Lithium Flashlight

When it comes to a hiking flashlight, just like with the rest of your outdoor gear, you generally don’t want to skimp on your equipment.  Does this mean that you have to spend a forune?  Not necessarily.  I was recently able to checkout a relatively inexpensive SureFire flashlight that is great for hiking.  In fact, by the end of this article, you will know of a great all around hiking flashlight for under $50

So your hiking backpack lacks a good, high quality hiking flashlight.  Obviously you will want a waterproof flashlight that is rugged, dependable, and bright enough to see your immediate surrounding but also in the distance when you need it.  Before you jump to an LED flashlight, I would strongly suggest an incandescent hiking flashlight due to its better color rendition.  LED flashlights are great around the home, but out in the woods, your outdoor gear should really contain a quality incandescent (Xenon).

Based on the above considerations, I’d strongly recommend you give the SureFire G2 Nitrolon a good long look.  It is powered by 2x CR123 lithium batteries and produces a bright 65 lumens of output with a 60 minute run time.  In really dark situation such as out in the woods at night, 65 lumens is plenty sufficient.  The beam it produces is a nice mixture of side spill, which allows you to see your immediate surroundings, with a bright center hot spot to see in the distance.

Be sure to pick up a SureFire G2 for a great hiking flashlight before you set out on your next hiking vacation.  It will complement the rest of your quality outdoor gear that’s stashed in your hiking backpack.

Technorati Tags: hiking flashlight, lithium flashlight, surefire flashlight, surefire g2

As one who loves the outdoors, I try to combine my lithium flashlight enthusiasm with Geocaching, which turns into “night caching.”  After the recent blog post I wrote on here about lithium flashlight color rendition, I decided to pick up a SureFire incandescent flashlight to see if it would help with finding Geocaches during night hikes in wooded areas.

So on the way home from work this past Friday, I bought a SureFire G3 Nitrolon lithium flashlight from my local outdoors outfitter.  Of course, being the flashlight enthusiast that I am, I immediately compared it to a family member’s SureFire G2 upon arriving home.  The G2 is supposed to produce 65 lumens of light while my new G3 is supposed to provided 105 lumens.  To my surprise, my new G3 was actually dimmer.  Not exactly sure what to think of it, I decided to bring it along for our night caching adventure anyway.

Before continuing, I’ll come straight out and state that I’m a firm believer in the quality of SureFire flashlight and products and own a variety myself.  But there is a reason that it is said on a flashlight discussion forum that I’m a member of that when it comes to flashlight, “two is one, and one is none,” regardless of what brand or type of light you may own.  After around 10-20 minutes of total use with my new G3, the lamp began to dim rapidly and over the course of about 20-30 seconds, the lamp dimmed to nothing and died.  Luckily, I did have my SureFire E1B LED flashlight in my pocket and used it to get back through the woods to my vehicle.

If a general consensus were to be take among the flashlight community, most would definitely agree that my experience Friday night with my new SureFire G3 was definitely a fluke and far from the norm for a SureFire.  This morning a quick phone call to SureFire customer service and there is a new SureFire P90 replacement lamp en route.  Normally, incandescent lamps are not covered by SureFire’s lifetime warranty on all its products, but this was obviously a unique case.  In the rare event that something does go wrong with a SureFire lithium flashlight, SureFire’s customer service is great with taking care of the problem.

So as a reminder to everyone, it is very important to keep a spare flashlight on you!

If anyone has any similar experiences with his or her lithium flashlight or otherwise, I’d love to hear about it in the comment section.

Oh, and to any fellow Geocachers, hunting for Geocaches at night and navigating through the woods was much easier/better with the incandescent while it lasted.  I’m hooked.

-Robert

If you are about to purchase your first lithium flashlight and you’ve done your research, you have probably decided on an LED lithium flashlight. I mean, why not? They tend to brighter, smaller, and run for much longer than their incandescent counterparts. So why should you still be considering an incandescent? Color rendition.

So you’re probably thinking, “What is the world is color rendition?” Color rendering is the light’s ability to render or portray the colors of an object as compared to its appearance under sunlight (or some other ideal light source). Because LED’s produce light in a narrower portion of the light spectrum, LED’s have a lower CRI (color rendering index) score compared to an incandescent lithium flashlight.

