Hi, let's check out the Zinon Ra backpack Adventure Light. Now this is a Kickstarter that I backed early uh, 2016 So over a year ago now and it's basically they promised delivery in Uh June I believe of 2016 it's now July 2017 so over a year late. So typical you know, crowdfunding campaign type delays. but they have finally delivered the product.

So as part of the Kickstarter, I got the two strap lights plus the Uh three output battery pack here for $99 This uh, current Jeel package currently goes for about $215 now, so it's not a cheap bit of Kit So let's check it out. So the reason they call it a Backpack light is it's well. it was originally designed to like be strapped onto the shoulder straps of a backpack and of course you got two shoulder straps. hence available in a double pack and it was designed to be flexible.

It's not as flexible as I thought it would be I'm putting a lot of force onto that and that's about as far as it can go in that direction. So I thought it'd be a bit more flexible, but it's good enough. Um for the shoulder strap of a back pack I would uh suspect and I did not get but I believe you can uh buy as accessories like velcro attachments and like a D ring attachment for it that uh can go onto backpacks and other uh stuff like that. so I'll just have to figure out my own way to F that fix that I'm not even sure it was an option at the time for the kickstarter, but it's basically USB power.

There's no built battery, there are five high quality cre leads in there I'm not sure of the exact uh type and of course it's a uh, the the fins on there you can see, uh, the heat sink. CU Of course you have to get heat out of this puppy because uh, they can be quite bright. They're uh, three multiple levels with the uh, single push button. It's designed to be uh, waterproof and the light output is massive.

It's actually up to, 1600 lumens supposedly. So yeah, um, it is pretty kickass. It does have have lower modes as well 120 uh angled pattern on it with a per supposedly like a perfectly diffused uh pattern. So the whole idea behind it is you strap it onto your backpack and you're walking through a cave or the bush at night or something like that doing some other Adventure activity and it just floodlights everything in front of you evenly.

So the whole idea is that the battery pack goes inside your backpack when you're hiking or you're adventuring or caving or doing anything like that and these go on your uh, shoulder straps and you can, uh, design to give a nice even light. That was the claim of this thing was that it was going to be beautifully even and just light up the surrounding uh environment. Perfect for say, uh, caving or for any sort of, you know Adventure mountaineering or something like that. you know, typically you're going to use a headlamp, but if you're doing long Bush walks and things like it's not the right lighting solution cuz two of these weigh you know, a reasonable amount, you know and a ized aluminium and of course a big beefy 13,400 Milah lithium ion pack is not lightweight as well so you know usually the goal of uh, lightweight Bush walking is to go as lightweight as possible.

So you're going to get a real lightweight headlamp and you just put up with how much uh, light that's willing to give out versus battery. This is like a a real high-end solution for producing lots of light if you don't care about weight basically. so it's not for your Ultra lightweight uh Bush Walkers who you know care about every gram sorry ounce for you Yanks and I forgot to show you the nice little uh pouch it comes in uh, draw string and also it comes with the velcro that you can actually uh put between here and then velcro around stuff like that. very handy, but yeah, it fits in there quite nicely so you can throw a couple of those in your backpack now.

I've got to say, it does feel very nice. super high quality. The anodizer aluminium feels uh, fantastic. the uh, this braided USB cable feels really good The Strain relief on there feels Fantastic look at all the screws in The back.

Beautiful. So yeah. I like they this has not been built down to cost so hats off. They've really done the business.

So as with most crowdfunding campaigns, they you know had a lot of production issues. They thought they could get this into production in a couple of months and well, a year later they had to redesign all the Optics and all sorts of things. but they kept everyone up to date and it was. It was really good.

It was a really apart from being late, it was, you know, quite a well-run campaign. The communication was excellent so no problems at all and they basically did deliver what they promised. uh five, uh cre leads on a flexible uh Mount like this USB powered and so yeah, it's done the business they have delivered. But you know what we say here on the EV blog? don't turn it on, take it apart and that's exactly what I've done here.

I've we flip it over? we can see I've just taken. uh of course these are all going to be identical in here. so let's take off the last one and the first one. We can see the circuitry down in there and let's check it out.

Now the first thing I noticed is that they've uh, wrapped the PCB like Mo Well, no, not molded. They've got two two separate parts, a top part and a bottom part there with all this rubber around it. and that's how they're getting the waterproofness of the pressure of the rubber going down against the board like that to stop the water. Ingress Onto the Uh main.

PCB So it looks like they've got two strips of uh, spring steel on the top and bottom. like that wedged between and the PCB wedged in between that. so I rather like that solution. It's really quite an elegant one to get the waterproofness along the uh, whole length of the thing where you got these separate uh enclosures.

So yeah, they um, were really thinking when they did that. Nice. and the lens. it just sits on top of the rubber like that.

