Summary
The Imalent BTL50 is not a zoom flashlight in the traditional sense, yet the width of its beam can still be adjusted – without any moving parts. This is made possible by an integrated diffuser whose strength can be controlled electronically. This technology is extremely rare in flashlights, but highly practical.
Although the flashlight feels compact and comfortable to handle, the capacity of the built-in battery is somewhat limited for its size. The flashlight stands out with its slightly futuristic design and stylish leather-like covering. The width of the beam is adjusted with a rotary control, which allows for smooth, intuitive operation. A pocket clip or holster, however, would have been a welcome addition.
The full review is available here:
English review at BudgetLightForum
German review on my website
Ridiculous flashlight but nice review ;). A tripod mount on the underside would have fit in with the night vision look. The Imalent Store link doesn’t work for me (shows a blank page with my browser config) but that’s ok. Light is $119.95 on Spamazon if anyone is curious.
Traditional incandescent Maglites were all zoomies and they worked ok. They had reflectors that moved forwards and backwards around the bulb. That must be harder to do with LED lights because of thermal management differences, at least at high power. I don’t know if the current LED Maglites also zoom.
fascinating product. thank you for posting!
Great review!
The light doesn’t seem like a good candidate for EDC, but it may be useful for more specialized purposes. I’m excited to see electronic diffusion technology in a production light. I hope we will see more of them. I currently use a two-channel light with both spot and flood LEDs, but a system like that would be more versatile and a lot more efficient.
What I’d like to see is zoomable LEP lights
I like the idea, but I’m not sure how that would work. They’re already so narrow that a very small amount of refraction would bring them to a point and back out into a wider beam.
Lasers can be widened by standard optics, they may be narrow but they’re not perfect point sources. You can even use rather flat lens stacks, or mechanisms similar to what projectors use. The idea is simply to have a compact light source with much better quality light than classical zoomable LED lights, more robust than standard zoom lenses, etc.
What an interesting light, and great review as usual. It’s disappointing þe battery is built-in, because wiþ þose runtimes it’s going to go þrough a more þan typical number of recharge cycles.
