OrcaTorch D630 can light vs UWLD 35

[stuartv]

I just saw this post over in the manufacturers section. The video is from Dan Wright diving the Tilley Foster mine.

In part of the video, he has the D630 on one hand and a UWLD 35 on the other hand and shines the beams side by side onto a surface. His buddy has a Halcyon Focus 2.0 and they compare that to the D630 as well.

Then he dives the D630 to 322' in the mine.

I was skeptical of this light. In particular, skeptical that it would be as bright as they claim and especially skeptical that the beam would really be tight. The Halcyon was focused as tight as it would go and it was definitely tighter than the other 2. But, it was not NEARLY as bright. The other 2 both seemed to pretty well overwhelm the Focus beam.

In the video, the D630 looks to me to be brighter and have a tighter beam than the UWLD. And Dan's burn test (in the Comments of the FB vid), he says his UWLD with Tall can burns 4 hours on High. The D630 went 6 hours, only dimming at the 3.5 hour mark.

The D630 looks like it might be a serious contender!

Thoughts or comments? @tbone1004?

Orcatorch D 630 underwater test by Dan Wright

 

[rob.mwpropane]

A little sidetracked, but I got lost down a rabbit hole looking into Tilley Foster mine.
Fascinating read. I'm sure it's been mentioned on here before. Sorry Stuart, don't mean to get sidetracked. Thought you might like.
Tilly Foster Mine Exploration "Deep Flooded Mine" | Facebook
Carry on.....

 

[tbone1004]

@stuartv
Some things we know.
The Focus 2.0 only has about 1500 lumen and while it is an impressive light due to the beam pattern, the total light output is considerably less than most other modern options and it has to make up for it's lack of total output with the super tight beam.
UWLD chose to have a wider light beam based on maximizing total usable light, and is just over 8* compared to the D630's 7* beam angle. UWLD uses 3x LED's vs D630's 5, so it stands to reason that the D630 should be brighter.

That said, the D630 has a 89wh batteyr that they claim 5 hours of burn time. 89*.9 since you hope they have a battery cutoff in there is 80w which gives an average of 16w consumption throughout the burn. They don't say which cree's they're using, but likely the XML-U2's, so max 160lumen/w, at least theoretically. 16*160=2560, then put about 80% efficiency in there for the optics, and you're at around 2100 lumen for a realistic average. It is unlikely they are using a constant output driver, especially as the battery is only 7.4v. It is highly likely that it starts out somewhere around 4000-4500 lumen, but like the output curves on big blue and others, will drop off pretty quickly.
Dan said that on full power it went for 6 hours, which is worse, and then kicked down around 3.5 hours and went from "green" to "red" on the indicator. That says that in the first 3.5 hours it used 70% of the battery. 89*.7=62.3wh consumed, over 3.5 hours=18watts for the "high burn", which theoretically is about 2900 lumen, but more likely 2300-2500 lumen average and a taper from 3000 to 2000 over that long is not going to be noticeably to a diver. Michael Barnette swore up and down *as a professional UW videographer* that his Big Blue lights didn't do it until he turned them on and took a picture on manual exposure every 10 minutes and could see it. Using gopros like they are, you will never be able to see that difference either since the cameras have gotten so good at low light.

What does all this mean? Like all of the other cheap lights, it is impossible that it does what they claim it does. 5 hours at 5000 lumen using multiple emitters would require a substantially larger battery and ideally at least twice the voltage *to use a buck driver that would allow for constant output due to voltage drop under load and as the pack dies. This is why the UWLD packs are 5s instead of the 3s packs used by Halcyon/Light Monkey or the 2s pack used by Orcatorch in this light*. That said, for $600 it's a great little light and if you need/want a canister, it's got the performance to get you through a lot of diving. No idea what durability/quality is like so I can't speak to that, but I'm fairly confident the difference between it and a UWLD/Halcyon would be pretty obvious, but they're also 2-3x as expensive.

If Erica at @OrcaTorch wants to send me one, I'd be more than happy to compare it to my other high end lights, and I'd like to get it down to @JohnnyC afterwards for the big light shootout that he's doing where we can do some more scientific analysis on the light.

 

[stuartv]

@stuartv
UWLD chose to have a wider light beam based on maximizing total usable light, and is just over 8* compared to the D630's 7* beam angle. UWLD uses 3x LED's vs D630's 5, so it stands to reason that the D630 should be brighter.

[snip]

I'm fairly confident the difference between it and a UWLD/Halcyon would be pretty obvious, but they're also 2-3x as expensive.

It only stands to reason it should be brighter if you assume they are using the same LED emitters in both, right? I have not been able to find out what the UWLD uses. Nor have I seen where OrcaTorch says what they use. If the UWLD uses 3 x XHP50 and the OrcaTorch uses 5 x XM-L2, I would expect the UWLD to be brighter.

The video shows the UWLD and OrcaTorch side by side. And it kind of looked like the OrcaTorch was brighter. So, I'm not sure what you meant to say by "the difference ... would be pretty obvious."

I think the open question is how do they look, side by side, after both have been on, on High, for 3 hours. I'm pretty sure the side by side video was shot when the OrcaTorch was fully charged (or nearly so).

 

[tbone1004]

@stuartv UWLD is using XML's, and I'm fairly confident the Orcatorch is as well.
The Orcatorch at the beginning when they are doing side-by-side with fresh batteries is likely going to appear brighter. It has a tighter beam angle and it's not in pitch black so the extra light that UWLD uses to light up a cave passage is going to be lost with ambient light, and with fresh batteries, it is quite probably that the Orcatorch has pushing out a few more lumens. The UWLD I can promise you looks exactly the same at 3 hours as it does at 3 minutes and I can all but guarantee the D630 doesn't by nature of the electronic design.

The start of the sentence about the difference being obvious was durability/quality. You can't beat the fit and finish of UWLD, it's engineered too well. If we can get a hold of one, then we could test to compare, so maybe they'll loan us one

 

[stuartv]

Yeah, all this talk is no substitute (for me) to seeing what the beams actually look like, side by side, after they have both been on for 3 hours.

The price of the D630 is very tempting just because, well, "shiny!" But, in reality, I am not doing dives that merit a can light, so even buying the D630 doesn't really make sense for me to do.

 

[JohnnyC]

I have no interest in testing anything from Orca Torch if Dan Wright is involved with him in any way.

 

[tbone1004]

@JohnnyC per most things with him, I suspect he bought one and is trying to make it sound like he's affiliated with them, but I do agree, if he's sponsored by them, that alone is enough for me to not buy them, no matter how good they are

 

[stuartv]

Well.... if you look at the first comment on the video, someone asks "Dan, why did you not test your LM primary light on this dive?"

His reply is: "Because they are not giving me one to test?"

It sure sounds like OT gave him one.

 

[tbone1004]

@stuartv hrrm, curious. I can promise you that he bought the UWLD though, Bobby doesn't give free lights to anyone, period.