Lithium Flashlight

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

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

You may or may not have heard some of the stories circulating about exploding CR123 batteries inside of a lithium flashlight.

Doug Ritter from Equipped.org has an excellent post about what to look for when selecting a lithium flashlight and purchasing lithium batteries, along with some simple precautions one can take to prevent lithium battery mishaps.

In short, there have been reports of battery explosions for a long time (not just the lithium variety).  But CR123 lithium batteries are higher voltage and generate and contain more power than common alkaline cells and accordingly can build up more pressure and heat.

Keeping in mind that the number of occurrences of exploding lights is tiny compared to the number of lithium cells in use, here are some basic precautions that Doug recommends:

1. Never use Chinese manufactured lithium batteries!  Most reports of exploding batteries seem to be centered around Chinese lithium cells rather than American or Japanese.

2. Do not mix batteries (by manufacture, type, age, or charge level).  Doing so could be very dangerous.  Mixing batteries of different charge levels seems to be the faster route to running into a problem than anything else.

3. Stick to high quality flashlights.  This is especially important if the lithium flashlight uses multiple lithium cells.  Be careful of Chinese knockoffs and low-cost look-a-likes.

4. A single-cell lithium flashlight tends to safer than multi-cell lights.

Enough emphasis can not be placed on the importance on buying a high quality lithium flashlight and American made lithium cells (such as the Surefire E1B and SF123A-cell pictured above)

If you would like to read more in-depth, be sure to check out Doug Ritter’s original article found here.

If you have never experienced a lithium flashlight, you are probably wondering what the big differences are to the alkaline powered lights that you are used to. You probably have flashlights right now that are powered by AA, AAA, C, or D-cells–not a 123-lithium battery.

Why buy a lithium-powered flashlight? Here is why:

Most lithium flashlights run on somewhere between one and four 3.0v CR123A lithium batteries. The advantages to using these short and fat little batteries to power a light are numerous.

Unlike alkaline batteries, a 123 lithium battery has a 10 year shelf life and is capable of withstanding much colder temperatures. This is great for emergency use or flashlights that are stashed away in your vehicle.

Probably the single biggest advantage to a lithium flashlight though, is it’s ability to shine brighter (due to its higher voltage) and with greater consistency (due to it’s Li-Ion chemistry) over the life of the battery. As an added bonus, these benefits are often times in a smaller and lighter flashlight too.

Some popular brands of lithium flashlights include Surefire, Streamlight, and Fenix.

Technorati Tags: cr123, lithium flashlight, surefire