The New Aquatec 5W

4218 Views 16 Replies 10 Participants Last post by PipeDown, Aug 2, 2010

HP

Discussion Starter · Apr 24, 2010 (Edited)

Is a hell of a recreational dive light for £69. A good "halo" with an exceptionally bright, tight central spot that gives a great balance between general illumination and signalling ability. Well made and durable, compact, takes 3 C cell batteries with huge burn time. Would go on to make a great Technical backup light as folks progress as well. Chuck the telephone cord on the bin though. Highly recommended in my book, I reckon BJ won't be sending his one back

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Naomi S

· #2 · Apr 25, 2010

Yes Rob has one of these, they really are quite bright aren't they! Small thing but I wish the attachment for the boltsnap was in the middle but thinking of getting one.

soggybottoms

· #3 · Apr 25, 2010

That looks to be a good find HP

A little more info gleaned offov a German site ....

5 Watt LED Aluminum Flashlight with high brightness and very long burn time (approx. 18-20 hours). Attractive design. Virtually indestructible. With hand strap.
- requires 3 C batteries
- Color temperature: 6000-8000 K
- 230 lumens
- Max. Diameter: 44mm
- Length: 200 mm
- water resistant up to: 120m

and I see that Stoney have it for £49.97

tempting, so tempting......

Charlie

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G

· #4 · Apr 25, 2010

how does it compare to the LENSER ? i got a lenser ages ago for a backup and the bloody switch broke - to be fair it was replaced but i've lost confidence so was looking at one as a new backup. You know how it goes, if the shit hits and you need your backup chances are thats when it goes tits as well. the lenser now just gets used on land, its bright tho, 3W cree but cant find details of the lumen output. anyway stoney doing them for £50 so it looks a bargain.

HP

Discussion Starter · #5 · Apr 25, 2010 (Edited)

I think if you're buying a cheap Tech backup light and you can't afford the Halcyon or the Heser - then take a look at one of the new UK SL3 LEDs as well. This is a great all round Rec light, but might be a little bit long for shorter people wanting to clip it under the arm to the chest D Ring - ala DIR

The Stoney Aquatec ones seem to have a polycarbonate body, maybe an earlier model, the one I have here is all anodised Ali and the better for it I reckon

This walks all over a Lenser and hasn't got a stupid switch that breaks or seizes up

HTH

stewbie

· #6 · Apr 26, 2010

Stony do both - the metal one is about £65 and the polycarbonate one about £50

Nice torches though. Took the 3W one to the Red Sea in January and it was superb for clear water night dives.

turbanator

· #7 · Apr 26, 2010

I *think* the same light (anodised) is sold by S'Pro for about the same price.

G

· #8 · Apr 26, 2010

i just bought a HID 35W so everything looks bright now!!! about 3000 lumens bright

but it does mean i cant justify big bucks on another, or so she says!

gcbryan

· #9 · May 6, 2010

I'm not sure why some manufacturers insist on making up these wattage numbers. This one isn't 5 Watts or if it is it's very inefficient as you can get this lumen output with leds in the 3 Watt range. It doesn't really matter that they do this other than to indicate to an informed customer that they don't know what they're talking about. I'm sure it is a good torch and more than likely is in the 3 Watt range.

steve6690

· #10 · May 6, 2010

They're probably stating the maximum rated power which, for an xr-e, has recently been increased by Cree so 5W should be about right. But at 230 lumens it's probably running at no more than 4W at the most, so it's a bit naughty of them...

gcbryan

· #11 · May 6, 2010 (Edited)

steve6690 said:
They're probably stating the maximum rated power which, for an xr-e, has recently been increased by Cree so 5W should be about right. But at 230 lumens it's probably running at no more than 4W at the most, so it's a bit naughty of them...

A Cree XR-E R2 was listed with a max spec of .700mA and now it's been increased to 1000mA so if the VF is 3.6V and the current is now 1000mA that's 3.6 Watts not 5 so yes...naughty!

steve6690

· #12 · May 6, 2010

It's the old "watts is good" con. At the dive show last year I was looking at Tillytec lights on the Go-Dive stand. One of the HID lights was rated at 175 watts. Greenforce do the same thing with their lights by the way. So I asked whether it was actually a 21W HID bulb or higher. "That's a 175 watt HID bulb in there" was the reply.
"Are you sure ? Wow, I thought it'd be brighter than that.."

genoni

· #13 · May 6, 2010

Steve-Did you have a view then of the TillyTec torches?

gcbryan

· #14 · May 6, 2010

steve6690 said:
It's the old "watts is good" con. At the dive show last year I was looking at Tillytec lights on the Go-Dive stand. One of the HID lights was rated at 175 watts. Greenforce do the same thing with their lights by the way. So I asked whether it was actually a 21W HID bulb or higher. "That's a 175 watt HID bulb in there" was the reply.
"Are you sure ? Wow, I thought it'd be brighter than that.."

Yeah, some of the people really don't have a clue as in they're not being dishonest they just are selling and don't know what they are actually saying. Intova lights used to do the same thing. I sent them an email asking how can they come up with these figures and they admitted that using watts figures aren't useful numbers to be putting on their packaging and ads for led (as opposed to the way it's used in HID and incandescents) and said they were going to stop doing that ...and they did.

Sometimes that's where watt figures come from. What they mean is that if this led was a halogen it would be xxx watts.

DiveRite has the LUX which they used to list at 945 lumens and some runtime that was impossible for their battery configuration and 945 lumens. Another guy on another forum persisted in getting them to justify those numbers or list what we knew to be the real number (545 lumens as I recall).

Eventually, they got their act together and now the LUX is listed on their website at 545 lumens. This must have been embarrassing to them as well because it was supposed to be an improvement on their Diverite led 700 model (or whatever it's called) as in 700 lumens.

The problem sometimes is the company actually selling and branding these lights don't actually have in house engineering staff. They out source that to another company and therefore don't actually know what they are talking about. There aren't really tight standards for the lighting industry so they can say whatever they want. It was only recently that most of them said anything other than "buy our light, it's the best, it's super bright".

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steve6690

· #15 · May 6, 2010

genoni said:
Steve-Did you have a view then of the TillyTec torches?

I managed to have a few minutes looking at them. I wouldn't buy one for a few reasons.

1. Why buy a Greenforce clone when you can buy a Greenforce for the same money ?

2. Greenforce has UK support in the form of Rob Lumb so you know you'll be looked after.

3. I emailed Tillytec with a genuine question about their claims for one of their led lights. The reply I got (from USA) told me that the "executive" knew nowt about the lights he was selling and he was spouting a lot of techno-babble which was completely incorrect. He was trying to tell me that lux had nothing to do with lumens and beam angle. When I pushed for the correct info I just got "Yeah well, you really need to dive with the light to see how much better it is."

On the plus side though, it's nice that they bother to quote the lux readings for their lights.

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endoman

· #16 · Aug 2, 2010

I've now got one of the Aquatecs as a backup, it's brighter than my Chinese YD special ( which was pretty good) and a tighter beam for signalling. Seems pretty sturdy as well. Much easier to attach a boltsnap as well.

PipeDown

· #17 · Aug 2, 2010

I've got the Scubapro Nova 230 and my other half has the Aquatec - they're practically identical, the same price and both very good.

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