Hi all,
As a newcomer to the high-performance budget light scene, there are many brand names I've never heard of. Trying to understand the quality hierarchy of brand offerings has got me a little perplexed.
It seems that most of the " ***fire " brands are populated with inferior knockoff emitters, poor drivers and questionable build quality. GB, BG and, perhaps especially Amazon reviews aren't to be trusted because casual flashlight users aren't well educated as to what's possible, they just know that their new ***fire (or whatever) unit is very bright, with no other experience to compare. They may not even relate poor spectrum output to anything being amiss, if they notice it at all.
I'm unwilling to support knockoffs of any kind. I'd prefer a quality, known brand emitter such as CREE, Samsung, etc. in anything I buy.
In reading through the fake CREE emitter thread, among others, I saw a few mentions of particular brands that are considered to be trustworthy:
"...established Brands and reputable sellers will have real Cree emitters, (Such as Convoy, Thorfire, Manker, Thrunite, Nitecore, Olight, Foursdevens, etc."
I also saw Streamlight, Surefire, Maglite, and Pelican mentioned in a much older thread.
Are these brands still considered good value, offering solid build quality and genuine, high-quality brand-name emitters?
What are some other current brands that offer quality builds along with assurance of receiving genuine emitters, not inferior knockoffs such as LatticeBright, et al?
Thanks for your time gentlemen. And ladies, if there are any here.
slmjim