Fenix E12 v2

You won’t be able to choose your favorite LED, tint or bin, like you can do with the small manufacturers. Fenix doesn’t usually give the option and by default uses cool white emitters. In case you care about this, you probably already know this.

The E12 v2 also has a cold white LED, and I had no idea what type of LED it was until I read the manual. I know, men don’t need manuals, but for a review, it’s important to glance over the details at least once. And then I saw the type of LED they used, it’s called a MATCH CA18 Cool White LED. I never heard of this brand, nor this type of LED.

Anyways, if you look at the pictures below, you can see that the reflector/TIR optic looks really cool. It does look like the LED is a little bit off-center. The color temperature doesn’t seem too cold, but it’s hard to guess without proper tools.

The copper looking bezel isn’t removable. I tried to remove it but to no avail. It turns, but it doesn’t unscrew.

• Length:  77.8 mm / 3 ”
• Head diameter:  19.4 mm / 0.76 ”
• Body diameter:  17.6 mm /  0.69 ”

Weight: 

• Empty: 28.1 g /  0.99 oz
• With battery: 54.7 g / 1.93 oz

EDC and Keychain flashlights

Size compared to other EDC flashlights and small flashlights
From left to right: Fenix E12 v2, Enogear AA, Lumintop EDC05, Lumintop Tool AA 2.0, Lumintop EDC AA.

After reviewing Anduril Firmware based flashlights, it sometimes feels like a relief to find this kind of simple UI. No hidden modes, no blinkies, nothing. Just a simple old-fashioned 3-modes UI.

Available modes:

• Low, Medium, High

From OFF:

• Half-press: nothing (it’s a reverse clicky switch)
• Single-click: Turn on in Low
• Double click: just turns off again.

From ON:

• Half-press: Cycle through the menu from Low to High
• Single-click:  turns off

Mode memory:

• No, it always starts in Low

Blinky modes menu:

• Nope

Low battery warning:

• Nope

Lock-out mode:

• Nope

PWM:

• Nope

Fenix includes an Alkaline battery named Pairdeer Industrial and it’s difficult to know how it performs in certain circumstances since it’s not rechargeable. I used it to measure the High mode, and that’s it. I wasn’t able to test the lumen output or throw with it. I used a Duracell AA battery instead and Eneloop as my calibration.

So, the flashlight itself has no built in charge system. Oh, and keep in mind it doesn’t accept 14500 lithium ion batteries 4.2V. It does however accept lithium AA like Energizer 1.8V

Lumen measurements:

All output numbers are relative for my home-made Integrating Sphere. It is set up with an Extech SDL400 Lux Meter for measurements including a Kenko PRO1D ND-16 filter. The base measurement is done with a Convoy S2+ that was tested at 255 lumens.

All of my readings were taken from a fully-charged Panasonic Eneloop AA 1900mAh.

Fenix’s numbers are always pretty trustworthy.

Next up is an overview of its performance on a single Duracell AA battery

As you can see, they are the same as a NiMH battery, like the white Eneloop AA used above.

Runtime:

The runtime test was done with the 50cm integrating sphere, including the Kenko Pro1D ND-16 filter and Extech SDL400 data logging Lux Meter.

The yellow line is the battery Fenix included in the package. You can see a bit difference between the Alkaline cell and Eneloop AA. Alkaline batteries can run for days in a row at the lowest energy consumption. NiMH are much better at high power. The following graph is showing the first 2 hours, so you can notice the big difference between a rechargeable AA and the Alkaline battery.

The Alkaline batteries run a very long time, many, many hours after it dropped to about 1-3 lumens. But you definitely see the difference in output between the 2 types of batteries.

Here’s a closeup graph of the first 10 minutes

Throw Measurement

Measurements were taken both indoors and outdoors with a professional Hagner E4-X Lux Meter.

In this table, you can see that it overperforms a little. The difference is small.

For the following beamshots I used a Canon EOS 5D Mk2 and a 50mm lens. manual settings: ISO1600, 1/4sec , F4, 5000K