Zak Reviews

Review: Skilhunt M200 v3 - an excellent 18650 EDC light with magnetic charging

https://zakreviews.com/skilhunt-m200-v3.html

#flashlight #review #EveryDayCarry #edc @[email protected] @[email protected]

Review: Skilhunt M200 v3 - an excellent 18650 EDC light with magnetic charging

<p>The Skilhunt M200 v3 is an 18650-powered everyday carry flashlight with USB-magnetic charging. It offers excellent color rendering with the Nichia 519A option and it's fairly slim for the battery size. It's an obvious competitor to the Olight Baton Pro, but uses standard batteries and offers much better color quality.</p>

Zak Reviews
Jul 13, 2023 at 6:32pmWeb
Show threadgiant_smeegJul 13, 2023

My one serious complaint is that the charging pad can cause sparks when short-circuited. I was not able to ignite steel wool with it as I could with the Olight H2R and the current shuts off almost instantly. Still, live contacts on the outside of a flashlight are a safety concern in some situations and I’d like to see Skilhunt add a diode to the charging pad to eliminate the risk. This is enough of a flaw to keep me from giving the M200 v3 the five-star rating it has otherwise earned and to hesitate to recommend it to mechanics who could be around both metal shavings and fuel.

Is that just the charging cable side? or does the light on its own have any of this behaviour

Show threadZak ReviewsJul 13, 2023
@giant_smeeg the light itself.
Show threadgiant_smeegJul 13, 2023
Fair. Not a fan of that cheers.
Show threadsolrizeJul 13, 2023
That is a pretty horrible misdesign or maybe manufacturing defect, if live voltage is supplied to the external contacts like that. It is even a safety hazard. It’s enough to make me want to stay away from the light without wanting to know anything else about it. Ouch.
Show threadZak ReviewsJul 13, 2023
@solrize it's an issue for all the Skilhunt lights with magnetic charging. It's not nearly as bad as when Olight did the same thing, but Olight fixed it.
Show threadsolrizeJul 13, 2023

Thanks but that turns me off from the whole brand. It’s almost like a light that explodes. I had thought of the magnetic charger as a smaller alternative to a cradle charger and I hope no cradle lights do anything like that. They should not have approved production of a light with this flaw. If Mag or Streamlight had shipped this, they would probably have to do a recall. Ouch.

I still love my Skillhunt E3A though.

Show threadDefeaterofDarknessJul 16, 2023

For clarity, there’s no risk of the light (battery) exploding itself. The current shuts off immediately when shorted.

The scenario where there could be risk is if a metal shaving arcs the pad and there is a combustible gas or liquid in the immediate vicinity of the light. I would be way more worried about sparks from other sources (metal on metal, static electricity) in that environment than I would be about this flashlight.

Not really an issue for the vast majority of users but worth the disclaimer and the one star hit IMHO.

Show threadsolrizeJul 13, 2023

Very thorough review, thanks for posting it. I like how the Lemmy/Mastodon comments are now merged into your blog. I may try to set something like that up for some of my own web pages.

One request: could you at some point add an index to your review site? Preferably automatically generated and linked to categories. I don’t know what software you are using so don’t know how feasible this is, but it would be nice.

Show threadZak ReviewsJul 13, 2023

@solrize How would you like the index to be structured? Currently, there are tags and it wouldn't be hard to use them to make some sort of index.

I've had the Mastodon comments for a while, but nobody commented until I (and many others) started using Lemmy. I modified this code and should probably update it:
https://carlschwan.eu/2020/12/29/adding-comments-to-your-static-blog-with-mastodon/

Adding comments to your static blog with Mastodon

Update 29.01.2023: Adapted the code to work with Mastodon 4.0 and replaced linuxrocks.online by floss.social Update 15.03.2023: Thanks to @[email protected], this code now handles replies in a lot nicer way. You might want check out her solution too. Update 07.07.2023: Thanks to @[email protected], the layout was improved and this now handle emojis One of the biggest disadvantages of static site generators is that they are static and can’t include comments.

Carl Schwan
Show threadsolrizeJul 13, 2023
I think Zeroair’s category links work ok for now. if his site had a lot more reviews, I’d want a more compact format, like parametrek’s db pages. I’ll give it some thought and maybe post more later.
Show threadReader9Jul 13, 2023
You can also find many (all) reviews filtered to zakreviews.com in this database recently launched by @[email protected] : lumireviews.ca
@NightTime - Lemmy.world

Show threadNightTimeJul 14, 2023
Yes, all Zak’s reviews are in the database. Well, everything that has a light. If Zak reviewed a charger or a knife, it won’t be there. If you need the hyperlink list, I can provide it.