Haikelite HK08

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Haikelite HK08 specs

Brand & Model	Haikelite HK08
Flashlight category	Brightest flashlights
LED	SFH43 (x8)
Max. output	60,000 lumens
Max. beam distance	1,340 meters
Max. beam intensity	450,000 cd
Battery config.	4x 21700
Onboard charging	USB-C
Main modes	4
Blinkies	“Burst” (medium strobe), SOS, “tactical flashing” (fast strobe)
Waterproof	IPX6
Review publication date	September 2023

From what I’ve seen of HaikeLite over the past few years, the company has one goal: to put out as many lumens as possible. Pretty much every flashlight they make seems to be a lumen-monster. The Haikelite HK29 that I previously reviewed certainly matched that description: it packed a whopping 29 LEDs to make one intense, floody beam. The HaikeLite HK08 that is up for review is even more ludicrous, it has 8 monster SFH43 LEDs, each of which have 16 dies. That all adds up to a boatload of lumens… more than I’ve ever witnessed from a flashlight. Intrigued? Me too!

Package quality.

The HaikeLite HK08 arrived in a nice, 2-part white cardboard box with minimal branding on the outside. The inside was filled with black foam and a lot of goodies. Inside the box was:

• HaikeLite HK08
• Carrying strap
• Two charging cables
• Spare o-ring
• Manual

The HK08 is a chunk! You could potentially hold it with your hand, but it is large enough that I can’t wrap my fingers around the body. And honestly, this thing gets so hot during operation that you don’t want your fingers on that battery tube. Thankfully HaikeLite built a handle into the flashlight. That handle is meant to stay there permanently, too, because the lone e-switch is built right into the handle.

Due to the handle, it isn’t allowed to roll around too much. And the tail is very flat, so it’s quite stable for tail standing in case you need to light up an entire auditorium during a power outage. Which brings me to how you might make use of 60,000 lumens. You can make an entire parking lot look like daylight. Or if the lights happen to go out at a major sporting event and you somehow made it past security with the HK08 – you might just save the day (or get tackled by a guard… let me know how that goes for you). It’s also powerful enough that you could probably cook your dinner over it in a pinch.

According to NealsGadgets, the HaikeLite HK08 is made of 6063 aircraft aluminum. While it sounds fancy and all, that’s pretty standard but good. Neal also says that the coating is Hard Anodized Type III. That’s plausible, I suppose, but I am somewhat skeptical when any company I’m not familiar with claims HAIII. I’m not an anodizing expert so I’m not one to refute it I guess. The coating is on the shiny end of the spectrum. Which, to be honest, I usually associate with cheap lights with less than stellar quality. I’m not saying that HaikeLite’s anodizing is bad – it’s very even and clean.

The machining is on the “blocky” side of things, which is befitting a flashlight of this stature. The battery tube has a square pattern with thin lines running its circumference. Overall, the HaikeLite HK08’s design and build quality seem… fine. There’s nothing wrong with it, it just doesn’t seem as inspired or refined as some other designs out there.

Warranty… that’s a good question. I don’t see anything about the warranty policy. If you buy the HK08 from Neal’s shop and you have any trouble, I’m sure you can just reach out to him for assistance.

The bezel is anodized aluminum, matching the rest of the light. It has some shallow crenulations. The lens is double-sided AR coated. The HaikeLite HK08 employs an orange peel reflector that is a bit deeper than I expected it to be. That helps out some with increasing the throw figures – it actually throws better than I imagined for an 8-LED light. In each pocket of the reflector is nestled a big SFH43 LED with 16 dies. Each one of those LEDs can theoretically put out 9,500 lumens. So 8 of them must be good, right? (Spoiler – yes, it’s very impressive)

Measurements from the Opple Light Master at 5m on Turbo:

• CCT: 6488K
• CRI: 70.4
• DUV: -0.0002

Haikelite HK08	Millimeters	Inches
Length	177 mm	7.0 in
Head diameter	90 mm	3.5 in
Body diameter	57 mm	2.2 in

Dimensions are rounded to the nearest millimeter, and to the nearest tenth of an Inch.