So once again, uh, beautiful. uh seal Rubber seal cuz the uh pressure of the surrounding case like that when you screw it on will complete the waterproofness of that. So I I Really don't doubt that this thing is, uh, quite, uh, waterproof. It's Ipx7 rated, so it's designed for uh, submersion, so you know you wouldn't go diving with the thing or something like that.

but like you can easily jump into a a pool, swim across a a river, or a creek or something like that, or rain. no problem whatsoever. And of course, it's all about the lens for the optic side of things. So there you go.

For all you lens afficionados, they've had to put a lot of work into that uh, apparently to get the right light pattern. and I don't doubt it. And the neodium magnets oh came installed in here, but when I opened them up, they sort of like flipped out. They're so strong they flipped out and uh uh yeah got themselves.

Well, they ended up on the uh surface under there. so oopsie. Yep, there they go. Maybe my only complaint is that the thermal compound they've used, it's gone a bit flaky.

like it's gone a bit hard and Flaky so it's You know it? maybe not the best, but I'm it's hard. Yeah, it's hard to say like it, we'll see and it hasn't had any use. It's not like it's gone hard through, uh, heat. um like it's hardened up over time or anything like this is is uh, shipped.

Brand new. hasn't been used but one awesome feature of this. look individual themister on each one. They've also got a the up here as well.

Fantastic! so that prevents um, individual lead overheating. Great attention to detail. Love it. And of course you can see how they're getting the heat out there.

Standard multiple VR Arrangement on the bottom of the board conducting the heat from the top side. So if you combine that with the solid aluminium backing plate on there plus the fins on the top which are going to get any uh, you know, Breeze or anything, especially as you're walking, you're going to generate Breeze across that These things are going to stay pretty cool. Um, assuming that they've done their thermal Cals right and I suggest they had. but it looks like a very nice design.

If we have a look at the circuitry on the top side of the board here, we got a Texas Instruments 61500 and that's a uh, constant current lead driver boost circuit with dimmer. So 5 Vols DC in uh, driveing and obviously uh, they've got five the all five leads in our series string configuration. So a nice chip designed specifically for the purpose, so no worries whatsoever. Uh, looks like they've got a big beefy uh inductor there and a big ass diode over there.

It looks to be doing the job, no problems whatsoever. For the other side there, this: MGB Zer Is it 1644 I'm not sure what that's doing, but obviously uh, well, they've got pick there. So is that a Uh? Is that a Pck micro? H Because it's got to generate, we need something to generate the Uh Pwm signal for the different Uh brightness levels and just do some measurements with it on low brightness we're actually getting at the end of the cable 5.16 Vols So that's good. It's uh, compensating for, uh, any loss in the cable.

But let's uh, switch that brightness up, shall we? How do we do that? There we go. Whoa. Full brightness W Still 5 Vols at the board. Perfectly designed I Love it.

They've got a good rubber surround on the button there so that will prevent any issues with water Ingress through the button and the board wedges in there like that. and and probably the only potential place where water could get in is through this uh, strain relief on the end which is excellent by the way. I Really like that that should last a long time and there's a lot of uh, copper in this uh, cable as well. uh, lot of strands so it should, you know last for quite a significant uh, you know, flexing abuse and stuff like that movement cuz of course this thing's going to be uh, moving all the time when? well, it should be strapped down to your shoulder strap, but there's going to be movement.

but yeah, that's really. you know you couldn't ask for much better than that. and we've got about 25 milliamp draw there on the uh, low setting. let's whack it up to high and see what we get there.

We go drawing 1.37 amps so that's a uh consumption on full brightness. there. it only has the two brightness levels plus a flashy mode of 7 watts and so for a nominal energy uh, capacity of you know, 492 W hours we're looking at about 7 hours continuous use on full brightness I'm not going to have the time to test it for this uh video video, but I I'll take it as a given I'm sure they've done their uh test. This looks like a professional solution.

so I don't know where the Uh battery pack who it's made by, you know, assembled in some one hung low Factory in China but you know I'm sure it is a decent quality one. it feels decent quality it it's the vibe feels pretty good. So I'm sure you'd get you know close to Six to 7 hours use on full brightness, but of course you wouldn't be always using the thing on full brightness. you'd be, you know, just for regular walking or something like that.

I'm sure the uh lower brightness setting is more than good enough and I actually like how they've made the cut out for for the Uh the in there. Very nice touch. One small little criticism when I was taking this out I did see a couple of Uh braid like dags coming off from the Uh braid. This is a braided uh cable so metal dags coming off.