Depending on how you use your lithium flashlight, color rendering may or may not be an issue for you. For example, if you work in IT or around electronics and have to regularly determine which wire is red and which is orange, or which is blue and which is purple, having a flashlight with a high CRI may be very advantageous and could possible prevent a catastrophe if you couldn’t determine the wire color correctly.

Below are two digital photos where camera setting were kept constant for both shots. On the top, is a SureFire P60 lamp (Xenon incandescent) and on the bottom, a SureFire P60L LED. Notice the big differences in the color.

I won’t go further into any of the details of CRI and light (Wikipedia is a good place to start if you want to learn more though), but just wanted to bring the topic of color rendering to light for people and how LEDs and incandescents and be quite different.

In closing, LED technology is advancing rapidly and will most likely achieve a CRI score similar to an incandescent in the future, but for the time being, a good-old incandescent is hard to beat when accurate colors are a must from your lithium flashlight.

Technorati Tags: color rendering, incandescent flashlight, lithium flashlight, surefire flashlight, surefire led

If you are looking for a great all-around SureFire LED lithium flashlight, you definitely owe it to yourself to check out the SureFire 6P LED (or sometimes referred to as the 6PL).  I have personally owned this light for almost a year now and have found it to be a fantastic all-around LED flashlight.



Basically, the SureFire 6PL is an aluminum, 2-CR123 powered lithium flashlight which produces 80 lumens of bright, blinding LED light.  The original SureFire 6P is SureFire’s best selling flashlight and known for its unprecedented quality, reliability, and durability.  The 6PL is same as the original 6P, but with the addition of SureFire’s “P60L” LED module.  The 6PL measures just over 5 inches long, and has a rugged Type II, black anodized finish.

Why the SureFire 6P LED Is So Great

As you probably know, there are a whole variety of LED flashlights available on the market today.  Some that offer click style tailcaps, twisting heads, multiple modes of operation, multiple light levels, etc., etc.  The 6PL in contrast, is simple.  It has an ultra-reliable push-for-momentary tailcap (hold the button in and it produces light; let go and it turns off) that produces a single level of 80 lumens of light.  Its simple user interface, rugged body and design, makes the SureFire 6P LED an excellent everyday “workhorse” of a lithium flashlight.  There is no worrying about what mode you left it in last, or hours spent learning a complicated user interface (some flashlight require the user to actually program features on the flashlight).  In addition to producing 80 lumens of bright light, it is capable of running for up to 11 hours on the 2-CR123 lithium batteries.  I’ve seen independents test from fellow flashlight enthusiasts that verify this number (~3-4 hours of constant 80 lumens, then declining output to the 11+ hour mark).

If you are looking for a reliable, bright, and extremely rugged flashlight, look no further than the SureFire 6P LED (or the nearly identical but lighter weight Nitrolon version, the SureFire G2 LED), you won’t be disappointed.

If anyone else has used a SureFire 6P LED lithium flashlight on a regular basis, I’d love to hear your experiences in the comments below.

-Robert

Today’s discussion is about a small SureFire LED lithium flashlight that I’ve found to be the best little flashlight for everyday carry.  This small flashlight was released earlier this year by SureFire out of Fountain Valley, CA and it has been carried daily, clipped to my pocket for over 6 months now.  What is the name of this amazing light that I speak of?  The SureFire E1B Backup.

First up, this little Surefire LED lithium flashlight really is small!  The E1B is only 4 in. long (slightly longer than my index finger) and weighs only 2.80 oz.  It is made of aluminum and has a HAIII hard anodized black finish (mil-spec).  It includes a forward-click tailcap (press for momentary light, click to keep on) which activates it’s two modes of light output.  To change modes, you simply turn it off and quickly turn it back on to cycle between high and low.

What’s truly amazing though, is the shear brightness of its LED and its amazing runtime on low.  On high, this SureFire LED produces a near blinding 80 lumens of light–more light than a big 3 D-cell flashlight!  It’s low mode produces 5 lumens of light for an amazing 37 hours.

