Triple XM-L potential buyers... read my thoughts here.

I just received my TK70 light a week ago and have formed some opinions. I struggled for quite a while over which triple XM-L to buy but finally settled on the TK70.

For those of you that are still considering this, I wanted to share my advice.

The primary advice is that the lumens will probably NOT be as impressive as you expect them to be. Secondly, beam pattern is particularly important for usability.

Remember that it takes about 4x as many lumens for a flashlight to appear twice as bright to our eyes. This is because of how our eyes work. You can easily test this by using one of your multimode lights. When you go from 3 lumens to 30 lumens for example, does it REALLY look 10x brighter? Not really. More like 3x brighter.

Most of you likely have an MC-E, SST-50, or even XM-L light already. So you already have a 500 lumen flashlight or better. Consider that your Triple XML of choice is going to be 4x the lumens but will only LOOK twice as bright! Thus, you may be disappointed if not ready for this fact. I was actually disappointed with the TK70 output because "2300 OTF lumens" simply sounds better on paper than it does in real life, relative to my 600 lumen lights.

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Secondly, what makes a big light impressive is how well it throws and thusly how far off you can see. While I have never been a fan of pure throw lights, I do understand that for a huge triple XM-L the intent is usually to illuminate a large area that is fairly far off.` Remember that the level of light on an object falls off pretty rapidly over distance. A flashlight with a high beam angle is basically dividing all its lumens by the area of a circle (pi x Radius squared), and the radius of the circle is dependent on the beam angle of the hotspot and the distance. Thus beam angle is quite important.

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To assist with your effort, I have two forum posts with beamshots from various flashlights. use these to compare!

Beamshots of 14 powerful xm-l flashlights(including TK70)+1 xp-g for comparison. | Candle Power Flashlight Forum.

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Why I chose the TK70:

The TK70 is much more expensive than the cheaper offerings. One can get it for about 200 bucks shipped from say goinggear with the 11% off coupon code. Some have found it cheaper from HKgood or something but this was the best deal I could find including shipping.

The TK 70 has a very large head with deep reflectors. As such the beam angle is very impressive. It throws like a beast and illuminates extremely far off. It out throws the SR92 and rivals the SR91. In my tests, it can light up trees and obstacles that my 600 lumen MC-E/SST-50s don't even touch. Putting 4 of my 600ish lumen lights together would be brighter, but still wouldn't light up that particular tree.

It still has plenty of flood and lights up an area quite nicely.

Build quality is very good. Unlike the cheaper offerings, I can expect the TK70 to have a very good driver and not poop out on me. This doesnt justify 4x the price exactly, but it IS a factor to consider.

So far the TK70 has been shown to be a reliable light based on topics and forums Ive read.

It is a legalized weapon pretty much. Not to go into this topic deeply, but Ill bet most people would feel safer walking around with this thing, compared to the grenade-looking DRY/Nitecore or long skinny 3x18650 trustfire. But it is not modified to be a weapon, doesnt look like a police baton, or any other of those factors which could theoretically be problematic if you did however unlikely, get into an incident.

The thermal mass of this thing ensures that you can run it for an extended duration without getting hot.

Finally, the light modes are well done. The low 20 lumen mode is enough to not ruin your night vision but enough to see decently if walking around the house at night for example. The 300 lumen mode is about equal to a strong RCR123 keychain light. Good for walking after dark or general purpose. The 900 is when you really want to light up an area, but you can sustain this level indefinitely. Then the turbo of course for maximum output.

Hope this is helpful on your search!

I like my DRY a lot but i can totally agree with you that despite the massive output I sometimes feel a bit helpless if i'm trying to light something up 150-200m+. I don't know if there would be a way to increase the throw of the DRY i already tried some renders with screw on reflectors i drew in 3D but that doesn't work :(.

Maybe someone a bit smarter than me could figure something out but i'm afraid the only way to achieve more throw is bigger native reflectors and not by extending the current ones but then it can't be an EDC anymore i think.

thanks for the info! wish you had a trustfire 3t6 in those beam shots though, but i'm sure it's very close to the skyray triple..the trustfire is the one I was looking at getting after the skyray was so unreliable..the tk70 is out of my budget and would be too big for me to use often, but man the beam shots from it looks great..

Joe,

Thanks for the insight. I've considered getting the TK70 but I was afraid I was going to be somewhat disappointed with my expectations of what 2300 OTF lumens looked like. In the meantime, I taped 3 C8s together to get an "idea" of what it would look like and I really can't justify dropping 200 on one. I have a TK35 so I'm familiar with the quality. I guess I'll wait for perhaps a 5*XM-L or maybe the new DRY version coming out soon.

We're practically neighbors - if you shine the TK70 into the night sky, I might be able to see it from Fairview. LOL

Yeah I had to promise the Missus that this would be my last Big Light. So I figured Id better make it count! :-)

I am honestly very happy with my triple X lights I have the first version of the Skyray and the Dry. The Skyray has been dead reliable and as a bike light nothing puts out a wall of light to compare to it. I have stuck it out the window of my truck at 60mph on a dark back road and killed the lights and it puts out a wall of light much brighter than 2 headlights combined, try that with the TK70. I never expected the triple to throw, I mean look at the tiny reflectors, but to send out a massive wall of light nothing comes close. The Dry is another great piece, massive wall of light with great run time. We had a 3 day power failure and tail standing the Dry on low on one set of batteries for 3 days this thing lit my house up like daylight. God forbid you ever hit someone with night vision adjusted eyes with either light on strobe they will be seeing spots for hours truly weaponized yes, the only two light I think can justify having strobes for that one purpose alone. I do have some throwers and I would love to own a TK70, but these lights are like comparing apples and oranges two different beasts all together.

Yeah, I agree that it is brighter than a typical XM-L light and possibly day and night difference when used in the house....but when you use it outside then the difference is not as much as most would think. If you want something that goes OMG OMG...go for a 100W HID. It does about 7500 lumens OTF, that ought to be enough, at least for portable usage.