Emisar is the highest quality brand available.

Just a few random thoughts run through the blender…

To be honest/blunt, I’m not quite sure what’s the point of gifting or even encouraging The Muggle to buy an Überlight. Whether it’s dumbing it down, hobbling it, lobotomising it, affixing training-wheels to it, whatever, if someone can’t handle it, what’s the point?

It’s like gifting someone a Ferrari but installing a “teen mode” speed-governor to it.

The SC31 and even that 500lm Xiomi “lipstick” light were designed to suit that purpose, and at least the former was “improved” by making it brighter. :person_facepalming:

Advertising a light that can set small children on fire from 50’ away sounds tres kewl, but it is practical? Oh, it’s fun (well, except for the small children), but is it the best thing for The Muggle?

I got a DC7 which is very Q8ish, but for the most part only has ramping and a coupla shortcuts. Works fine for probably 95% of the population. Even if it had candle-mode and LOL mode and 0-0-0-destruct-0 mode and all these other fun options which you could only enable first by bapping the sideswitch with “iddqd” in Morse code, great. But that’s really only for The Enthusiast, no? The plumber who just wants to see what’s in the dark scary cellar probably doesn’t care about the blinkies.

Simplifying the UI, while making hurt-yourself modes harder to get to, great. But even defaulting to “special”-mode will absolutely result in returns and nasty reviews. Guaranteed.

Case in point. I recently got a food thermometer (B019W2CGM6). The “cap” which slides onto the probe can be stuck onto the opposite end to extend its “reach” into a hot oven. Some lackbrain 1-starred it and commented, “Uhh, that’s not 13in, more like 13mm!”. Wait, an exact quote is best…

This is 13MM NOT 13 INCH!! Only reason I bought this one was for the long reach. Returning. P!SSED

Retard.

This is what you’d be dealing with. When people return lights because they “don’t work”, and can’t be bothered to take out the protective disc on the end of the cell, even though it’s triple-wrapped in glow-tape saying so, wellp, that’s the result.

So… yeah, maybe simplify the most-used functions if need be, and make it harder to get into hurt-yourself modes, and that should be enough.

Come to think of it, how many, even BLF members, mistakenly believed they received 0 voltage brand-new. batteries?

In case it’s at all useful as a data point, “didn’t realize the batteries had stickers on the end” seems to be the #1 or #2 reason for returns of the Sofirn SP36. It’s really common for people to just try to turn it on, get no response, and assume it’s broken… not realizing that shipping regulations require the batteries to be physically blocked from making contact.

I hear it was also common for people to miss the “insert batteries from the front” card placed in the FW3A box.

There has been an increase of people like this buying BLF-related lights, so we should probably find ways to deal with that. And more generally, muggle mode has always kinda sucked, so it’s worth rewriting regardless.

I’d love for muggle mode to turn into a pocket friendly (accidental turns on don’t result in burnt pockets)/anduril lite mode.

My suggestions would be to keep the basics of a good UI, so hold from off for moonlight, triple click from off for battery check, double click from off to the top of the safe ramp, and single click from off to memory. The ramp can start from either moonlight or a higher level, but access to a moonlight mode by holding from off is a crucial feature that I think anyone can appreciate.

I’d propose that the memory be tied to the memory mode outside of muggle mode, so you could either preconfigure a set turn on level or go with the default of using whatever was the last level. From on, a single click for off and a double click for top of the ramp.

Outside of muggle mode, it might be nice to move most of the config options a few further clicks away.

I suggest Glamdring.

I think most of us agree. The problem though is that we can’t stop the Muggles from getting the lights - Muggles are buying the lights, whether we like it or not. That leads to…

  1. Muggles buy the lights. We can’t stop this.
  2. Muggles don’t like/leave bad reviews/return the lights because they’re confusing/dangerous/whatever. Maybe even because the muggle put a AA in his D4 and it didn’t go.
  3. Manufacturers begin responding to the Muggle audience instead of us, because there’s more Muggles (and therefore more money to be made from Muggles)

See, thing is, Muggles buying the enthusiast designs we love is a good thing, because if what we like is commercially successful, we can get it made easier. If Lumintop makes FW3A and it sells like hotcakes, they’re probably going to be more willing to build the next hot design we pitch them. What we have to be mindful of going forward, and what TK is addressing here, is that Muggles are part of the buying audience now and we need to take into account how to make the lights we want also work for them.

To help get the thread back on topic, I too think Emisar is a good brand.

