I am sure you know that almost all of these lights step down and don’t run what they state on the package most of the time. They use FL1 Standards, which is false advertising in my opinion. There are honest companies and exceptions.
Example: For the Acebeam L16… High: 1000lms, 1hour 12minutes, 46560cd, 431m
Turbo: 2000lms, 1hour 6minutes, 90800cd, 603m
This isn’t happening, your not going to get twice the lumens and have the exact same run time. 2000 lumens for a couple minutes then a step down.
You have done a lot of research. I have yet to give into USB rechargeable lights though, so my help is highly limited. (You did mention self defense though). I like the cells removable whether they are primaries or rechargeable. I am one of the very, few people here that use only CR123A cells when I need a light to work 100% of the time. In a 3 cell light one cell will go bad. The lumens will drop, but you still have light, even if 2 cells go bad you will still have light. I come home and then test them. I always find at least one good cell, and most of the time I keep that cell and toss the bad ones. I use the good cell in a S1 Baton.
I can tell you from personal experience, back when the 500 lumen Surefire M6 was the king. I was being chased by a drunk guy around my truck. I was backing up and blasting him in his fully night adapted eyes with it. Sometimes constantly, sometimes I manually strobed it directly into his fully night adapted vision, and it barely slowed him down. (a little bit, but not much). We both ended up in a persons front yard I quickly got a blood choke on him and he took a nice nap.
Flashlights are the best tool for situational awareness in the dark. Most criminals will avoid people using bright lights and look for another target just from seeing that you have a light even if you never see them. (I know this from my previous work). Begin extra credit info: Meth heads might actually have the largest flashlight collections bar none, because they are out tweaking all night 3-10 days with no sleep. You will never find a tweaker without a light. They also are paranoid and will think anyone with a 1000 lumen light is a cop. ( Just trust me on this ) End extra credit info
Anyway, back on topic. I would say forget strobe, it is useless. Just get something bright for a decent amount of time with a dead stupid switch on the tailcap you can’t forget. Mash it and have another way to defend yourself, because light doesn’t work well in a fight.