This was my first Wurkkos light, which I never got around to reviewing as I had bought it specifically to stash in a get home bag in my wife’s car. It was recommend to me as a great option, easy to use, solid, cheap and with a great LED. It spent about 3 days in that get home bag before I decided to put a slightly more expensive light in the bag, so I could use this light myself.
It’s not the best light, I think the TS21 is a better buy, but it’s much lighter and easier to carry, so it’s worth considering if you want a great light for not a large budget as it can be had for $30 easily.
LED & Power
The great part about this light is the LED, which is the Samsung LH351D and right now you can get it in: 2700k, 4000k, and 5000k. All of them are good, but I am particularly partial to the 5000k in this LED. It offers a fantastically clean light. It is high CRI, above 90, but the light is incredibly neutral in tone for how white it is. Typically you don’t see that, so if you want to make your 4000k SST-20 look warm and cozy, shine it next to this LED. So naturally what I have selected here is the 5000k variant, but the 2700k is a good grab too.
The thing to note about this LED is it produces a larger beam than most other LEDs in the same reflector. So even though this has an orange peel, TIR, style setup, you do get a nice and wide hot spot. Otherwise it will look like other TIR. It’s good for walking around outside, or moving about where you need a decent amount of balanced light with some flood and some throw to it. This is the “all around” optic.
The light is an 18650 powered host, and the factory provided (but optional) battery is a button top with 3000mAh. One thing I think is a little shady is that the printed runtimes are tested with a 3500mAh battery, so you won’t get that with this battery. Even still, the LH351D is an efficient LED and will run at about 50 lumens on this battery for a substantial amount of time. And unlike with a 21700 battery, this feels featherweight by comparison.
In Use
Alright, I will keep this short becuase this light is decently inexpensive and overall it is fine — not great, not bad — fine. Here’s the highlights:
- There’s two groups in the UI for this light, you need to move to the second group so that you have smooth ramping. It very closely mimics Anduril 1/2 where you click to turn on, press to smoothly ramp up to full power, and double click+hold to move back down the power. You still have quick access to turbo though, which is great. This is simple enough to be nice, while not confusing to anyone.
- The lockout on this is necessary, but sucks. When the light is locked out, you get a decently bright double flash of the LED if you click the button. It’s not at all useable in lockout and if the light is locked out and you were trying to save your night vision by turning it on to low, the flashing will blind you.
- The light can be charged with USB-C, no functionality though. I think that’s find given the smaller battery size here, but feels like the feature should be there.
- The button is blacklit rubber, but only lights up for battery status, which is silly and poor design. It should have a locator light on it if you ask me.
- Further the button is grippy when dry, slick when your fingers are wet. Which kind of defeats the purpose a little. Why have a rubber button if it feels slippery when my fingers are wet?
- In fact with wet hands, I find the light is generally slippery in hand. Something I only found out when I tried using it with wet hands.
- It is lighter than you might expect which is really great.
- It is also longer than you might expect which is really not great.
Left to right: JetBeam RRT01 Raptor, FC11, Olight S2R Baton.
That’s all I really have to say. It’s fine if you need to toss it in your pocket, but it’s not great. It works fine. Fine.
Overall
And that’s my impression of this light: it is fine. The LED is fantastic, and it’s a good way to get a really solid light with a great LED. But otherwise, there are better options for not much more money. If budget is very constrained then this is a really good option if you want something with very good output. I recommend 5000k on this LED all day long. If this light were not this long I think it would be a more compelling offering on it’s own, the pieces are there, but they just missed.