We are ALMOST there (and I have noted which category those changes would impact below). New UIs, new electronics, and hopefully the normal price drop due to tech advances that could make LEP reasonable purchases. There is a ton of innovation that is JUST around the corner. There are a few trends I am tracking that buoy my hopes for the future. The good stuff is, almost universally, older stuff, which is fine, but sad. If you are paying big bucks for a custom light you should get high end performance, at the bare minimum.Īll around, the flashlight market is pretty depressing. In the same way that good flipping action is incidental to knife performance, barrel decorations are incidental to flashlight performance. The custom market has a lot of what I think of as the “Shirogorov” feel to it-a fixation on noncritical aspects of the tool as a justification to raise prices to insane levels. Still, the market eats them up and ultimately places no priority, again, on usefulness.
Barrel and Hanko have also released new bling lights and none of them are cheap. Its offering price of over $1,000 was stunning (largely matched by the machining, but still). Focus EDC raised the ante in terms of baroque torches with the Cylon. The gizmo end of the spectrum is gaudy and the tac end is slow, but the custom end is even more worrisome.
Is it too obvious a pun to say that Hui’s stuff is a bright spot in the market? His new magnetic operated light is a masterstroke-so against the grain that it is truly innovative and interesting, not just more marketing bullet points. III continues to set the pace for inexpensive EDC torches. If you want a small, bright enough, good runtime torch, Jason’s two brands Prometheus and FourSevens are the place to look first. There are three of his lights on this list for good reason-they are ideal lights for general use. Jason Hui continues to find success bucking trends. The Wedge is one of the most exciting new lights out there and as soon as they are more widely available, one will be in the review queue for sure. Strangely, it is Streamlight that is innovating. Similarly Malkoff would do well to bump up the output on his otherwise stellar lights. I would love to see a higher output HDS, something in the 500 lumens range. Where is the clicky version already? That can’t be all that much of a challenge to make. It is a good light still, but 6 years is a long time. Surefire’s last EDC light, the Titan Plus, is now 6 years old. Tactical lights, on the other hand, are bad for another reason-there is no innovation. Remember the old saying from Quick Beam (which I am paraphrasing)-like with lights and lumens, the highest proof bourbon isn’t necessarily the best.
Once you pass around 1,000 lumens, the utility of additional lumens, especially without a throw head drops quickly to zero. A paper towel roll-sized light, regardless of output, just can’t be useful enough to carry. Flashlights only became worthwhile as an EDC item when they shrank to finger-sized tubes that could be pocketed or put into a bag with ease. There is no real reason to drop an already too large battery for an even bigger one, unless you buy lights on specs alone. The trend of moving away from 18650s to 21700s is proof of this. Light after light that comes out from these companies gets a heaping helping of “more” but nothing in this array of “more” makes the lights more reliable, easier to use, or longer running. They are getting brighter and more complex, but not better. The positively silly array of “features” and cratering output after seconds of headlight highs makes me think that the budget overseas lights just aren’t getting better. The division between the gee whiz gadgets powered by Anduril, what I think of as gizmo lights (yes, I purposely chose the word “gizmo” to make me sound older…after all the Anduril Army contends that I am dinosaur for liking the HDS Rotary at all) and the tactical market has grown a bit. For the first time in a long time, the flashlight market has been pretty disappointing.
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