Wellp, all lights that work after being confirmed non-DOA will be 100% reliable sitting untouched in their respective boxes. :laughing:
I don’t abuse my lights, either, and I’ve had some issues like retaining rings (tailswitch and driver) coming loose after recharging the battery, that went mental ’til I poked around, found the issue, and tightened ’em up.
I did have a TK04 go boom, just tip over and stop working. That was fun. Not fall, just literally tip over onto my laptop’s keyboard, so it wasn’t even a hard hit. Eerie.
Also a TK05, ironically, just flicker and go dim. Very dim. LED got loose. Press down on it and it works 100%.
So yeah, weird crap happens for no apparent reason.
But the idea is that lights shouldn’t be fragile and stop working if dropped when pulling it out of a pocket or bag, etc.
But I wouldn’t trust most lights unless I completely pulled ’em apart and rebuilt ’em, being sure to regrease all the O-rings and threads, maybe even lightly RTV the edge of a switch-boot if I wanted it truly waterproof, and make sure everything everything everything is 100%.
Still, dropping a light on its bezel at an angle can very easy crack even the thickest glass. Hell, I busted a clear (“UV”) filter on my camera’s lens, in a padded bag, from just 2’ high. Bent/Deformed the ring just enough that I can’t even get it off the lens anymore (I did remove all the errant glass-shards, though). Freak accidents happen, too.
So with the exception of my bobofett lights, whose “coating” peels off when you just look at it wrong, even my heavily EDCed lights still look pristine. Hell, I was balancing my MH20 precariously on my bike-seat when it rolled off and hit concrete. Not so much as a ding on the ano, and I looked hard.
Do I want to tempt fate? Nah. So it’s nice to know that some lights stand a better chance as far as being reliable, even if freaky stuff happens.