Things like their: build quality, innovation, and value are (IMHO) easily above even custom flashlight makers.

That being said, I think they have room for improvement. For one thing, based on my IPC J-STD-001 certification training, I would not pass their LED board soldering.

But than again, I wouldn’t pass many, many manufacturers for their ESD practices or soldering.

In summary, Emisar is good but could technically be better.

This is a brilliant idea, TK. By doing this, you avoid the novice from having to struggle. People like Nick Shabazz (he’s a major knife reviewer but just did the FW3A… and was befuddled by the UI) would become a viable customer, not scared off by a complex UI. So when reset, light is in muggle mode. You can easily step out of muggle and stay that way, having full access to the Anduril system. You could make it a “10 clicks” to get out of muggle, so a novice won’t accidentally get into the main Anduril UI.

There is a WIN strategy. You can make 2 kinds of Muggle modes. FULL and LIMITED. FULL by default, so full power of light is available. LIMITED when giving to children, so they don’t hurt themselves if they manage to get a hold of the flashlight. Muggle group should have a fairly easy means to toggle between the two sub groups.

[quote=ToyKeeper]

This is a brilliant solution TK! Definitely the best of both worlds. Safe for muggles by default, trivial for enthusiasts to “unlock” the full potential.

Am I the only one who checks Hank’s website daily for new lights I definitely don’t need?

Nope, not the only one. Some people even have scripts check automatically and send notifications when anything changes.

And I thought it was Surefire……… All these years collecting ’em.
For nothing. I’ll throw ’em away. (Over a 100 different models. 150 plus with the duplicates.)
Only I won’t tell you where. Since you consider they are of inferior quality.
Good luck with your fifty dollars, hand burning, plain looking, 10k modes you can’t use lights.

Cheers.

Wow, strong ocean breeze in here suddenly.

Hi elbakan1,

Surefire lights sure have their advantages against emisar lights, and a post explaining them would surely be very interesting for the thread.

Fifty dollars is a respectable ammount of money for an aluminium tube with an led, some electronics and a switch, and you can get a lot of nice ones, for even less.

My brother’s convoy s2+ from Simon was 13€, and sure can take a beating. I bet a lot of people here put s2+s or simillar lights to hard use, they hold up better than you might think.

My D4 cost me 30, and it is one of my most used lights, very nice flood, neutral tint and high CRI (my surefire, an eb1, has a cool, normal CRI tint, and most other models of their lineup do too). It usualy makes about 100 lumens for normal usage, and I can always crank it up if needed. Sure, I wouldn’t use it for self defense or combat, it wasn’t made for that, but for general use.

Have a nice day.

With all the brands he listed in the OP you managed to be insulted about your collection of a brand… that he didn’t mention? :frowning:

Surefire and Emisar have completely different use cases, that much should be very evident. I’ve bought a ton of enthusiast flashlights over the last few years and still have uses for the handful of Surefire lights I was lucky to receive as gifts or hand-me-downs. Considering the average quality of big-box store lights though… do you think the average person needs a $150+ Surefire that can stand up to thousands of rounds of weapon recoil? Do you think most of the lights discussed here would not be a massive upgrade over some all plastic, alkaleak-using light from Wally world that most households have?

But “plain looking” I simply can’t agree with…

I think my adjective of choice would be “gaudy” lol. That’s also coming from someone that thinks the E1E and Novatac are the most attractive lights ever so aesthetic tastes here are obviously pretty varied.

Surefire lights are good quality, but they are not nearly as bright as some of our favorite BLF lights. Some of us like really bright. :wink:

So plain.


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Fortunately they are also very well made, generously priced, and perform way above par.

Not to mention those “10k modes you can’t use”, which I love and use frequently. These excellent lights are loaded with some pretty great perks.

Now go take a look at these.

Keep in mind I do love that they’re US-made. Too bad they’re so boring to me.

Why so hateful?

Surefire is ok quality but overpriced.
Example: one “SureFire TITAN” costs 60$. You can buy six “Sofirn C01S” flashlights for that same price. SureFire has some random emitter and Sofirn has a high CRI emitter. Sofirn is 6 times cheaper and provides better quality lighting than SureFire.

"...hand burning..."

Oooh.... oooh....... Controversy! .... ....about flashlights. The best kind. This is exactly what I need to get some elan and verve in my boring, repressed life on this hostile planet. I am so glad I stumbled upon your invigorating post.

Lol, here we go.

A light that burns a hand is like a hot-rod that roasts tires.