EDC - Flashlight Addition Edition

[Weetabix]

Update on the Olight I3S - the little triangle piece that holds it to a keyring gave out. I need to look for a split ring to go on there instead.

[MarkD]

After Hurricane Sandy last year, a guy I know was telling me about his favorite flashlight which set him back something like $150. Personally, I'd much rather have ten $15 flashlights than one $150, because no matter how good a light is it can still be broken, lost, or have dead batteries. Two is one and one is none.

What say you (obviously we've gotten Aesop's answer already).

[Greg]

After Hurricane Sandy last year, a guy I know was telling me about his favorite flashlight which set him back something like $150. Personally, I'd much rather have ten $15 flashlights than one $150, because no matter how good a light is it can still be broken, lost, or have dead batteries. Two is one and one is none.

What say you (obviously we've gotten Aesop's answer already).

Would you rather have 10 Lorcins or 1 Sig?

Quality does matter. Unless you're a rube who gets fleeced, a $150 flashlight is going to be VASTLY superior to a $15 flashlight, and reliability and durability will in fact be part of that. But as you go higher on the scale of quality, of course there are diminishing returns. So you figure how many units you need, look at your budget, and decide where on the cost/quality curve you want to live when factoring in your needs vs your budget. Same as everything else in life.

I own a $150 flashlight, but I don't use it much and might sell it. (If I had been more of an enthusiast a few years back, I could easily have wound up with a $400+ custom made Ti body light.) The light I use the most was $50. I actually own lights that cost less than $1, but those are literally party favors. I also own a range of lights in between, for different purposes. The technology keeps getting better so occasionally I upgrade something, and when that happens there's a gear trickle down effect.

[Greg]

Needed something from Amazon but it was small so needed some extra to get over the free shipping threshold... so I threw in one of those Ultrafire lights, a couple of 18650's and a charger. Hope nothing blows up. Will follow up when it all arrives. If it doesn't completely suck, batteries catch on fire, etc, it should be a great deal.

[Cybrludite]

My EDC light is an Olight M-30 in a NiteIze flashlight holster. Frankly looks like a lightsaber prop. It's big enough that I almost never forget to clip it on my belt, and if I do forget, I usually realize it before I'm out the door. In my book/laptop bag, I have a Terralux single AA light and an el cheapo six generic LED/3 AAA battery loaner that I don't mind if it develops legs. In the truck I've got a Surefire G2 Nitrolon & a generic headlamp in the glovebox and a 4-D cell maglite with a Malkoff conversion in the door well.

[MarkD]

After Hurricane Sandy last year, a guy I know was telling me about his favorite flashlight which set him back something like $150. Personally, I'd much rather have ten $15 flashlights than one $150, because no matter how good a light is it can still be broken, lost, or have dead batteries. Two is one and one is none.

What say you (obviously we've gotten Aesop's answer already).

Would you rather have 10 Lorcins or 1 Sig?

Quality does matter. Unless you're a rube who gets fleeced, a $150 flashlight is going to be VASTLY superior to a $15 flashlight, and reliability and durability will in fact be part of that. But as you go higher on the scale of quality, of course there are diminishing returns. So you figure how many units you need, look at your budget, and decide where on the cost/quality curve you want to live when factoring in your needs vs your budget. Same as everything else in life.

I own a $150 flashlight, but I don't use it much and might sell it. (If I had been more of an enthusiast a few years back, I could easily have wound up with a $400+ custom made Ti body light.) The light I use the most was $50. I actually own lights that cost less than $1, but those are literally party favors. I also own a range of lights in between, for different purposes. The technology keeps getting better so occasionally I upgrade something, and when that happens there's a gear trickle down effect.

No, but I'd rather have three SIGs than one Korth. Note that I said $15 flashlights, not $2 flashlights. You can get a perfectly serviceable flashlight for $15, maybe not as bright, and maybe I can't run over it with a truck, but perfectly adequate for finding my way down the emergency stairs in a blackout (been there, done that) or finding the right breaker in the garage at night.

[Greg]

No, but I'd rather have three SIGs than one Korth. Note that I said $15 flashlights, not $2 flashlights. You can get a perfectly serviceable flashlight for $15, maybe not as bright, and maybe I can't run over it with a truck, but perfectly adequate for finding my way down the emergency stairs in a blackout (been there, done that) or finding the right breaker in the garage at night.

A $15 flashlight is no Sig. Maybe a Taurus. Most of what you get in that price range is leftover incandescent Maglites (which might have been nifty 30 years ago but now? crap), and Barney lights in various configurations. (What I call a Barney light is a poorly designed and engineered LED light of some kind, which, thanks to poor design and engineering lets the LED get too hot which damages it and causes it to emit purple, before failing completely). Some of the Chinese LED lights in that price range can be surprisingly good, but it's a crapshoot. Though I must admit what you can get for $15 only gets better over time.

If you want something sturdy, durable, NOT incandescent (heaven forbid), with proper care to heatsink the emitter, with circuitry to drive it properly, etc, you might need to pay a few (only a few) more bucks. But you'll get something that'll be there for you for a long time and keep working under tough conditions. And regulated output rocks. Oh and don't use alkaline batteries if you don't consider your flashlights to be disposable.

Like I said, quality matters but everyone has to decide for themselves where on the cost/quality curve they want to live. A perpetual pox on the type of idiot who says "it's all the same thing" and means it because he doesn't know any better.

[Termite]

Since it is Superbowl season.......Enjoy the spoof.

