Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsWell Made Flashlight, But Not To My Liking
Reviewed in the United States on September 3, 2017
Bought this J5 Tactical V1-Pro LED Flashlight for my 93 year old mother-in-law to carry around with her. The light appears to be well made with the tail-cap threads being smooth, the switch operation is solid, and the slide zoom is smooth, although there is a bit of a scraping-metal feel. Light output is decent for a single AA battery flashlight, and it has three light modes: High / Low / Strobe.
The lumen output (300 lumens) seems somewhat over-rated. I have a Streamlight ProTac STL88033 PT-2AA that is brighter, yet it is rated at 155 lumens; only half the rated output of the J5. Granted, the Streamlight costs twice as much as the J5, but lumens are lumens. So either the J5 light output is over-rated or the Streamlight's is under-rated.
I did find two other minor annoyances with this light, and they are identical to other lights that look the same as this one.
1) When you zoom in (focusing the light beam into the smallest "dot") the beam becomes square: looks sort of like a capital "E" inside the square. As you get more distance from what you're looking at, it becomes even more obvious. You can zoom back out a bit and "round" it out if you wish, and you won't lose much light if you do.
2) The tail-cap switch works well, but a bit different from the lights I've owned/used in the past. Here is the click progression:
1st Click - High Beam
2nd Click - Off
3rd Click - Low Beam
4th Click - Off
5th Click - Strobe
6th Click - Off
After that it repeats the progression.
If you click the light on to use it, go to the High beam, then click it off, it will come on with the next setting (in this case, Low beam) the next time you click it on. (Hope that makes sense). So if you always want to use the High Beam (like I typically do), you'll have to click through these steps each time you use the light. Once the flashlight is on, you may partially depress the tail-cap button and step it though w/o the extra "Off" clicks. In any case, you just can't always start with High Beam with a single click - you do need a few extra steps.
All in all, it's a pretty bright little light and looks like it would last a while. But, IMHO, it is no better than the Hausbell 7W Mini LED flashlights I bought a while back. For five bucks less than this single J5 I got two of the Hausbell's.
Sending it back for a refund.
