[selfbuilt]

[UPDATE 10/20: It's confirmed the 18650 version of the Vika "12W Wide" LED from Fifthunit is actually a LuxIII running direct drive. The 2xCR123 version is indeed a lumiled K2, but not the 18650-specific version. Fifthunit has promptly delt with this issue, and revised their descriptions accordingly: Fifthunit 12W "Wide" Vika]


I just received the new 18650-version of the K2 wide-lens light from fifthunit, and am pretty impressed so far.



Quality of construction is better than I expected for such a cheap light. Thickness of the bezel is good, and anodizing is smooth throughout. There seems to be a limited number of screw threads on the head-portion of the body, but this doesn't seem to affect it much. Oddly, the spring is soldered directly onto the head PCB, thus making contact on the positive battery terminal. Not the highest quality here, but does the job so far.



Light is labelled "CHARGE.B-18650" on one side, and "POWER-12W" on the other. There's plenty of room inside for a protected 18650 - this is actually one of wider internal diameter bodies that I've seen.

The tail features a 2-stage reverse clickie that has good tactile feel (sequence is high-off-low-off). Overall hand-feel is very nice, and it sits comfortably in the palm being about half an inch shorter than a standard minimag.



Popped in a AW protected 18650 (3.7V Li-ion, 2200mAh), and was blown away by the beam. According to my light meter, on high, it slightly exceeds the throw of my 3W-LED upgraded 3-D cell Mag focused for maximum throw.


(3D Mag with 3W LED upgrade on the left, "12W" K2 Wide-Projecting on the right)

Note that the spillbeam is fairly wide, thanks to this new larger reflector (with 3 interesting "dimples"). Overall output seems to be about the same as the 3W 3-D Mag. Not bad for such a little light!

On low, the hotspot is still pretty bright: about 20% brighter than my Fenix P1, according to my lightmeter. But subjectively, overall output is definitely less than the P1 at this point.

I haven't had a chance yet to do detailed output comparisons or battery runtimes (I'll post more when I do), but so far this little light is off to a good start!

UPDATED: runtime graph below - pretty impressive at 2hours 10mins to 50%. Note the spike at 1hr, where the light started to flicker for about 30 secs. It recovered, and was fine from then on. There is always some minor noise on my runtime plots, since they aren't done in complete darkness.