Until now, meteor has only had two definitions.
A fiery terror ball that reins death from the sky and crashes to earth...
Or a pizza adjective. Well Meteor
now has a third important definition it's a small badass light
that's probably even brighter than your winter tan. The Noctigon
Meteor M43 is probably the brightest and smallest flashlight
most people not familiar with flashlights have ever seen and quite
possibly also flashlight experts.
"Oh" you say, "it's like that Tom Cruise of flashlights?"
First is nothing like Tom Cruise, and second you may want to rethink
what small and badass mean. So how can
a light so small, be so damn bright? Well
it's easy... it's a mixture of unicorn blood Minotaur horn dust,
copper, 12 LED's, and four 18650 batteries.
Any four 18650 batteries?
Well not exactly. The M43 requires that you use high-quality,
high-drain 18650 cells, like the
LG ICR186550HE2 cell that is used to do
most of the testing in this video. If you don't use them, you operate
this hand warmer at your own risk.
Like all fancy flashlights, this one is covered in a type 3 anodization
and comes in a few different colors. Well let's call them exterior tints.
Its LED's are housed behind a coated glass lens and focused with
Carclo optics. In fact, no detail was spared.
Inside you have, beryllium copper springs, that's cool right?
And pure copper MCPCB's in the tail cap and the flashlight
head where all those bright LED's are mounted. The flashlight
is operated by a backlit multi-color electronic switch
that indicates the charge level based upon color.
You might notice that I didn't say exactly what
LED's the M43 uses. That's because the Meteor has several different LED options
that allow you to customize the tint, the amount of total lumens it outputs,
and the peak beam intensity. This particular version uses 12 XPG2 S2 1D
de-domed emitters with 10507 Carclo optics and is
manufacturer rated to pump out an unreal 6300 lumens
in a 5000k neutral white tint.
And if you don't understand that last sentence very well, it's just
flashlight speak that generally translates to- "Holy Shit!"
So how does it work? It has a pretty advanced programmable flash light
mainframe inside that as far as I know
you can't hack in to. It will require a bit of manual reading
and operates all off one button. "Okay well that sounds kinda like witchcraft"
someone from the 1700's might say. Well it's not and to keep you
from watching a 45-minute flashlight video
and from me making one- although I'm tempted don't get me wrong... I'll
go over the basics. But before I go over anything else I'd
like to describe the interface I chose (of the three) to do this
tutorial, as a heavily "shortcut-based" interface.
The 8-page English manual- yup I just referred to an 8 pages of flashlight
instructions... says there are three basic operating interfaces to pick from.
They're called imaginatively UI1, UI2, and UI3.
UI1 is called "minimalist," UI2 is, I don't know- "regular guy interface?"
And UI3 is "advanced," which is an understatement.
So I tried UI1 and didn't care for it. And I tried
to decipher and program UI3 for about 15 minutes and cried-
but don't tell anyone... and decided by default to go with UI2.
So let's activate UI2... to do that
you get hit 10 fast clicks and hold... boomboomboom... just like that.
The flashlight will let you know you're in UI2 by signaling with 2 flashes.
Are these numbers confusing you yet? okay UI2 has
three basic level groups, not including turbo.
"High, Mid, and Low."
And each of those groups has two programmable levels. Are you still with me?
Hello... hello? Since you are probably
interested in this flashlight to blind small animals or
children, first let's get down to business and
activate turbo without buying it dinner first.
Just press and hold
for scorched earth. See? Wow.
Then one press to turn it off. Boom.
Okay now the low modes. One quick press.
You're in low group! A double click gets you back and forth between the two low
modes which are called "low" and "moon." Cool.
How about a mid grouping. Well you'd have to be in low group first to
get to the medium group. Like you just did.
Hold the button for half a second, release it, and now
you're in the mid grouping.
A double click switches between mid 1 and mid 2 just like
in the low modes. Now on the high grouping you can do it one of two
ways... because everyone likes
to do the same thing two different ways right?
