Reactor III was the first official 1W luxeon Star LED powered flashlight I bought, I mean first factory made Luxeon Star flashlight. As usual larger companies are relatively slow to adapt new technologies :) Anyways, for its price(I got mine for less than 30$) it is a real bang for the buck. Although, to my taste it looks quite weird. Mainly the huge head assembly, as the body is standard aluminum tube housing 3 AA alkaline batteries. Reactor III is the evolution or modification of CMG Equipment's Reactor II powered by 2 AA cells. Operating RIII is easy, twist the head to turn it on, twist to the other side to turn it off. I didn't have any problems with RIII fit and finish, quality seemed to be nice, however after 5 days of very light use it developed a problem :( In particular, when I twist the head to turn it on, the light is dim, probably half of the normal output. I have to push it with more force to get the full brightness. Originally it didn't have this problem.

Beam

 - Currently it is the brightest 1W Luxeon Star flashlight I have. It definitely outshines both of my Maglite mods, Inretech 2AA adapter and BadBoy 400mA, let alone the puny incandescent 2AA flashlights :). Apparently that is related to the power source, 3AA cells for the Reactor and 2AA cells for the other mods. Also, have to note that RIII LED produces the best white light out of those 3 1W Luxeons. Inretech is quite green, BadBoy is purple. Obviously RIII continuous runtime will be longer, simply because of the extra cell. I can't judge the efficiency at this point though :)

Conclusions

- Overall, it's a good light. Especially for its price. If not the trouble with twist on/off switch I would be completely happy with it. May be it was a lemon, and you'll have better luck.

Last updated - 05/06/19