Wurkkos Dive Light Earlier Birds Testers: Acknowledging Challenges and Looking for Your Input

[lairdb]

Hello scubaboard folks,

Although Wurkkos has been manufacturing dive lights for years, our primary focus has been on engaging with the BLF and Reddit/flashlight. This has inadvertently slowed progress in advancing Wurkkos dive light Development and limited our connect of divers' actual needs.

Like a couple of others have described themselves, I only do a few dive trips each year and don’t blog, so not a good review candidate — but I have a mild flashlight addiction and I’m a sucker for providing feedback that I can pretend might get used. Obviously this is for the diving I do — others will have other needs.

I have several dry-land Wurkkos, but no dive Wurkkos; my diving tends to want an auxiliary light size (e.g. 1x 18650 with bolt snap at the rear), easily turned on and off, easily stowed, used to look in crevices and underhangs or as a pointer.

At present, I carry two BigBlue AL1100; one on each shoulder d-ring. I’ve tried several others, but here’s the elements that have brought me back and left me with a crate full of decent but unused lights.

-Absolute disqualifier: the SOS setting (if present) must use an unusual press to reach it. It must not be part of the normal cycle. There are a bunch of lights out there that are hi-mid-lo-SOS-off; no no no no no no no. If there’s an SOS function, it should be mildly hidden (long press, 10x click, etc.)

-Easy turn off. Because I tend to briefly look in a crevice or point something out, then re-stow, I don’t want to cycle through settings and check the light before re-stowing. I like the BigBlue UI where after a couple of seconds of being on (during which pressing will adjust intensity) then the next press turns it off. Very quickly becomes second-nature to on-look at thing-off, or on-dim-look at thing-off, with no need to cycle through settings on the way to off, miss off and go through the cycle again, etc.

-One-handed operation. I get the simplicity of the screw-on designs, and the vessel integrity of the twist-ring designs, but as an intermittent light user, that’s two hands every time. With a body-forward button (or some other single-hand actuation) I can un-stow, on, look/signal, off, restow — all with one hand. My current lights almost never get unsnapped during the dive; just pulled out of the snoopy, pointed, activated, etc. all while still clipped in at the rear. (This is why I don’t favor tail-cap buttons for diving, as much as I prefer them for dry land.)

-Charge state indicator. As a on-look-off user, I don’t recharge between every dive, as long as the charge state indicator still shows good. Handy. (Also, I carry two, and on an actual night dive, three, so charge state of #1 isn’t as critical.)

Things I don’t have that I wish I did:

-laser pointer that actually works in clear-ish, bright-ish water. I’ve tried three lights with lasers, and in the videos they are great, and in the conditions I dive they are useless. I’m probably fighting both physics and safety regulations (and actual safety), but as long as I’m wishing…. (Maybe it would be more visible in bright-ish conditions by blinking, or pulsing, or pulsing in and out of perfect collimation, or alternating between red and green diodes, or…?)

-Easy flood/spot. Not sure how to solve this without mucking up the UI — the BigBlue flood/spot model has an adjustable lens; not bad, but two-hands, a little bulky, and artifacts when it’s a spot. Maybe it’s a separate emitter solution, with off-spot-flood-dim spot-off?

-Easy momentary/morse mode. Again, don’t mess up a simple UI — but an easy way to access a momentary mode would be handy. For my dive style, it might actually stay in momentary mode most of the time; if not, there are still times it would be handy.

-Easier recharge. This is lowest on my wishlist because my current (ha ha) state of affairs is okay: all lights are on 18650s, and I carry a lightweight dedicated single 18650 charger — but with USB C available, an on-board (on-board light or on-board battery) charge means would be handy. (And while we’re at it, anything that takes a charge should be able to serve as a power-bank. One of my 3 FC13s is always in my daily bag because it can power-bank as well as light.)

Don’t:
-Don’t put Anduril in a dive light.
-Don’t have SOS mode a part of ordinary use of the light.
-Don’t bother with a lockout (as long as a quarter-turn of the battery cap will do the same thing without compromising water-integrity.)
-Don’t overcomplicate the UI (see Anduril.) (There’s a reason the kitchen drawer has a TD02 and not an FC13.)


