UltraFire C2 Cree XR-E, or just an average flashlight that thinks it's a thrower.

I know there are tons of flashlight reviews on Muska, but this model caught my eye. I also wanted a simple flashlight for around the house, nothing fancy. I wanted one, I got one—but it’s not quite that simple. If you’re interested, read on.

I’ll try not to make this review too long. There’ll be photos of the outside and inside, the usual stuff.
I probably won’t be reviewing any more flashlights anytime soon, unless I happen to receive the third one I ordered back in August.

I’ll start with the packaging. I’ll hide the photos under a spoiler, but I’ll say this: the package had clearly been through a lot. Still, everything arrived intact, which even surprised me.

The flashlight has a metal body, with “UltraFire C2” printed on one side.
It’s no Convoy or Nitecore, of course, but it looks perfectly decent.


The other side is marked Cree. We’ll check that during disassembly.


For a sense of its size, here it is next to the infamous flashlight from my fall review and an 18650 battery. That’s the type of battery this flashlight uses.


The removable tailcap has a wrist strap, and there’s an O-ring on the main body. The workmanship is very good, and the threads screw together tightly.
The threads aren’t anodized.


The flashlight has what’s called an “orange peel” reflector. I expected it to produce a wide flood beam, but the reality was a little different—and that really disappointed me.
More on that in the testing section.


The positive contact has a spring. The negative contact is a solid piece of metal, but it’s spring-loaded too.
The battery fits snugly inside and doesn’t rattle.
There is one small downside, though: the spring presses quite firmly against the battery. Since you have to remove the battery from the flashlight to charge it, the negative contact on a protected battery could wear through over time.


The front section unscrews too, but here the threads are anodized along with the rest of the body.
There is also a sealing O-ring.


The flashlight fully disassembled. The lens has an additional sealing O-ring; there are no glow-in-the-dark parts, and the button is made of ordinary black rubber too.
The middle section unscrews, and there is a rubber sealing O-ring.
The reflector is aluminum.


The LED is covered by a plastic retaining ring that fits very tightly. It took quite a bit of effort to pry it out. This ring also presses the LED against the heat sink.


A copper ring is press-fitted into the aluminum section, and the driver board is soldered to it. The board itself is a very tight fit.


After some prying at the plastic ring, I got to the LED.


The LED inside looks like an XLampXR-E. I added the datasheet to my collection.




I've reached the driver board.
There's solid aluminum beneath the LED, which helps dissipate heat.
At maximum power, the flashlight gets warm—around 45 degrees—but the body heats up fairly evenly.


The driver has five modes: three brightness levels, strobe, and SOS.
I wish they'd stop adding those last two modes to flashlights. I couldn't disable them.
The modes are changed with a brief, gentle press of the button, or simply by briefly interrupting power to the driver.



After that, I moved on to current consumption tests.

After that, I set the camera to a fixed shutter speed of 1/6 second, went outside, and photographed the flashlight shining in complete darkness in its different modes.
Luckily, there’s no light out there—the bulb has disappeared again.
The wall is about 6 meters away.
Maximum brightness.


Medium brightness.


Minimum brightness. In person, it actually looks a little brighter than it does in the photo, but I still don't understand the point of this mode. Maybe I just don't need it in real life.


This is what the flashlight looks like in my hand; it feels quite comfortable.
The flashlight weighs 170 grams with the battery.


Summary.
Pros
Quite well made.
The flashlight's driver is simple, but works pretty well.
The battery fits very snugly inside and doesn't rattle around in the body.

Cons
I was expecting the beam to be less focused.
The strobe and SOS modes are annoying, but they were listed on the product page, so that's a downside for me personally, not for the product.

My take: It's a pretty good flashlight and works well, but I really wanted one with a wider beam. Otherwise, I have no complaints. I'm thinking of modifying the driver and removing the extra modes. In my opinion, two brightness levels are plenty for a flashlight used around the house.

The flashlight was provided for review by the chinabuye store.

I've had this review sitting in my drafts for quite a while, but only decided to finish writing it and take the remaining photos now, to take a little break from a more complicated review that I hope to publish soon.

I don't know if my review will help you make the right choice, but after reading it, I probably wouldn't order this flashlight myself.