Wurkkos K1 EDC Flashlight Review

The Wurkkos K1 EDC flashlight offers a spot emitter, high CRI flood emitter, lantern-like white output as well as many RGB options. Read on!

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Official Specs and Features

Here’s a link to the Wurkkos K1 EDC flashlight product page.

Versions

The Wurkkos K1 EDC flashlight is available in two body colors (gray and green) and as a kit with one cell or as a kit with two cells.

Price

MSRP for the Wurkkos K1 EDC flashlight is $81.52, but there’s a 35% off sale, making the price $52.99.

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What’s Included

• Wurkkos K1 EDC flashlight
• Wurkkos 18650
• Charging cable
• Lanyard ring
• Spare o-rings (2)
• Manual

Package and Manual

Build Quality and Disassembly

The Wurkkos K1 EDC flashlight has a fine build quality. Maybe the photos below are the best place to see it, but there’s a lot going on with this light. Button on top, exposed magnets, fairly big clip, side emitter, lantern emitter, and so on. Not to say any of that is bad – it’s just a lot to hold.

The head comes off the light. That exposes unanodized threads, a button for positive contact, and the inner sleeve inside the cell tube.

The negative terminal (inside the cell tube) has a spring.

Size and Comps

106mm x 30mm x 38mm and 144g.

Here’s the light in hand:

Here’s the test light with the venerable Convoy S2+. This is a brass version, which is a good bit heavier than aluminum, but has the same dimensions: 24mm in diameter by 117.5mm in length.

Also in the photo above, my Standard Reference Material (SRM) flashlight is the Hanko Machine Works Trident, an 18350 light. While I have not reviewed or tested the Gunner Grip version seen here, I have tested a Hanko Machine Works Trident Total Tesseract in brass. I love the Trident, and it’s a striking contrast to the inexpensive Convoy S2+, another great SRM.

Retention and Carry

A pocket clip is screwed into the switch end of the light. The pocket clip has two magnets built in.

The clip holds the light just fine. It’s not a very deep carry, but sufficient.

Wurkkos includes a ring-type lanyard that attaches through this hole near the switch.

The magnets are perfectly sufficient for holding the Wurkkos K1 EDC flashlight.

Power and Runtime

A single lithium-ion, in this case an 18650, runs the Wurkkos K1 EDC flashlight.

The cell goes into the Wurkkos K1 EDC flashlight in the usual flashlight way – button toward the head. But, since there’s a flood emitter (which gives this light a “right angle” feel) and a big lantern ambient light around the body, it still sometimes seems to go in the wrong way. Just pay attention, and if you forget or want to check, look at the little cell icon on the body.

Below you can see a number of runtime tests. Three of the highest “spot” emitter levels, and then the highest flood and highest ambient modes. Those last two are both relative, so scaled so that the initial output is 100%. I made these mainly to show you how the driver performs.

The temperature lines in these charts are included as general context, not precise measurements. The values represent the range (min to max) during testing, but should not be taken as exact readings. A temperature sensor is not always attached to the bezel (or even the hottest spot, assuming that could be defined). Even with ideal placement, too many variables affect temperature to definitively state a specific max value.

Charging

The Wurkkos K1 EDC flashlight itself surprisingly does not have built-in charging. But the included cell does! There’s a USB-C charging port on the positive end.

Wurkkos includes a C to C charging cable.

Charging via C to C and A to C are both fine and quick, at around 2A (from the USB source).

Pulse Width Modulation

These PWM images are in this order: top row, all 6 spot outputs (lowest to highest). The second row is lowest/highest of flood and white ambient. There’s no PWM on any of the modes.

Click here to 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

The Wurkkos K1 EDC flashlight is controlled in two ways. First, there’s a rotary mode selector to pick between RGB, flood, and spot.

It’s easy to use this rotary selector.

Next is the e-switch, which you can see above, and being pressed below. The e-switch is very flush with the surrounding material but textured. You’ll probably be able to feel this switch. (Probably.)

Here’s a user interface table! I tried to cover everything, but honestly the user interface does so much, and there are so many options, I’m not sure I got it all.

