything is as it should be.
There should be a paragraph about charging, but the flashlight was already ready for review, and charging was not ready yet, so I suppose that there may even be 2A, if they write that 2 accs are charged in 5 hours. This of course somehow reduces the negative from the «pin». Well, 2A could also be implemented with Micro-USB.
The heat sink is not bad, the flashlight does not really sag in the turbo, which is understandable, for such and such a head this brightness is more than possible.
Cooling has no effect on the graph in the turbo beyond the measurement error, then the brightness stabilizes normally.
In terms of stabilization, I have zero complaints, everything is very good here. But there is a fair claim to the fact that there is no discharge indication at all. The flashlight does not blink, does not switch to low mode. It just shines, shines and crap — cuts off. DBL BLD.
The scatter of modes is so good, with the exception of a giant hole between Turbo High, where you could safely shove another mode somewhere around 800lum. With turbo, the brightness drops somewhere around 1300lum, somewhere around half of this brightness in the form of a separate mode would be very good.
The only thing I have no complaints about is the light. The flashlight actually shines well for its size. That’s just very good, they didn’t screw up here. See for yourself, at a distance of fifty meters, even an insignificant ultralow gives visible light, from the standpoint of the duration of work it will be sooooo long, which is good in situations where there is no way to install new batteries. In the video review there will be a clear example of this light on the video, at a distance of 150 and 400m.
50m
150m
400m
And for comparison with another long-range, Nitecore MT42, the difference is clear …
At the end of the video review, the video also clearly shows how the flashlight shines.
General impressions
Extremely, extremely inconsistent. Maybe the nightcore engineers have strong and hard-wearing palms with which they turn the MH40GTR head from one mode to another without any problems. I could not get. And I think that others will be uncomfortable. And do you know why they didn’t put the usual, for changing modes, button to the head? Yes, because they decided that the unscrewed part of the head is much cooler than the usual rubber plug. And if for this reason it is not possible to put a button there, then we decided to give it a burn and came up with such a scatter.
Maybe I’ve caught up with the negativity in vain, after all, there are a lot of flashlights with one tail button, where the modes are switched. And then they even gave a dedicated turbo.
Well, if this flashlight were mediocre in terms of light, the impression would be uniform. But the flashlight actually shines very well, and against the background of this light, the control is presented in a very unfavorable light for me personally. I repeat — if you have ordinary goals that do not involve frequent jumps in the line of modes, then this inconvenience will not affect you.
If you need to quickly jump back and forth through the modes, then alas, ah.
If the charging was standard, and the brightness was switched by the side button, then this flashlight would be very, very good.
For now:
+ excellent range
+ Expect good build quality
+ built-in charging (crane rare for 2×18650)
+ representative appearance
+ stabilization
+ heat sink
+ instant turbo
— built-in charging only with a native PSU (although I’m sure that there is a third-party PSU with this connector, but I don’t have a specification yet)
— control, which more interferes with the use of a flashlight
Where to buy and how to save
you can buy Nitecote MH40GTR 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
If you are interested in choosing good a long-range flashlight in such a long format, I highly advise you to see my review Sofirn SF47T he is a head taller than he is