My Thoughts Over The Past 6 Months

As I mentioned above, this Surefire LED lithium flashlight has been clipped to my pocket and used regularly for over 6 months now.  Here are my experiences and findings.

First, let’s get my only gripe out of the way…
Unlike most other SureFire LED flashlights, it’s aluminum body lacks knurling in the finish which I’ve found makes the light a bit slippery at times.  On the other hand though, it’s lack of knurling is easier on your clothing and other items in your pocket.  I’d say it is probably a fair trade off.

I really like that when I turn the light on, it always come on in its high mode first, then I have the option to cycle to low.  This way, if I’m walking along and see or hear something and need to light it up, I don’t waste time have to cycle to high.  This SureFire E1B utilizes what SureFire calls its Total Internal Reflection (TIR) lens which allows this lithium flashlight to more efficiently capture all the light from the LED emitter and “throw” it further distances than a similar sized flashlight.  I’ve found that it is really is amazing how far you can see with a flashlight of this size.

In addition, it’s TIR lens also makes the 5 lumen low actually useful in my opinion.  5 lumens is really not a lot of light, but when all the light is projected tightly together, I’ve found that it’s actually useful enough to walk around in the dark if you need to conserve battery life.

In closing, I have been extremely happy with my SureFire E1B lithium flashlight over the past 6 months of use.  If you are looking for a great lithium flashlight for everyday use that is compact enough to fit in your pocket, I strongly urge you to look no further than this SureFire LED flashlight–the E1B Backup.

If you own one yourself or have any questions, I would love you hear about you experiences or try to answer some questions.  Please feel free to comment below.  Here is a link to the SureFire E1B Backup.

Technorati Tags: lithium flashlight, surefire flashlight, surefire led

When purchasing a lithium flashlight, one of the very first things one needs to consider is whether he or she would prefer an LED (light-emitting diode) or incandescent flashlight.  Both lights have a variety of pros and cons and different attributes one needs to consider before purchasing one.

For the sake of this discussion, a SureFire G2® and a SureFire G2® LED, both excellent, top-notch lithium flashlights that carry lifetime warranties, will be used as a comparison.  They are identical with the exception of being LED vs. incandescent, the LED version having an aluminum head, and a slight difference in light output (80 lumens [LED] vs. 65 lumens [incan.]).

Initial Cost
When comparing two lithium flashlights of similar size, make, quality, and brightness, the LED lights will most likely be more expensive.

For example, the LED version of the SureFire G2 is 1.8x the price of the incandescent version.  Before writing off LED lithium flashlights based on the steeper price, consider some of the other comparisons below.

Battery Runtime
When it comes to battery runtime, the LED is king over an incandescent.  Below are the runtimes of the two example flashlights:

SureFire G2®  – 1 hr. (1 full hour of constant brightness with almost no diminished output)
SureFire G2®  LED – 12 hr. (~3 hrs. constant brightness with diminishing output to 12 hrs.)

As you can see, the CR123 lithium batteries will need replaced far less frequently in the LED flashlight, thus saving money on battery replacements.

Beam Tint
When it comes to beam tint, neither options really have an advantage over the other one.  Beam tint is really more of a personal preference.  In general, incandescent flashlights have a much warmer (yellow looking) beam color, whereas LED flashlights have a much cooler beam (white with a hint of blue, purple, or green is common). 

Ruggedness and Durability
When it comes to durability and overall ruggedness, LED lithium flashlights tend to be the winner.  Because the LED emitter does not have a filament to break or burn out, an LED lithium flashlight is much more resistant to drops, vibration, and physical shock.

Bulb Replacement
Over certain periods of time, both LED and incandescent lamps will need replaced after its useful life as been expended.  How long they live for are significantly different though.  Surefire states that its LED emitters last for thousands of hours, so, most likely, you won’t need to replace it—ever.  On the other hand, an incandescent bulb will likely not last past 50 or 100 hours of use, but it can vary widely.

Good luck in selecting a lithium flaslight.  Below you will find links to both of the example flashlights from above–be sure to check them out.

SureFire G2®

SureFire G2® LED

Technorati Tags: lithium flashlight, surefire g2, surefire g2l, surefire incandescent, surefire led