It sells for $60, but is available directly from Thrunight with a 20 percent discount, making the price to me $48 -- a bit more than the $40 I paid for the original version, but still a good deal. This also includes their battery, which makes it a great deal. The battery is a 3100 maH protected cell by IMR (the Samsung 30Q according to some people). This is apparently provided because it is a protected cell capable of delivering the high current required by the turbo mode of this light).
It uses a Cree XHP35 HI emitter (the old version used the Creen XM-L2) It is available in Cool White and Neutral White.
Some changes:
It has 6 brightness modes and SOS. Only the middle four (and SOS) are normally accessible. The current measurements are from the BLF review.
A week ago I was hiking with the original version in low mode (11 lumens for 107 hours). Just recently I was hiking with the version 2 in low mode (37 lumens for 57 hours). I could and did make do with the 11 lumens following a faint trail on a dark night, but the 37 lumens is luxurious and bright enough for anything you want to do at night.
Compare the above to the following for the original version. In particular the brightnesses of the firefly and low modes are now increased, which does not particularly make me happy. In particular the low mode clearly now uses twice the current (and runs for half the time) as the previous lamp.
Now look at the values for the low mode. The old version used 25 mA, which gave a nice 107 hour run time. The new version uses 50 mA, which gives you more lumens, but a 57 hour run time. If we could drop the new version to 25 mA, we might be getting 37/2 or about 18 lumens (versus the old version giving us 11 lumens from 25 mA). Personally I would like that better. We would get the same 100 hour run time and almost twice the lumens.
But the key point to note is this. In general they have made the light brighter, not just by having a superior emitter (though it indeed does give more light for the same current), but by also bumping up the current levels significantly. I wish light makers would understand that there are people like me who value long runtime at useful light levels more than maximum brightness.
As an example, I recently found myself unexpectedly needing to hike for hours after dark. My overriding concern was that my battery was going to last. It was not a high capacity cell and was of unknown charge state. Yes it would be wise to always have a fully charged high capacity cell, but it would also be wise to not get into the situation in the first place. I used low mode for many hours and found it entirely sufficient to follow a very faint trail. I used medium and high briefly in difficult places where the trail did something complicated. I never used or even thought about using turbo (or the accursed SOS mode!) for that matter.
As has been noted already, they have now stupidly put the SOS mode in the normal brightness cycle. The previous version had it nicely tucked away where you had to double click twice to get to SOS. This is enough to discourage many people from buying this light, and perhaps rightly so. Honestly though, I find it only a minor irritation. You keep holding the button down, and the light might blink twice before transitioning to low.
The light ships with their 3100 mAh battery (which justifies the slightly higher price). Note that they have switched from their unbranded 3400 mAh battery to the new protected 3100 mAh battery. This was probably necessary to supply the 8 Amps of current now needed for the 2100 lumen turbo. For someone like me, who thinks the 2100 lumen turbo mode is absurd, the old 3400 mah battery is fine. For that matter any flat top battery scavanged from an old laptop does just fine!
I have to say that shipping the light with the battery and including a USB driven charge circuit in the light makes this product interesting to a much wider circle of users. In particular, you can now buy the light with battery included and not have to go spend money for a quality 18650 charger. This makes this light worth considering by people who are not flashlight enthusiasts.
To turn the light on, press the button quickly.
To change modes, with the light on, hold the button down. Normally the light cycles from low to medium/low to medium to high to sos and then back again, ad nauseum. The low setting will be fine once your eyes are dark adapted. Once again, it is terrible that SOS is included in the regular mode sequence.
This light now has a mode memory and will come up in the last mode used. This may help avoid being frustrated with the SOS mode.
To get to firefly mode, long press when the light is off.
Double click gets you to turbo from any mode.
Tom's Light Info / tom@mmto.org