They just need to be careful in production that they don't short over to any of the pins on the top side or the the bottom side cuz you know you might get a yield failure there. So I've had it running for a little bit. Let's have a look under the Uh Flur camera there. you can see that the hottest parts are actually the metal uh strip in between there which are getting like 45 I think I measured one of them up to probably close to 50 47 something like that.

but the uh, the backside of the anodized uh heat sink uh section of each one, you know 40 odd degrees. So as long as you keep it under 50 like which is basically the too hot to touch uh temperature it, it should be all right. So that's not bad considering that this is. remember this is drawing 7 Watts So yeah, you need a lot of surface area to get rid of that heat and that's that's doing.

Not too shabby at all. You can see the Uh battery pack over there as well. that's getting up to a 30ish and if we have a look at the top side there once again and it's getting, you know it's get yeah 50 on the metal strapping some parts of the uh front surface. that's the uh Dome of the lens.

So yeah, I I'm going to give that a pass considering that the static in here, no air con on so there's no air flow over that. That's pretty good. That'll get cooler once you start walking or in cooler environments and you can select which mode it powers on in to I've I've selected so it comes on uh the full 1600 lumens but of course if you cycle through you can uh set it the low one and then you can just press and hold the button and it'll Flash and then next time you switch it on, it should I Don't like that you can't just switch it off. That's a bit annoying.

What am I doing wrong? Haven't read the manual I don't think it actually came with the manual. There we go off and then back on. low brightness. Yeah, uh.

the buttons are a bit funny. they could be a pipak. So I've got it hooked up to my backpack. Let's give it a bill.

although it's daytime here, so I'm just going to walk around the lab like a do. All right? I've got it. it's on. Um, it's just the particular backpack.

I've got to right in right high on here and it's you know you really have to get it down. uh, much lower to if you wanted it to point down towards the ground. So that's just an implementation. uh thing.

But I can, uh, change the brightness up here. Cool. Let's turn that lights. give it a B Got him a do.

All right. So let's switch it on. I've got constant exposure here. It really is quite hard to, uh, you know, film this sort of stuff.

so please forgive me, that's one of them on full brightness and oh hello, there's the other. So there you go. I walk around. It really is an incredibly even uh pattern of light.

There's no real hot, the only hot spot is where they um, is where they overlap. But if you uh take you know if you only have just the one, it really is a very even beam. I'm not sure if you're seeing that, but yeah, it's pretty good. I Like it.

This might be hard to see, but on low I think it's going to be good enough at uh, you know, nighttime just for walking through the scrub or for doing, you know, basic scrambling or uh, anything else. And of course you get a massive battery life from that. Most of the time it's only you know if you were skiing night or something, you'd want the full brightness. If you're mountain biking at night or something like that, you definitely want the full brightness.

But yeah, I think it's good enough. Nice. Be nice to have an extra mode though. and just for a constant exposure camera.

uh, comparison. This is my uh Dell Mag light and there you know it's It's not that great at all. and we switch on the Ziny Ra. Look at that.

that's just one of them. Nice. it's just no contest. And look at the even of it, you can see the uh spot nature of the mag lamp and I tell you what, It barely hangs on with all the magnets on one side under its own weight.

That's like yeah, not great, but good enough for its intended uh, purpose of course. which is to go uh, inside clothing with the uh strap that they've got on this thing which you can buy separately and then put inside your shirt and it just Clips onto your shirt. uh, without any attachment at all. That's quite novel.

I Think it's really quite good and really quite novel. Really, quite well engineered. I'm very impressed by that. They really haven't put a foot wrong there, so that's fantastic Of course.

I haven't done any long-term uh tests on it and stuff like that out in the field, but uh, you know, just from the looks of things, the tear down and the design and the look and feel of it. Um, it looks like they've really hit the money on that, so no worries whatsoever. So it comes down to whether or not it's fit for purpose. most definitely.

You know, if you're doing any nighttime skiing, snowboarding, mountain biking, or something like that, to have this strapped onto your clothing onto your backpack or something like that. It's fantastic. and it's basically A New Concept I'm not sure if anyone's actually doing if there's any competitors for this, uh, like strap based, uh light. just wish it maybe had an extra uh mode on the thing or something like that.

or maybe adjustable, uh, brightness or something like that would have been quite neat. So they actually delivered on this thing. And they delivered well. and it is superbly engineered.

I Love it The Zony Ra. So I give that a thumbs up for its category of a strap Light. Um, basically creating a new category. Almost.

But yeah, that's well engineered so definitely a thumbs up there and all at $215 odd, it's an expensive solution for the two strap lights plus this, plus the Uh including this and plus the accessories on top of that if you want those. But if you're serious about your uh nighttime Adventure stuff, there's probably no rival. I mean, 1600 lumens I Can't wait to actually use this in Ang in the field should be fantastic, but that's got wi written all over it. So anyway, I like it and if you like the video, please give it a big thumbs up.

And as always discuss in the comments or EV blog Forum down below. catch you next time.