Hi there, casual lurker here yet this is my first post.
I cant say i’m a flashaholic but i always had at least one ‘decent’ flashlight since i got a minimaglite aa combo set about 22 years ago.
It served me well from camping to reading and to play with my gameboy for countless hours…
I was very fond of maglites and ended up getting a solitaire and a 6D which i regretted to buy because it was so overkill and heavy…
Around 2008 i bought a 3 emitters drop in for the minimaglite and i was really impressed by the sheer power and the awesome runtime, of course i had my share of crappy el cheapo led with nasty blue tints before i tried the drop in but i havent tested something decent before.
Around the same time i bought a petzl tikka with red filter and a 1x cr123a litexpress aspheric lens flashlight which produced a very narrow beam without spill at all and was utterly useless and expensive to run for the crappy performance.
I liked the tikka for its runtime but i ended up losing it…
Around 2011 i was gifted something poisonous, a crappy ultrafire 1x18650 flashlight with 2 cells and very shady looking charger with a flimsy hinge on the plug, that thing came from ebay and was around 10 euros, i used that light until the cells stopped holding a charge then i read about the dangers of cheap li ion cells and chargers and discarded them asap as i was really getting paranoid.
Around 2012 i bought a klarus mi 6x stainless which i carried around the neck, i really liked it and learned what a good led flashlight should be.
One thing sucked hard tho, the lack of spring on a twisty means the contact ring with three prongs will get flattened and the cell might be damaged too.
After a couple years i had to put little aluminum foil pieces in the bottom to keep the circuit closed, it worked ok until a few months ago, it was still firing in medium but i was unable to change modes.
Since the fenix ld22 2015 came out i was considering getting one which i did 1 month ago, i really like it so far but i would have liked a larger hotspot, a sublumen mode and a checkered side switch.
I’m fairly sure i’ll get a zebralight aa flood or floody headlamp next as i really like the ui and the form factor is really sexy…