Weight: 

Haikelite HK08	Weight in grams	Weight in oz
Without battery:	1080 g	38.1 oz
With batteries (4x 40T)	1367 g	48.2 oz

Weight is rounded to the nearest gram, and to the nearest tenth of an Oz.

Flashlight size comparison with its competition:

Group 1: Convoy 3x21A, HaikeLite HK08

Group 2: Astrolux MF01X, HaikeLite HK08

The driver arrives in “infinitely dimmable” / ramping mode, which I immediately switched over to stepped mode for testing purposes. The manual mentions that there are 4 stepped modes (called First, Second, Third, and Fourth) plus Turbo. I find that a bit odd, because mine seems to have 5 stepped modes plus Turbo. To make things even more confusing, the output of the first 3 modes seems to change depending on if I get to that mode by (1) rotating through the modes by holding the button, or (2) turn the light off and back on in that mode. That is to say, if I go to change modes to Level 2 and measure the output, I get around 6100 lumens. But when I turn the light off and then back on, I measure around 2100 lumens. That’s the first time I’ve ever seen that behavior on a flashlight, and it took me a bit to figure out what was going on.

Available modes: 

• Level 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and Turbo

Available blinky modes:

• “Burst” (medium-speed strobe), SOS, and tactical flashing (fast strobe)

From OFF:

• Press and hold 3 seconds: lockout
• Single click: turn on, last used mode

From ON:

• Press and hold: change brightness
• 1 click: turn off
• Double click: Turbo
• 3 fast clicks: switch between ramping/stepped modes

Mode memory:

• Yes, the normal brightness level are memorized

Shortcuts:

• To Turbo: double click

Low voltage warning/protection:

• There is an indicator LED under the button
• When the battery is below 12.8V the blue light flashes
• Below 12V, red light flashes
• Below 11.2V, the light with shutdown

Strobe/blinkies

• From Turbo, double click to get to Burst (medium-speed strobe) mode
• From Burst, double click to get to SOS mode
• From SOS, double click to get to Tactical (fast strobe) mode
• Click at any point to exit

Lock-out mode: 

• Hold 3 seconds from Off to lockout
• Hold for another 3 seconds to unlock

PWM

• 39.8 kHz PWM was detected

Additional/summary info on the UI: 

• There is thermal regulation that ramps the output down to around 4000 lumens, but no lower (even then, it gets crazy hot)

The HaikeLite HK08 takes four button-top 21700 batteries. There doesn’t seem to be an overabundance of unprotected button-top 21700’s around, so I used some solder-blobbed Samsung 40T’s. Note, you’ll want unprotected cells due to the high-drain nature of this flashlight.

The HK08 specs say that it has 100W USB-C charging/discharging. I thought that had to be a typo. Pushing 100W through a flashlight’s USB-C port sounded like a lot (and perhaps a bit overkill) to me. But testing showed that I was able to hit at least 85 watts (4.32 A at 19.68 V) of power when charging. I was able to fully charge the four Samsung 40T cells in 1 hour and 7 minutes. I probably wouldn’t want to charge my batteries that fast on a regular basis, but I guess it’s good to know that you could if you wanted to. And if you don’t want to charge them that fast? Just hook it up to a weaker USB supply.

While I wasn’t able to measure the charge rate when using the HaikeLite HK08 as a powerbank, my phone did register as “charging rapidly” which is a good indication of a high wattage.

Lumen measurements

How Lumens are Measured: Understanding ANSI FL1 Standards How Lumens are Measured: Understanding ANSI FL1 Standards: The ANSI FL1 standards specify that output in lumens should be measured 30 seconds after turning on, as this is the standardized time for measuring brightness according to the industry standard. This is why we focus on this part in our measurements. The ANSI FL1 standards require an ambient temperature of 22 ± 3°C. We record the ambient the ambient temperature to identify potential reasons for any observed discrepancies.

