Picked this weirdo up from Temu the other week, I'd never heard of the brand but for £20 I thought "how badly can this go?".
I'd never heard of the brand Smiling Shark before, it's yet another cheapo brand selling on the big Chinese sites, but this really caught my eye. The sales page wasn't hideously hyperbolic, and an 18350 Mule seemed like such a weirdly niche product I thought it had to be worth looking at and potentially modding later on.
Well it arrived, and I've been immensely impressed. I only have a FFL L60 (3700-1800k mix) to compare it to Mule wise which itself is hardly a big light for a 21700, but this little thing is tiny! It also punches seriously above it's weight, on turbo it's brighter than the L60; it can't sustain that beyond about 20s but it's not bad considering how little thermal mass there is.
The UI is a bit odd, 2c Turbo but 1h for off, 1h on goes into a smooth ramping mode where it behaves fairly normally (though there's no moonlight). However there's no cycling through modes to turn it off so that's a big UI sin avoided.
Can't complain with the package either, it arrived in a tough plastic box with foam inserts which I'll definitely use as a travel box, and a standalone battery charger to make up for the lack of USB charging. It's a rubbish battery charger and I've not tested it, but it's a nice addition. Battery came charged to 3.7v.
There's some odd design choices as well, the lanyard eye is a screw in ring like you get in some FFLs and Hanks (definitely good!) but it doesn't get pinched in before the tube threads close so it spins around uselessly unless you squeeze an O-ring on there. The battery tube, believe it or not, is actually quite wide so the 18350 it comes with has space around it. Fortune the double springs hold it in place nicely and there's no rattle or movement, it's just a bit odd.
So what about the light it kicks out? Well it's a standard Mule achieving any throw by pure brute force of lumens, the LED isn't perfectly centred but you'd struggle to notice, and the nice bezel is easy to remove. The LED is a P70 – I have no idea what that is but it does a decent job. I knew it was very cold white but I was surprised with the Opple measurements:
6800k, 81 CRI (Ra), 2 CRI (R9), -0.0099 DUV. Weird.
Pic 5 shows a picture of yesterday's roast beef with the ES16, 6 is the FFL L60, and 7 is a normal 519a 4000k for comparison (white balance auto). You can see how much the low R9 kills the nice browns of the meat and flattens the red peppers, but greens and yellows look pretty much as attractive as they do under the 519a.
8 is it in the garden lighting the whole place up nicely, that's about 15m to the end of the shed though the post that's just visible behind the shed is a about 40m away (big tree behind is about 70m which it can't touch), pic 9 is the L60. White balance auto, exposure and ISO fixed.
10 and 11 are just it out lighting up some trees at work this evening, not bad!
So if you've got this far you've probably guessed I really like this weird little light. It's not an EDC light, but it'll actually come in handy for photography which is where my request comes in – does anyone know how I'd go about swapping in a new LED for this thing? I have no idea what the driver is nor can I work out what the LED really is so I'm at a bit of a loss when it comes to replacing it (happy to solder, that's not a big issue). Any recommendations for a high CRI (including R9) emitter around 5000k which I could add in here?
by SeverumBoy