State	Action	Result
Off (Selector on Spot)	Click	On (memory)
Off (Selector on Spot)	Hold	Eco
Off (Selector on Spot)	Click 4x	Lockout
Lockout	Click	Spot blinks to indicate lockout
Lockout	Click 4x	Unlock and on (memory)
Off	Click 3x	Strobe
Strobe	Click 2x	Strobe advance (Strobe > SOS > Beacon)
Strobe	Click	Steady (memory)
On (Selector on Spot) (Except Turbo)	Click	Off
On (Selector on Spot)	Hold	Spot mode advance (ascending, excluding turbo)
Off or on (Selector on Spot)	Double click	Turbo
Turbo (Selector on Spot)	Click	Previous state
Off (Selector on Flood)	Hold	Ramping flood increase
On (Selector on Flood) while ramping flood increase	Release then hold	Ramping flood decrease
Off or on (Selector on Flood)	Double click	Flood turbo
Off (Selector on RGB)	Click	Ambient white (memory)
Off (Selector on RGB)	Hold	Ambient white (lowest)
On (Selector on RGB)	Hold	Ramping ambient white increase
On (Selector on RGB) while ramping ambient white increase	Release then hold	Ramping ambient white decrease
On (Selector on RGB)	Click	Off
Off (Selector on RGB)	Hold	RGB memory
Off (Selector on RGB)	Double click	“Dynamic” RGB output (click to return to previous state)
Dynamic RGB	Double click	Advance through dynamic RGB options

LED and Beam

The main emitter is a Luminus SFT42R with a ripple TIR optic. It’s quite throwy.

The flood emitter is very floody

Every time you turn on the Wurkkos K1 EDC flashlight, you’ll get a battery indicator. Green can be seen below.

The ambient light is more like a lantern.

LED Color Report (CRI and CCT)

These CRI reports are in the same order as mentioned in the PWM section above. The spot emitter is low CRI and high CCT. The flood emitter has a nice CRI and CCT, though!

CCT (Correlated Color Temperature) refers to the measurement of the color appearance of light, expressed in Kelvins (K), which indicates whether the light is warm (yellowish) or cool (bluish). A lower CCT (below 3000K) is considered warm light, while a higher CCT (above 5000K) gives cooler, bluish light.

CRI (Color Rendering Index) is a measure of how accurately a light source renders colors in comparison to natural sunlight. Scored on a scale from 0 to 100, higher CRI values indicate that colors appear more true to life and vibrant, similar to how they would look under the sun.

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. These photos are taken around 18 inches from the door.

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

Summary and Conclusion

The Wurkkos K1 EDC flashlight at $53 provides a bunch of features in one package. It’s a nice package, too! All of the individual component options work as they should. The Wurkkos K1 EDC flashlight doesn’t offer built-in charging (a bit of a surprise), but the included cell does. I do not love the exposed magnets on the pocket clip, but they seem firmly connected.

The Big Table

Wurkkos K1
Emitter:	Luminus SFT42R (Spot)
Price in USD at publication time:	$52.99
Cell:	1×18650
Runtime Graphs
LVP?	Yes
Switch Type:	E-switch
Quiescent Current (mA):	?
On-Board Charging?	Yes
Charge Port Type:	USB-C (on cell)
Charge Graph
Power off Charge Port	–
Claimed Lumens (lm)	1850
Measured Lumens (at 30s)	1588 (85.8% of claim)^
Candela per Lumen	24.9
Claimed Throw (m)	400
Candela (Calculated) in cd (at 30s)	1101lux @ 5.99m = 39504cd
Throw (Calculated) (m)	397.5 (99.4% of claim)^
Claimed CCT	Spot –
Measured CCT Range (K)	Spot 6100-6600 Kelvin
Item provided for review by:	Wurkkos
All my Wurkkos 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.

What I like

• Reasonable price
• Flood emitter is high CRI
• Fun RGB options
• Basically “all of the output” options
• Standard 18650

What I don’t like

• The user interface can be confusing
• Low CRI/High CCT main emitter
• Switch can be hard to find without looking

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Notes

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