Nitecore TM9K Flashlight Review

The Nitecore TM9K flashlight boasts a brief 9500-lumen output, a built-in cell, and onboard USB-C charging. Read on for some testing!

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Official Specs and Features

Here’s a link to the Nitecore TM9K Flashlight product page.

Versions

Just one

Price

This one goes for $159.95. Here’s a referral link to NitecoreStore.com.

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Short Review

For brief, floody, high-output needs, this light is great. I don’t love that the cell is built-in, but it is what it is. The interface is good, too. I would like to see the price come down a good bit, though.

Long Review

The Big Table

Nitecore TM9K Flashlight
Emitter:	Cree XP-L HD (x9)
Price in USD at publication time:	$159.95
Cell:	1×21700 (built-in)
Turbo Runtime	High Runtime
LVP?	Switched to low (but almost certainly has LVP)
Switch Type:	Both
Quiescent Current (A):	–
On-Board Charging?	Yes
Chargetime (from USB, not USB-C)
Power off Charge Port with no Cell?	–
Claimed Lumens (lm)	9500
Measured Lumens (at 30s)	2375 (25% of claim)^
Candela per Lumen	1.8
Claimed Throw (m)	268
Candela (Calculated) in cd (at 30s)	148lux @ 5.738m = 4873cd
Throw (Calculated) (m)	139.6 (52.1% of claim)^
All my Nitecore reviews!

^ Measurement disclaimer: Testing flashlights is my hobby. I use hobbyist-level equipment for testing, including some I made myself. Try not to get buried in the details of manufacturer specifications versus measurements recorded here; A certain amount of difference (say, 10 or 15%) is perfectly reasonable. These are 30-second tests. Below is at startup.

Nitecore TM9K
Claimed Lumens (lm)	9500
Measured Lumens (at 30s)	10057 (105.9% of claim)^
Candela per Lumen	1.8
Claimed Throw (m)	268
Candela (Calculated) in cd (at 30s)	1067lux @ 4.579m = 22372cd
Throw (Calculated) (m)	299.1 (111.6% of claim)^

^ These measurements are startup measurements (not FL1).

What’s Included

• Nitecore TM9K flashlight
• Nylon pouch
• Lanyard (with helper)
• Pocket clip (friction-fit)
• Charge cable (USB to USB-C)
• Manual etc

Package and Manual

Run the light with this little protector, and you’ll discover what “angry blue” is. 🙂

Build Quality and Disassembly

This is a nice little chonk of a light. It has a very nice weight. Heavy, in the way that often means things are well-made.

The head has cooling fins.


The body has some knurling, but it’s entirely decorative.

The switch is very proud.








I didn’t disassemble this one. The cell inside is soldered, and my tailcap and other parts were all screwed down tightly enough (or possibly even thread locked) so that I couldn’t make them budge.

Size and Comps

Officially:
Length 125 mm / 4.92 in
Head Size 40 mm / 1.57 in
Weight 218 g / 7.68 oz

Wish I’d thought to put this beside a Convoy C8 or the like. It’s around that size.

Retention and Carry

Primary carry will likely be the nylon pouch, which is directional (bezel up). There’s also a nice metal D-ring – no plastic junk here! The pouch is open at the bottom, allowing access to the switches, but not open at the top.

Also included is a friction-fit pocket clip. It can technically go in two locations, but the only reasonable place is as seen below. The clip may be removed fairly easily, so while a lanyard could go on here, it’s not ideal. But generally, as a belt clip, it’s pretty good.

The lanyard is very simple.

Despite the little hole in the tailcap looking like a lanyard loop hole, it’s not. So the only place to put the lanyard is on the pocket clip.

There’s a tiny helper that would make attaching the lanyard here easy enough.

Power and Runtime

I didn’t disassemble this light, so I didn’t see the cell. Here’s Nitecore’s rendering of the internal 21700:

Complain as you might about this cell being solidly fixed inside the light, it does provide quite the performance.

Below is a runtime on Turbo. Turbo isn’t allowed as a steady state, so I continually pressed the button over and over to see how the heat responded and how the output fared. Surprisingly, quite well. In fact (and strangely), the output rises a little on successive repeats! The max I saw was 10057 lumens, which is approximately the claim made by Nitecore. But that’s not an FL1 rating. I also hit Turbo again at the 65ish minute mark, twice, and note that the light hits the high mark, but also steps down to the High output, and will stay there for a while, if the Turbo Ready button is continually depressed.