Wow — that was longer than I thought it would be.

 

[hancockks]

I would love a wide angle focus light that has both white or red settings, 21700 battery system. I have one sofrim and one wurkos dive light right now that we've been using for the last week, 4 divers pet day in PG.

 

[fred32176]

Thanks for your great support bro. The light size is the most point for secondary light? And how much lumens output at least?

Size is important. My secondary light claims to be just under 1000 lumens. and I take it on every dive as I found a place for it on my gear where it won't dangle or be in the way but is readily accessible.

 

[Wurkkos Diving Light]

The latest models we bought were DL16, and have the switch on the tail of the light. This has a protective ring as discussed elsewhere in the thread.

Unfortunately, the DL16 is the cold sale light of Wurkkos . We will try to apply the protection ring to others.

 

[Wurkkos Diving Light]

as i wrote yesterday, i don't trust the switch on the DL02, which is an excellent lamp for my lake diving and scuba diving practice.
the switch turns on too easily when the lamp is stored with diving gear or clothes.
Look at the state of my boxer shorts, i almost burned down a house. i think the installation of a safety or lock would be useful.

Bardass
DL02 (x2), DL08, DL16

Oh my godness. It's necessary to install a safety or lock. Let me feedback to Wurkkos factory and try it.

 

[stepfen]

DL07 are very nice dive lights. Everything is perfect with them EXCEPT their o-rings which deteriorate within months (if not weeks) of (otherwise careful) use.

I flooded one light like this within a couple of months after purchase. Following this I inspected the o-rings of the ones I own (3 in total) - all were deteriorating fast. I changed all the o-rings and since then, they've been servicing me very well for few years now.

Please pay attention to the quality of the o-rings. Their cost is minute compared to the cost of the rest of your device and it is a pity flooding such nice lights just because of crap o-rings.

I'm not looking for new dive lights...
Just wanted to give you some feedback. All the best.

 

[SouthernSharktoothDiver]

@Wurkkos Diving Light Not really sure how all this works, but I dive in darkwater environments pretty regularly (planning to get 20-40 dives in the next three months) and have a decent number of friends/dive buddies who do the same. Between the lot of us, we could definitely put your lights through their paces. I don't keep a blog, but I studied engineering in college, so I have technical writing training for whatever that's worth. I've got the capacity to take underwater footage of the lights, in action, in several different dark/low vis environments, so if any of that seems suitable and y'all're still looking for testers, let me know. If interested, I could also contact a fellow I know that runs dive charters under similar conditions, and see if he'd be interested as well.

 

[Wurkkos Diving Light]

Like a couple of others have described themselves, I only do a few dive trips each year and don’t blog, so not a good review candidate — but I have a mild flashlight addiction and I’m a sucker for providing feedback that I can pretend might get used. Obviously this is for the diving I do — others will have other needs.

Don’t:
-Don’t put Anduril in a dive light.
-Don’t have SOS mode a part of ordinary use of the light.
-Don’t bother with a lockout (as long as a quarter-turn of the battery cap will do the same thing without compromising water-integrity.)
-Don’t overcomplicate the UI (see Anduril.) (There’s a reason the kitchen drawer has a TD02 and not an FC13.)

Your comment is definitely the most detailed and complete in the entire post. It's great help to us. I don't know how to say thankyou. The perfect blog is. I will keep the four don'ts in mind. And feedback all to Wurkkos factory.

 

[Wurkkos Diving Light]

I would love a wide angle focus light that has both white or red settings, 21700 battery system. I have one sofrim and one wurkos dive light right now that we've been using for the last week, 4 divers pet day in PG.

Pet day? Oh my godness. I’ve not hosted the pet day with other people. I can feel it is definitely the perfect day. lol

 

[Wurkkos Diving Light]

Size is important. My secondary light claims to be just under 1000 lumens. and I take it on every dive as I found a place for it on my gear where it won't dangle or be in the way but is readily accessible.

Cool dive gear my man. After I shared that picture with my colleagues. They all praised it.