With LED flashlights being available for good 10+ years, one would expect the manufacturers to have their designs, quality control, performance and user’s ergonomics under total control. However exactly the opposite seems to be true in many cases. My recent search for a pocketable budget friendly option on XHP50.2 mixed beam light got me thinking how many lights i ruled out of the selection due to various flaws which I guess could be easily avoided. While some are just minor nuisances, others were legit deal breakers for me. Even though I doubt any manufacturer will pay attention, what are your features you DONT want to see on your light?
For me here are some serious red flags:
- ridiculous long press to turn on or off - this ruled out the JetBeam T4 Pro for me, where it took nearly 3 seconds to activate
- lights which shut down even with slight bump - like the haikelite MT01 Trekker
- high parasitic drain - seems this plagued the nitecore EC4XY series
- crappy UI with either wrong mode spacing , strobe modes in the cycle (not hidden)
- poverty quality control - do you remember the early overdriven XT11GTs?
- no lanyard hole or a microscopic one - seriously, it would be great if a paracord sized hole would be like the norm
- sluggish, mushy switches - again something that could be rather easily avoided
- poverty PWM drivers
ugly designs like look ruined by cheap white plastic switch
Overly easy access to strobe in a non-tactical light. The Manker U21 has a very frustrating UI. Long press for on to anything other than moonlight, double click shortcut to strobe rather than turbo, click to advance between modes, and long press for off. At least they got rid of the double click strobe in later lights.
Thought about it some more. These are my deal breakers. In order of magnitude. No proprietary or glue-sealed battery designs = I must be able to replace a dead battery of common size/chemistry. I do not want to field re-charge a dead battery with a battery bank and USB cable. Totally impractical.
No CR123 only = Its 2018, I have been posting this one for almost ~15 years (!!!) on CPF well before BLF days. I can’t believe I still need to post this as a bullet, but none the less, there are still designs out there. If it only takes CR123 cells, its totally useless to me.
No 3AAA & 4AAA = Inferior in so many ways, although I would take a 3xAAA light (of comparable quality) any day over a CR123 only light.
Battery carrier/caddy = No thanks, just one more thing that can fail. Physically its another thing to get in the way when field reloading cells.
Mechanical power lock out = Must have, I have nearly burnt my hand on lights that were accidentally turned on for lord knows how long in my pack… annoying as hell
Low frequency PWM = I am very sensitive to this, although it can be fixed with a DIY driver mod. Still as long as I have a choice, I will pick a light without low frequency PWM.
Dislike a Long (3+ sec) turn on, long off doesn’t bother me.
PWM (bad PWM actually makes me feel sick)
Cycling through STROBE or even more than a couple of modes to turn off
Non hidden strobe and signal modes in general
High parasitic drain (most of my lights are on standby a lot)
Sharp blue or green tint
No lockout (prefer mechanical but will take electronic types)
If I have to choose, I want a light to turn on in the lowest mode, NOT the brightest
Shallow or tiny thumb buttons
Side buttons that you can’t find by feel alone
No low warning (a flash or whatever) before shut-down
Power/mode buttons that I cannot feel or see in the dark. :rage:
Imalent perfected that on the DN11 and DN70. Obviously not a single one of the designers ever tried to take the lights out of his pocket and switch them on in the dark /with gloves.
Nice lights otherwise, with an impressive design fail on the first and major feature of a flashlight. :person_facepalming:
Strobe being in the main sequence, as in L/M/H/Strobe/L/M/HStrobe
The very annoying “blink on low” convoy 3/5 mode lights use to signal when you can change modes to include/exclude strobe and SOS. I use low a lot and it’s a pain to have the light blink a few seconds after you turn it on
UI’s that take a PhD in rocket science to figure out / program
Gritty threads on tailcaps
Lights that come from China without instructions, usually received in crushed cardboard boxes.
Imalent had another massive fail… those electro-sensitive buttons (or how that junk was called properly) did not operate in wet conditions, even in rain or wet hands. There were videos of users unable to change modes or even turn off that damned things.