I received the 3 Astrolux A01 from BangGood
They came very well secured from damage during shipping.
Each Astrlux A1 comes in a cardboard box.
Inside each box there is a light with a spare o-ring and a splitring.
The A01 comes in 3 colours: black, grey and purple. Grey and purple are kind of glossy and tend to reflect the light a bit.
Size is typical for an AAA class light: 70×16 mm.
On my 3 samples the anodization is flawless.
There is some knurling on the head. Well lubed sqare threads, and an o-ring on the body.
A big lanyard hole is at the end of the body. Of course, hard to tailstand for the A01.
On the plus pole of the light there is a sponge ring, like on some other lights.
Oh, did I mentioned the Neutral white nichia emitter? It is in an OP reflector.
UI
The light will turn on when the head is fully tightened on the body (as stated on the head)
The A01 has 4 levels: low (firefly like), medium (less than 10 lumens), hi (100 lumens) and strobe.
The light has no memory, and will turn on at low level. To advance to the next level, you need to turn off and on the light quickly (loose and tighten the head on the body), thus you will go from low, to medium, to high, and finally strobe.
The light has no memory, after 5 seconds since turned off, the light will turn on at low mode.
Runtime test:
At hi level, the initial output is similar for the 3 different cells: alkaline, nimh and lithium. The regulation, however is better for the lithium and nimh cells. Alkaline are semi regulated. Please note that lithium are ufficially unsupported, but I decided to test them anyway.
The specs state 7 hours at med level. Here you can see that the light keeps running for almost 10 hours, keeping the output constant all the way.
My thoughts:
This is a simple and well made AAA light. I am impressed by the quality of the light given the price (less than 10€ as today).
I like the body with the round/squared portions, they also help improving the grip, without the need of knurling on the body.
The grey and purple anodization colours are not common in this class of lights. If you are not a fan of this colours, regoular black is also available.
The tint it is great. The usual nichia 219b is hicri and 5000 k. I love hicri lights but I find the 5000k too similar to CW. But the nichia on this Astrolux A01 it’s much warm, around 4000K.
The output it’s ok: 100 lumens are more than enough for what I usually do with an AAA light.
One thing I don’t like is the lack of memory: when you turn on the light, you always get firefly mode. If you need something more than .1 lumen, you have to turn off and on again the light. Thus doing, you get mid level, which is around 10 lumens. If the A01 had memory, for my use will be better.
Other test and beamshot will follow.
Thanks for reading.