[Greg]

OK, time for a flashlight followup post. Quick review and explanation of what the hell is going on, so you know what I'm talking about. I got my light last night, along with batteries and charger.

I bought this http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00EOJKHH4

It's an Ultrafire WF-502B with a Cree XM-L emitter, plus a pair of 18650 batteries and a charger. And there's some necessary explanation.

Saying you have an 'Ultrafire WF-502B' doesn't really tell anyone much. It's like describing the new PC you bought by saying what kind of case it's in. Because the 502B is a P60 host- it's just a 'case' for holding a P60 module, one or more batteries, and a switch together. Ultrafire makes a few of them, as does everyone else. They make a few different types of P60 hosts, with some types available in different battery configurations as well. ('B' means 1 x 18650 or 2 x CR123a) (One foible of this particular P60 host is relatively limited contact between the module and the host, which means poor heatsinking for your led. To keep your led from frying from anything but very short use, you're going to want to fill the gap between the body and the module with something heat conductive. The most common solution is to wrap the module with metal foil. Aluminum or copper are popular.)

http://flashlightwiki.com/UltraFire
http://flashlightwiki.com/P60

Surefire developed the P60 a while back as a pluggable module for holding an emitter, any circuitry needed to drive/control it, and a reflector all in one package. Clean, simple, modular design. That way they could build a 'light engine' module, and a flashlight body of any desired shape or size to hold it. It caught on. Everybody and his uncle makes P60 modules now.

http://flashlightwiki.com/DIY_P60
http://www.fasttech.com/category/1616/f ... eous-parts

With a few simple parts you can get cheaply at any number of hobbyist sites, a soldering iron and a little care, you can make your own P60 modules to order. Or you can buy them made to spec, there's a small cottage industry doing that, too. What makes that possible, as well as the existence of companies like Ultrafire, is that everything is made of commodity parts based around well-known specs (where the engineering details have already been worked out). One nice thing with P60 host lights- you need never be out of date. If you want a newer emitter, just buy/make a module with the new tech hotness and pop it in. Or you can pop in a UV module, or modules with different emitters and drivers optimized for different characteristics (beam shape, desired brightness levels, runtimes, modes, etc). It's legos.

http://flashlightwiki.com/Driver
http://flashlightwiki.com/Popular_drivers

So yes Ultrafire is a bottom-feeder that makes cheap lights from cheap commodity parts. You will not impress anyone by showing one off. They keep prices low with indifferent build quality, low to no QA, and no support. You buy one of their lights, there is a good chance it will be DOA. Fortunately, most of the DOA's are simple little fixes if you know what you're doing. Also, Ultrafire is a relatively *reputable* bottom feeder (yes, laugh, it's funny) and there are disreputable Ultrafire knockoffs and counterfeits (yes, it's like someone counterfeiting a Packard Bell PC, it's fucked up but then it's China), and if you get one of those you're just screwed.

My light seemed to be a 'good' Ultrafire. Machining on the aluminum parts was pretty nice, threads were clean and well cut, anodyzing had no obvious flaws (definitely NOT Type III HA, though). But the pocket clip is held on by 2 small screws, one of which was cross-threaded AND the head stripped. Indifferent build quality. The emitter isn't an XM-L (as advertised) it's an XM-L2. Nice touch. (If you look closely and know what to look for you can tell emitters apart.)

http://flashlightwiki.com/LED_Gallery
http://flashlightwiki.com/Cree

The batteries, well that's a different story. Batteries sold as cheaply as the ones I bought... well it's guarantied that there will be something wrong with them. It's an open question exactly what that will be. They may just be lower-capacity than labeled, they may be DRASTICALLY lower capacity than rated (as in just one little cell inside the tube, packed in with filler), they may not have the protection circuitry that's claimed, they may in fact be *used* batteries pulled from dead laptop battery packs (yes laptop battery packs are built up from 18650's), etc. And the charger probably shouldn't really be trusted for anything other than starting fires. It's China, *everyone* lies and cheats unless you hold their feet to the fire. If you really want to use 18650 flashlights (same form factor as 2 123a lithiums stacked on top of one another) you probably want to buy some better batteries from a known reputable source, as well as a charger.

Anyway, I was eager and feeling lucky. I was going to test the voltage on the batts (4.2v is fully charged, 3.6v is discharged, anything outside that range is you have a problem) but my multimeter is dead (ironically, I think it needs new batteries). I daringly put one of my mystery batts in anyway, and fired it up. Worked. Modes cycle through high-med-low-strobe-sos. No memory, or it doesn't work. Which means if you turn it on, it defaults to high. If you cycle the power (with the light off less than about 5 secs) it goes to the next mode. If you leave the light off for more than about 5 secs and turn it on again, it starts again at high. Even with my battery at an unknown state of charge, high is several hundred lumens. It lit my home office (ceiling bounce test) about as well as my ROP (modified 2d Mag with a high intensity incandescent bulb, simple easy mod, it's like the 'Hello world' of the flashlight modding world). Beam quality was pretty nice.

This is a more than serviceable light that does what I was looking for, at a very reasonable price. (I wanted a P60 host to mess with, I wanted to play around with 18650's, and I wanted something to put out at least several hundred lumens without being too expensive.) It already has blemishes (that pocket clip screw is *annoying* and the memory function doesn't work) but I knew what I was getting into. I will probably buy a couple more, and some more reputable batteries and charger.

[Weetabix]

Very cool write up. It seems there are geeks for every possible implement. I could see myself being a flashlight geek given time (which, sadly, I don't have enough of).