Budget lights

Buyer Beware

Inconsistent Quality

The exact definition varies, but typically these are offbrand lights made in China and sold by direct shippers like DealExtreme, Manafont, and KaiDomain. Quality varies greatly, sometimes being surprisingly good, but often mediocre or poor. There seems to be little accountability to the companies that manufacture the lights with many similar lights showing up under different, but similar brandnames like UltraFire, TrustFire, and UniqueFire that even share logos.

Cool tint colors for LED's is commonplace and neutral or warm colors are rare. HA III hard anodizing is hard to find. Most are HA II, if that and therefore these lights show wear much faster than name brand lights.

Misleading Information

The retailers websites often post incorrect information about lights and change features around without notice. In particular, ratings of lumens and runtimes are often greatly exaggerated. User reviews can help establish some features, but because the models change, even those reviews may not be accurate.

Slow Delivery

Shipping is usually included in the price and can take weeks or even months. Before Christmas and at Chinese New Year, shipping times will be at least a month even if the merchandise is in stock (if items are not in stock it can be months or more before items are back in stock).

Poor Customer Service

The retailers themselves have generally poor customer service, frequently not answering inquiries and getting orders wrong or delivering lights that are "dead on arrival." Because most of the transactions are paid through PayPal, the buyer has recourse and as long as you are patient (not too patient! PayPal will do nothing after 45 days from the date of sale). Store credits or replacements are often issued to resolve problems.

Subject to Derision

Due to the number of problems, there can be derision by CPF users regarding budget lights. Therefore discussion of the lights is relegated to the Budget Lights Subforum. People who pay good money to get lights that work right out of the box (most budget lights are just wrapped in bubblewrap and shipped in a padded envelope) do not want to hear the woes of people with defective or troublesome merchandise.

Great Value

With those caveats above, some of the lights represent a great value, often a third of the price of a name brand light featuring the same LED. Although they often require some tweaking upon receipt for them to work correctly, one advantage is that many of these lights can be easily taken apart and modified. To get a good light, read the reviews on the retailers websites and everything you can find out at CPF as well as sites dedicated to budget lights like Jayki and Budget Light Forum.