Lux was measured by a UNI-T UT383 BT at 10 meters. Lumens were measured in a homemade lumen tube using a VEML7700 sensor, calibrated with a calibration light provided by 1Lumen. Four solder-blobbed Samsung 40T batteries were used for testing.

Mode	Specs	turn on	30 sec	10 minutes
Level 1	500	186 lm	188 lm	–
Level 2	6,000	6,727 lm	6,742 lm	–
Level 3	11,000	13,703 lm	13,720 lm	–
Level 4	15,000	14,487 lm	13,985 lm	6,515 lm
Level 5		17,948 lm	17,988 lm	6,369 lm
Turbo	60,000	64,447 lm	59,727 lm	3,985 lm

Parasitic drain:

• N/A – couldn’t test due to the light’s construction

When we’re talking about reality, pushing 60,000 lumens sounds like a tall order. But HaikeLite delivered! As to be expected, the output dropped like a rock after the 1 minute mark (or 2-3 minutes for Level 5 and Level 4). Oh… and despite the drastic drop in output, this thing got hot. The head topped out at an alarmingly hot 86°C and hung out there for quite a while. But that’s why this flashlight has a handle, right? Well, the battery tube was a toasty 75°C and even the handle was an uncomfortable 65°C. I would hope that a flashlight this massive could sustain more than 4000ish lumens without being crazy hot, but I guess that’s too much to ask for.

Haikelite HK08 Battery Life: Runtime graphs

How Runtimes are Measured: Understanding ANSI FL1 Standards About ANSI FL1 runtime standards: The runtime is measured until the light drops to 10% of its initial output (30 seconds after turning on). This does not mean that the flashlight is not usable anymore. The last column shows how long the light actually works till it shuts off. If there is a + symbol, it means that the test was stopped at that particular point, but the light was actually still running. This happens on certain occasions, with certain drivers, firmware, or batteries.

Mode	Specified runtime	Measured runtime ANSI	Time till shut off
Level 1	50h	–	–
Level 2	1h	–	–
Level 3	N/A	–	–
Level 4	N/A	1h 21min	1h 22min
Level 5	N/A	1h 16min	1h 19min
Turbo	N/A	1m 10s	1h 17min

HaikeLite was pretty sparse with what to expect for runtime. The mentioned figures for the lowest modes, but provided no information for the higher modes. Due to the drastic decrease in output the ANSI runtime of Turbo is very short, but it did produce over 4000 lumens for more than 1 ¼ hours. The other modes that I tested didn’t last much longer than that.

Peak beam intensity and beam distance measurements

About Peak beam intensity: Understanding ANSI FL1 Standards About peak beam intensity The calculated value of distance in meters at which the flashlight produces a light intensity of 0.25 lux. (0.25 lux is about the brightness of a full moon shining on an object). This means that the intensity has decreased so much, it becomes difficult to see darker objects, or objects that don’t reflect light. The columns ‘Meters’ and ‘Yards’ use rounded numbers.

Throw was tested at 10 meters with my UNI-T UT383 BT

Mode	Specs	Candela measured	Meters	Yards
Level 2		45,600	427 m	467 yd
Level 3		74,600	546 m	597 yd
Level 4		96,900	623 m	681 yd
Level 5		123,400	703 m	768 yd
Turbo	450,000 cd	298,200 cd	1,092 m	1,194 yd

While I was able to confirm HaikeLite’s claim of 60,000 lumens, I can’t back up their spec of 450,000 cd. I can give a certain amount of leniency since I’m testing with consumer-grade equipment, but their intensity claim is 50% higher than what I measured. That’s a huge difference.

Camera settings and distance: 

Beam shots of the building are taken at 50 m (55 yd) using a Pixel 7 set to ISO 800 with 1/20 second exposure time

Beamshots of the following flashlights compared:

• HaikeLite HK08 – Turbo
• HaikeLite HK08 – Level 5
• Fenix LR40R V2.0
• Lumintop Rattlesnake

Disclaimer: This flashlight was sent to me for review at no cost by Nealsgadgets. I have not been paid to review, nor have I been holding back on problems or defects.