Flashlight Price Light Duration
Minimag $10 7.5 41 minutes
Fenix tk11 $73 60.0 10 hours

You can also pay $150 for the performance of a tk11, and that’s what is meant by “Low price”.

My best overall pick is one I found from a place called superbrightleds.com. It puts out a very clear center circle with a very nice bright halo, and is soft, clear, balanced, a perfect size, really lights things up, and projects out several hundred feet, and this is all from one AA battery. This company sells lots of leds for auto and home use, and only couple of flashlights, but the stats on this one are fantastic. It will also take a 3.7 volt rechargeable lith. ion battery and will put out 205 lumens with the 3.7 volt battery, or it will us a standard AA alkaline and put out 130 absolutely perfect lumens. It will also let you cut back the lumens by a variable means down to a still very bright low level that is quite good, and is suppose to last 50 – 80 hours from one battery from this setting. It is model number ITL-15 and cost $39.00 plus $5.00 shipping. After I ordered one and proved that it was really that good with a tempered glass lens, alum. reflector rough on the bottom third and smooth on the last 2/3 to give both a clear even light, and also a very long projection. It has a very nice cree led. I ordered two more and found that the same $5.00 shipping got me two lights on the second order.

The second best if you want a spotlight that goes out the furthest is a Dorcy rechargeable 220 lumen with a cree. For packable a Coast LED Lenser tt7438 with an adjustable prism shoots a beam out there, and also softens up for up close. It is suppose to put out 105 lumens, and it is promised that you will still be getting light at 120 hours. I do know that it is in the pack of bright perhaps only a little less than the best, but so much more versitile, and long run time, and comes with a nice carry case at $45.00 from Lowe’s. It uses 3 AAA’s. I also have a couple of other LED Lensers that are very good, and the latest minimag light, and a River Rock with a Cree led that uses 2 “c” cells and claims 60 hours of light with 21 being at the rated 130 lumens. It comes from Target, but has the soft reflector, and is nice but does not shoot a clear beam out there. The Rayovac 3 “c” cell sportsman is a very nice torch, but big and heavy, but comes with a Cree LED, and claims 100 hours run time, but I doubt it. Still it is a very nice light at between the $25.00 I paid, and the $35.00 some are asking. Dorcy makes a few others that are ok for a cheap price, but they all have plastic lenses, and the batteries go from 2 -12 hours or so. I told you about the best one first, and the next few are very good. I hope this helps someone out. I think the first one I was sharing is a rare find, and you should go to the web site and check it out. I have purchased three now, and they are all consistant, and do exactly as advertised.

My mistake.

Daniel

Daniel

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Coast makes some very affordable flashlights, with “good” focusing optics. The power regulation in Coast high performance flashlights needs significant improvement, perhaps using a modern boost-buck switching power supply like Linear Technology’s LTC3780 current regulator for LED’s. Most flashlight manufacturers need to employ more modern electronic technology in their flashlights. While Coast does use microprocessors in some of their high end flashlights, like the P14, there seems to be some room for improvement. For instance, externally rechargeable batteries are not always guaranteed to deliver the same performance as the rechargeables in the manufacturer’s OEM flashlights. Good electronic LED drivers will overcome that limitation.

Optics seem to be another area where much improvement is needed. Focusing optics allow the user to deliver just the right amount of light for the task at hand. I don’t see any manufacturer anywhere using multicoated optics for improved light transmission, even though $25 binoculars at Wal-Mart come with that feature. Every non-coated lens surface wastes 10% of the light output. That’s 20% wasted light due to reflection with the flat lenses so widely employed in flashlights – even $300 ones. LED reflectors are more inefficient than TIR lenses. No TIR lens is multicoated (e.g., L2, POL, Fraen, Carclo, Ledil, etc.). Focusing optics combined with a good LED brightness regulator will provide a wider usage range. The best LED flashlights seem to be lagging significantly behind LED bicycle light technology, so manufacturers in certain business sectors are taking advantage of available technology.