My journey away from lithium-ion lights

[tmassey]

I have two of these:

DRIS Dive Gear 1000 Lumen Dive Light | Dive Right In Scuba - Plainfield, IL

!!!30-DAY UNCONDITIONAL WARRANTY!!! Face it, you need a tough and bright dive light...and plastic just won't do. So, reach for the 1000 Lumen Dive Light! Built on the same powerhouse platform as our popular 500 Lumen Dive Light(8

www.diverightinscuba.com

They use C-shaped batteries. They are ”DIR-compliant” (twist to operate, alkaline battery compatible, and very long life with C alkalines) if that’s important to you. Plenty bright, tight beam, etc. and they work with eneloop batteries in C shells just fine, with more than an hour of burn time, which is plenty for most applications; and if I use them in a cave I just make sure they have C alkaline batteries instead. Because they are backup lights, a set of alkaline batteries will last me forever. (I wish there were eneloop C’s. Maybe I should look for other LSD C batteries, but I have a zillion AA’s, and for Rec dives having an extra set to swap is trivial.)

 

[Marie13]

@tmassey

I refer to those lights as “fish bashers.”

They’re the mag lites of the diving world.

 

[Compressor]

Li-ion batteries have revolutionized battery power in my opinion. They are reliable and have almost no self-discharge. They do require care in handling.

I travel with lights all the time. In fact, I have the same DGEx video as the OP and regular light. Take precautions so they don't cause issues and I never charge them without supervision ( I don't leave them on the charger and leave the house).

 

[2airishuman]

(I wish there were eneloop C’s. Maybe I should look for other LSD C batteries, but I have a zillion AA’s, and for Rec dives having an extra set to swap is trivial.)

I have had good results with Tenergy Centura C cells. In practice they work fine. Checking them in the lab there is quite a bit more variation in capacity and charging time from one cell to the next than is the case with Eneloop AAs. So far this hasn't been significant in terms of real world performance. They do have twice the capacity of Eneloop AAs.

 

[RobinG]

Your comment about self discharge is incorrect. Liion has almost negligible self discharge. The BMS on the cell may be the culprit or the light itself if it is a push button, but the cell itself has negligible self discharge.

There are no good options for full size lights because of the capacity issues and there are extremely limited options in the backup light world as you have found. I have several that use aaa or aa batteries with my favorite being the dive rite bx1 that has 3xaaa eneloops in it but it’s not what I’d use for a primary.

I'm looking at the BX2 for a day light. Is that a next-generation BX1 and would you say that is a good day-use light (looking under ledges and pointing out stuff)? Thanks

 

[tbone1004]

I'm looking at the BX2 for a day light. Is that a next-generation BX1 and would you say that is a good day-use light (looking under ledges and pointing out stuff)? Thanks

BX2 is much better than the BX1 as a light goes, but it can't use AAA cells which some may find annoying. I think there are other good options out there though, but for a good day-use light I firmly believe they're all basically the same for most uses and the big key is the use of a quality goodman handle that makes them user friendly. Oxycheq makes the only good one on the market unfortunately

 

[Gone for diving]

You could use one of these, 3 AAA, don't think it will have the run time, fits in place of 26650 lithium

 

[tbone1004]

You could use one of these, 3 AAA, don't think it will have the run time, fits in place of 26650 lithium

BX2 uses 18650. 26650 is not a cell I would personally go with since there are so few reliable suppliers of that cell size.