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Measurement disclaimer: Testing flashlights is my hobby. I use hobbyist-level equipment for testing, including some I made myself. Try not to get buried in the details of manufacturer specifications versus measurements recorded here; A certain amount of difference (say, 10 or 15%) is perfectly reasonable. What’s Included I did find the user manual confusing, but that’s partly because they are a few variations of this light. You can choose a brighter cool white 6500K SST-20 650 lumens main LED that I have or a 5000K Nichia 219C LED with a higher CRI but only 420 lumens. And then you have a choice of side lights – either UV, red and white that I have, or amber, red and blue.
Moonlight is great for a nightlight. Low is plenty bright to see a menu in a dark restaurant. Medium is a good, general-purpose flashlight. High is surprisingly bright for such a little flashlight. The beam is well-focused and can shine a long way at its brightest. It’s shorter and fatter than the i3E we’ve already looked at, and weighs a little more at 22.2g, but it’s still very compact. Like the Nitecore TIKI the modes are very well regulated and all the modes up to 200 lumens stay very constant. And I got at least the full 500 lumens in turbo for around 2 minutes before it started getting warm and dropping its output. Which is plenty since you need to hold your finger down the whole time anyway. It’s the lightest torch in this roundup at just 15.4g. In fact if you take the supplied keyring off it weighs an impressive 12.6g and it can still be attached to your keyring though the end hoop. I’ll have dimensions for all the torches in the roundup on screen as I discuss their build and weight. It’s worth noting this is also based on the ANSI standards and only requires the equivalent of moon light illumination or 0.25 lux on distant objects which isn’t very much. You can divide this throw by 4 for a more realistic distance measurement. Again, the TIKI is not bad for its size with a good combination of throw and flood.I confirmed these outputs, although high I measured a little lower at 240 lumens – but that’s still pretty good for a light this size and weight. This drops to around 50 lumens after 1 minute. Unless I state otherwise I’m measuring the lumens after 30 seconds, as per the American ANSI flashlight testing standards. Its CREE XTE LED has a cool 7088K colour temperature with a CRI of 73, but mine was very neutral with no nasty green tint you often get with cheap torches.
The Duv value represents the tint of the LED. The closer this value is to zero the better, if you want perfectly neutral lighting with no tint. Less than plus or minus 0.006 would be considered neutral. A more negative value, often with a rosy tint depending on colour temperature is usually considered preferable to a positive value often resulting in an undesirable green tint.
Unlike the cool white main light, the sidelight in the top photo shines warm white. The lower image shows the UV mode. Here is the sidelight in low, high, and UV. You’ll get better performance with a rechargeable NiMH battery, ideally a low self-discharge battery like this Eneloop. I’d only use Alkaline batteries if you have to. Alkaline batteries are prone to leak and destroy your torch if you’re not careful. It should last around 90 minutes at this level and an impressive 72 hours in the 0.5 lumen moonlight mode which I did measure at just under 0.5 lumens. That’s one of the best moonlight modes I’ve seen and is still enough to see if it’s pitch dark. And it keeps your eyes accustomed to the dark. In turbo mode you’ll get 2000 candela which equates to 89m of throw which isn’t bad for a mostly floody beam. The 60 lumen mode should last around 1 hour and the ultra low mode can last for up to 40 hours. A long press turns the torch off. You can run the TIKI off a USB portable charger and unusually all the lighting modes are available. So it would be great for a reading light when camping for example.
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