It’s been a long time since I’ve done a review. This time it’s a review of a flashlight that I bought, and the review itself is on my own site, which is pretty cool.

MSRP: $79

Manufacturer page/Store link: http://www.zebralight.com/SC64w-HI-18650-XHP35-Neutral-White-High-Intensity-Flashlight_p_232.html

TL;DR

Zebralight makes compact flashlights with great build quality and customizable UI, but their emitter choices can be a bit iffy sometimes. The XHP35 HI that they chose for this light offers a very even tint with very little green. I’ll be carrying this around with me for a long time.

Packaging

The light comes in a small cardboard box. There’s spot in the top for them to put accessories and batteries if you order those. I did not, so I just got

Contents

A Zebralight SC64w HI flashlight

A manual

Two extra o-rings

Build

Zebralight excels in a few areas, but their build quality is the most obvious of them. First thing you notice is the size. Their lights are tiny. The SC64 line is 92.5mm long. Here it is next to a Convoy S2+, which is 117mm long, and an 18650 cell, which is, well, 65mm long.

In addition to the size, they’re also super lightweight. This one weighs 38g. For comparison, the 18650 cell that powers it weighs 48g.

Aside from that, the whole thing is just very nicely manufactured. There are no visible milling marks, the anodizing is perfect, and everything is just smooth and wonderful.

The tailcap is knurled with grooves that go lengthwise along it to help you unscrew it. It’s a very small tailcap. Inside is a gold plated spring attached to a PCB which I’m pretty sure is glued in. The end of the body tube contacts the outside of this PCB to complete the circuit.

The positive contact isn’t a spring, but rather five spring loaded brass pins. This would be lower resistance than a spring, but allows for less variation in cell length.

The threads are triangular, but very smooth. There’s a thick o-ring that provides lots of resistance, and therefore a very good seal.

The body tube isn’t knurled, but instead has ridges machined into it, and a flat for the laser etching. On the opposite side, there’s a clip that’s held on by two torx screws.

The body and head are machined from one solid piece of aluminum. The head has a large, recessed rubber button on one side, which controls the power and modes. It’s recessed to the point that it’s very hard to activate accidentally, but not so much that it’s uncomfortable to use. It’s ergonomically very good. The button is held in with a steel bezel. The rest of the head is covered in heat fins.

The optics are also held in with a steel bezel. The reflector has a light orange peel texture, which helps smooth out any artifacts that may come from the quad die emitter. The SC64w HI uses an XHP35 HI, a factory dedomed emitter. Mine isn’t perfectly centered, but it’s less than a millimeter off. It doesn’t show up in the beam.

Clip

The clip is held on by two torx screws, and as a result it’s much more secure than most other flashlight clips. It’s a fairly thick piece of steel, and makes a very satisfying *click* when you take out out of your pocket. It sticks about a 3/4in out of your pocket, which makes it easy to grab.

Power

The SC64w HI is very particular about what cells you can use in it. It has to be an unprotected flat top 18650 cell with a maximum length of 65.2mm. You need not worry about the flashlight over-discharging the cell though, as it has built-in low voltage protection. The website says that it cuts off at 2.7V. It’s closer to 2.8V in my testing, but that’s still a great cutoff voltage.

The website also says it can take a 4.35V cell, but I don’t have any of those. Sorry.

Modes and UI

Zebralight’s UI can be intimidating. It’s explained to you with a bulleted list, and it’s all done with one button, so there are lots of combinations of button presses for doing different things. There’s a lot to it, so I’ll just give an overview here.

There are shortcuts to low, medium, and high. Each mode has a sub-mode, accessed by a double click, which can be set to one of three levels. By default, a single click goes to high, press and hold goes to low, and double click goes to medium. Pressing and holding will rotate between low, medium, and high. Triple clicking gets you to the blinky modes, where you can cycle through a few different beacons and strobes. A single click turns the light off.

There are twelve brightness levels in total, ranging from 0.06 lumens to 1300 lumens. There are also two other mode groups which are fully configurable (you can change any mode to any brightness). I have one of those set up to go to low from a single click, medium from press and hold, and high from a double click.

In addition to the configurable mode groups, you can also adjust the thermal control and check the battery voltage.

Zebralight’s UI hasn’t changed much over the past decade. The LMH with sub-modes has been around since the H60, a headlamp released in spring of 2009. It’s held up very well, though. I remember a few years back, before TK and the rise of ramping UIs, it was pretty much the best side switch UI out there. It’s still good, but Andúril would be really nice. I don’t think that’ll ever happen though.

Beam and Tint

Zebralight’s beams are probably the most commonly criticized thing about their flashlights. They have a bad habit of using emitters with green tints and noticeable tint shift. The SC64w HI uses an XHP35 HI emitter, which pretty much eliminates that due to the lack of dome. The tint is almost completely even across the beam, and there’s very little green. Tint-wise, it’s one of the best Zebralights I’ve ever used. One of the best.

Back in the day, Zebralight made an SC62w. I bought one right at the end, a few months before they ran out of stock. It had a neutral white XM-L2 and the best tint of any flashlight I’ve ever used. It was rosy. I loved that thing so much.

I often wore a grey Columbia coat back then. Still do, but I did then too. The pockets were just shallow enough that things would fall out of them while I was biking around campus. Well one fall day after hammocking in the park, I rode back to the dorm only to find that my SC62w was no longer in my pocket. I’d taken it out of my jeans pocket and put it in my coat pocket for maximum hammocking comfort, but that comfort cost me the best flashlight I’d ever owned. I went to that park for the next few days, looking at the ground along the way, hoping to spot it. I never found it.

I don’t think this SC64w HI has a better tint than my SC62w did, but it’s possible that I’m just seeing that rosy beam through rose-tinted glasses.

Here’s the SC64w HI (right) compared to a Skilhunt H03 with a 4000K 219C (left). It looks greener in the photo than it does in real life.

Modding Potential

Zebralight makes their lights tiny by cramming everything, the button, driver, and emitter, all onto one board. That, along with the press-fit bezel, means that any modification is extremely difficult. I’ve only seen it done by one man, /u/bob_mcbob, who swaps emitters in SC64s.

Other than that, I’ve seen people put magnets on tailcaps and clips, and swap clips with clips that allow for deep carry.

Bottom Line

Pros:

Very compact

Fantastic build quality

Customizable UI

Great tint

Cons:

Price, I guess? This thing is all around great.

Thanks for reading my review! If you have any questions, put them in the Reddit thread here: https://old.reddit.com/r/flashlight/comments/g0x573/review_zebralight_sc64w_hi_1x18650_xhp35_hi_side/

Bonus shot of the moonlight: