Don’t mind me sharing a story, quite a few years ago, like in 2011 or so, triple XM-L lights started to come into the market and that’s when the lumens war started. Budgetlights started to have 3 x XM-L, then 4x XM-L, 5 x XL-L, 7 x XM-L, reaching i believe 12pcs. Simple coz XM-Ls were coming down in price.
Over here in BLF, we had a popular pocket rocket called the DRY 3 x XM-L. Many of us had these and also other variants of multi XM-L lights. I also have the Fenix TK70 3 x XM-L as a full-quality light, the most important point is that it is full-sized and optimised for extended run in high modes, downside is that it is big. There was one version in which the highest mode is a Direct Drive, ie driver is connecting the 3 x XM-L directly to the 3 x 18650s. So with certain cells like the Sanyo UR18650 2600mAh, you’d get a nice and toasty 4A plus, especially with a spring bypass.
You’d hit just over 3000 lumens in a cold climate. I was crazy to run the light till around 5A plus connected to an external power supply and cooling the head with ice and even dry ice, just to see how much light i could squeeze out of it. Yeah, that’s for being a flashaholic hobbyist. Yeah, 3000 lumens is nothing nowadays, but that’s in 2011.
There is a big difference in practical usage between the DRY 3 x XM-L vs the Fenix TK-70. Yes, the former is like 3000 lumens during start-up and the latter if i remember correctly 2200 lumens. The DRY triple XM-L has around 20k cd and the Fenix TK-70 about 90k cd. The REAL big difference in real life usage is that the TK-70 is able to sustain max output operation for way longer, it does this with (1) significantly more heat sinking and (2) significantly higher surface area for heat dissipation, i’d guesstimate about 5 x more. The DRY triple XM-L is really a 1 minute light (maybe 2 minutes in winter conditions?) and after that it needs to rest quite a while. The TK-70 is a > 5 minutes max output light, easily more than that in a cold climate (I’m in the tropics).
The point i am trying to make is, pocket rockets have their place in flashaholic hearts. All of us have been-there-done-that one way or another.
But in reality it might be a different picture, and it really depends on your own usage needs + preferences. Even within the practical usage group, there are many different requirement levels, some are not so critical, some are very critical, requiring really extended operation at max levels.