This tiny little light is truly a joy! For under thirty bucks, you get a prettty solid light with fairly nice specs. Sporting an 800 mAh 16340 battery, it’s nice and compact while also managing to include on-board charging through the included USB-C cable. The two-way pocket clip is only about half the length of the light. Initially I was a bit concerned by the relatively short length of the clip, but the retention is very strong, it actually requires some tugging to make it loose enough to be usable.

The light rocks the Anduril 2 UI, and that combined with the 16340 battery makes it a somewhat unusual piece- I’m not sure I’ve seen any other Anduril lights using the same battery type. You could say “Cornflake, this light is a few years old now, what makes this light relevant?” I simply think it’s nice to have more options in the small light on Anduril category. It’s not as pretty as my Emisar D3AA which has the newest and most impressive version of Anduril 2, but I was in the market for another little light and this fit the bill. I have not handled the Wurkkos TS10 V2 yet, but I’ve seen some disappointing posts about parasitic drain that is unusually fast. I have not encountered that issue on this light or the D3AA though, it seems capable of holding a charge on standby pretty well. ALSO, the Sofirn SC21 Pro uses a buck driver (according to the manual), which is a lovely thing to see in the little light market!

The Samsung LH351D emitter is rated for a CCT of 5000K, and I’m pretty sure the CRI is at 90. Unfortunately, it’s got a nasty green tint to it, I believe Cheule has nicknamed this LED “dog farts,” and it does live up to the moniker. For a small light it has a rather deep and heavily-pocked orange peel reflector, making for a nice spot + spill beam and I fail to notice any artifacts in.

The moonlight mode is perfectly adequate on this light, but I did have to fix the floor setting on stepped mode to include it in the stepped-ramp cycle. That’s a simple UI change in the 10H from on menu. My biggest gripe with it however is the resolution of the smooth ramping. Perhaps I’ve been spoiled with the D3AA, but the first few lumens on the Sofirn SC21 Pro have some VERY noticeable granularity to it, even when used at .5x ramp speed. This means that finding the “perfect” brightness just above moonlight is really hard to do as it appears to skip some intermediary brightnesses in the ultra-lows. Everything above those first several lumens seems to ramp better.

Is this a good EDC light in 2024? I think so. For a cheap price you’re getting a pretty capable light in an attractively small form factor. If you love Anduril 2 then it’s hard to pass up on the novelty of having it in this cute little form factor :)

  • solrize@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    Thanks, yeah, Hank’s lights generally seem better thought out than Sofirn’s, except for the lumenitis which disrupts other parts of the design. I do like having a charger built into the light, or at least the battery. I prefer stepped to smooth brightness ramping, though that’s just me. I wonder why the SC21 Pro uses a 16340 instead of an 18350 given that it’s not trying to be tiny anyway. Anyway it’s good to keep seeing new Anduril lights. I wonder if Hank will make a light with these new UPDI parts (t1616 etc).

    I think right now, I find both of these lights interesting, but not different enough from what I already have to make me want to click “buy”. My main EDC is still a Skilhunt E3A.