Thought I’d blow up that first few minutes (better than the 2 minute inset above), to display the output creeping up on successive turbo resets. Also see how the temperature creeps up, too. I do believe I reached a point after these 7 resets that the light no longer was hitting the 9K output.

Below is a test of high. The light does stepdown; most likely a temperature based stepdown.

The light also has a built-in power indicator. It looks to be only accessed when entering lockout, but that’s a fairly simple proposition. The indicator is beside the switches, and the lights are blue only. When the lockout is entered, the indicator will blink out the voltage exactly. Four blinks with a 1.5s pause, then one blink is a cell voltage of 4.1V. This also happens during runtimes – when the light reaches ~50% power, the indicator will blink every 2s. When the cell is “near depletion,” the indicator will blink continuously and quickly.

Also included, of course, since there’s a built-in cell, is onboard charging. An appropriate cable is included – USB to USB-C.

The charge port is in the head, with a press-in cover.

It’s an unusual cover because it fits into the charge port. It’s quite secure.

I tested with just the cable included, and not USB-C to USB-C. I don’t have a working tester for that setup now anyway (nor does it seem to be the way Nitecore intended to be charged). Charging is at around 1.3A, which is respectable, and takes around 4 hours to fully charge. You’ll note that at the start of the charge, the current is low, around 0.2A. I imagine this to be a soft start on a depleted cell. So Nitecore’s charge circuit seems to take into account how depleted a cell is.

Modes and Currents

Mode	Mode Claimed Output (lm)	Claimed Runtime	Measured Lumens	Tailcap Amps
Turbo	9500	–	2735	–
High	1900	3h	2350	–
Mid	460	4h30m	531	–
Low	130	14h	152	–
Ultralow	30	60h	47	–

Pulse Width Modulation

The light exhibits PWM on the lower three modes, but I didn’t notice it during use.

Here you can see a “baseline” – a chart with almost no light hitting the sensor.
Then there’s the Ultrafire WF-602C flashlight, which has some of the worst PWM I’ve seen. It’s so bad that I used a post about it to explain PWM! Here are multiple timescales (10ms, 5ms, 2ms, 1ms, 0.5ms, 0.2ms) to make comparing this “worst” PWM light to the test light easier. That post also explains why I didn’t test the WF-602C at the usual 50us scale.

User Interface and Operation

There are two switches on the TM9K. The Power button is the big proud mechanical switch. The mode button is a paddle-ish switch that doesn’t rise over the edge of the tailcap at all.

Here’s a user interface table!

State	Action	Result
Off	Click Power Switch (PS)	On (last used mode)
Off	Half press PS	Momentary (last used mode)
On	Click PS	Off
On	Click Mode Switch (MS)	Mode advance (Ultralow>L>M>H)
Any	Hold MS	Turbo Ready Turbo
Any	Double click MS	Strobe
Strobe	Click MS	Previous Mode
Off	Click PS while holding MS	Lockout (with battery level indication)
Lockout	Triple click MS	Unlock

LED and Beam

The TM9K has 9 Cree XP-L HD emitters and is basically a mule. Each of those has a tiny reflector, but really, this is a mule. Up close, the beam shape can be seen, but past about 3 feet it just becomes entirely flood.

Not that it’s bad. Mules are great and have good uses. I don’t think it’s stated anywhere, but these lean toward the CW temperature.

Beamshots

These beamshots always have the following settings: f8, ISO100, 0.3s shutter, and manual 5000K exposure. These photos are taken at floor level, and the beam hits the ceiling around 9 feet away.

 

Tint vs BLF-348 (KillzoneFlashlights.com 219b version) (affiliate link)

I keep the test flashlight on the left and the BLF-348 reference flashlight on the right.

I compare everything to the Killzone 219b BLF-348 because it’s inexpensive and has the best tint!

Conclusion

What I like

• Solid little chunk of a light
• Incredible (brief) output
• Able to USB-C charge (properly)
• 1.3A charging from a regular USB isn’t bad at all anyway

What I don’t like

• Integrated cell, and not user-replaceable
• No good lanyard attachment point

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Notes

• This light was provided by Nitecore for review. I was not paid to write this review.
• This content originally appeared at zeroair.org. Please visit there for the best experience!
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