Icon Solo





Icon is not a old flashlight company, but they share address and designer with one of the old and well known companies in the flashlight industry: Surefire. Icon does not design its light to look like a black tube, but uses color and other design elements to get another look. The Solo is a aluminium light with type II anodizing and it has two brightness levels.



The light is sold in a colorful retail package, with all instructions printed on the outside. The light is loaded with batteries, but in my light they were empty. There are not included any extras with the light.



The light uses a smooth reflector and has a unspecified led. Usual a smooth reflector gives a lot of rings in the beam, but they are nearly invisible here.



On the large head of the light there is space for the name of the light and the "Icon" symbol. The triangular shape of the head gives a good grip and will prevent the light from rolling (But the clip is better at that).



Just behind the head the body has some pits.



The light has a strong clip. I could not remove it without tools.



The light can be opened at the tail, where it has some nice smooth threads and a o-ring. The threads for the clips can also be seen, but either they are screwed down really tight or they are glued.
The tailcap cannot be used for lockout, the anodizing is not strong enough to give a safe lockout.



Looking into the battery tube shows the connection at the head. As usual the spring is placed in the tailcap.



The forward switch on the tailcap has a soft rubber cover. The light will always turn on in low, a fast off/on cycle will change to high.



This light has some good points: it is made in a very good mechanical quality, I love the forward switch. It does work well on alkaline batteries and the fact that it look different that other penlight can also be a plus, but I think it is too fat for a penlight and I would also have preferred a brighter setting.



Technical specification and measurements



The light is only specified to run on alkaline batteries, but it works on any 1.5 volt battery (Alkaline, NiMH, lithium).

Measured size and weight:
Length: 142 mm
Diameter: 15 to 18.9 mm
Weight: 66 gram with two eneloop batteries

The light uses a unspecified led.



The above measurements are done at 2.4 volt. In the table I have estimated runtime with 800mAh eneloop. The light is not a very bright light, this gives a longer runtime, but comparing it to medium on other light (That has about the same brightness as Solo in high), the runtime is nothing special.



The voltage scan shows that the light has no regulation but will change brightness depending on battery voltage. This will give a very long runtime with alkaline batteries especially on low.



Here is the runtime with both alkaline and NiMH, at high the load is too high for alkaline to surpass the rechargeable batteries. The runtime is a bit longer than the specified 3 hours on alkaline.



The light uses pwm at 516 Hz to control the low brightness. This is fast enough not to be obvious.



Comparison to other Flashlights

4Sevens Preon II cool, 4Sevens Preon II neutral, 4Sevens Preon II warm


Icon Solo, Fenix LD05, EagleTac P20a2


For the full comparison to other lights with graphs and beamshots see here.