So you either double click from off
or press and hold for half a second from the mid grouping.
A double click it switches between high 1 and high 2. Now while the light won't
remember the last mode you used when you turn it back, remember because it's
a short cut based user interface... it will remember
the output mode you selected while in each four groups... so next time you
you go to mid it will be the last mid you decided to use.
You know, except for turbo- because there's only one turbo, man.
Wait so you're asking no mode memory?
Well allegedly UI3 is programmable but after trying
and accidentally programming
one mode once, I was unable to replicate it. It's like lightning striking twice.
So I even studied the programming flow chart-
there are probably people who can do it but
that's right: I'm dumber than this flashlight So you've seen my videos and you're
probably expecting a runtime section.
Well here it is. For this test I set my camera to manual in the name of
flashlight research. First is turbo mode.
I did something unique here... well not that unique but
I used the manufacturer recommended LG high drain batteries
and then some high quality 18650 Sanyo batteries
because I'm a bit of a rebel.
The Sanyos ran a few minutes longer- believe it or not. You can see it only
stays at 6600 lumens for a few minutes before stepping down
with a gradual brightness decline over the entire runtime. My ending voltage
on the four batteries was usually around 3.05 volts each.
And lastly I did a test of high 1
mode with the LG batteries. It ran a few minutes longer than turbo with a
similar drop in brightness throughout the run time.
Okay so just how bright is the m43? Well since I'm lazy and I haven't built a
integrating sphere
this is gonna be my beam shot section. I have set my camera to manual
so you can compare the relative brightness in output between flashlights
all of them are set to their maximum output modes.
Without further ado... here's the boring beam shot or interesting beam shot
section of the review, depending on
how much you're into flashlights and their beam shots.
I've compared the M43 with my four brightest lights and one or two of my
lame single XML2 based lights just so you can see how bright these big lights are.
the lights I'm comparing this one to all have the manufacturer rated outputs
of 2000 to 3000 lemons for the Big Ones and 700-1000 lumens
for the smaller ones.
On the screen you can see where it shows the distance to objects
like the creepy shed
or those trees way out there. And also the camera settings that I used.
So what else? Well honestly I'd prefer user interface with simple mode
memory. One click on
and one click off. And maybe press and hold to find the mode you like.
And you know it stays on that mode for when you turn it on next.
That's what mode memory is. Well if this light does it, which
allegedly it does... I can't figure it out. Sorry, that said everything
about this light has been carefully thought out. There's tons of
copper and there's not a piece of the light that hasn't been constructed
out the finest flashlight materials, grown only the most organic
a flashlight gardens. It has excellent smart thermal regulation. So it will
adjust the brightness to keep your hands from burning and blistering
and your flashlight from melting into a pool of molten metal and
turning into a Terminator- then killing you
when using higher outputs. It's waterproof to
IP67 standards or one meter of water
so you can use in the rain or drop in a shallow
pool of water and it won't damage the light.
And it comes with spare o-rings, a holster, and a
lanyard- which shouldn't be a surprise to anyone because every flashlight comes
with those things. And you probably have a million of them
by now- that is if you own a million flashlights.
The moonlight mode is about as low as can be expected for a twelve emitter
light, but here's a quick comparison
so you can see for yourself. It's not scientific but you can kind of compare
which one is brighter and which one is dimmer.
Anyway thanks to international outdoor and mountain electronics for providing me
a chance to review this light.
Which is basically a flashlight rental because I have to pay to send it to
somebody else.
So don't forget to subscribe to my channel to see more videos
just like this one.
Thanks for watching. In order to check
out this light on the internet go to international outdoor dot com-
it's not spelled like think, so make sure you look at the credits and
to go to it to buy the light. The light is also available from www.Mtn-Electronics.com
which is a US based retailer. Opinions, editing, narration, and camera by M. Hanlen.
Shot on the Black Magic Pocket Cinema Camera. Edited in Final Cut Pro
And Graded in Apple Color. Remember visit www.intl-electronics.com and mtn-electronics.com for purchasing.