Last year, you guys may remember I did a post called Let's Talk Old-School: Incans Keeping LEDs Honest, in which I talked about LED lumen output vs incan output...
I wanted to follow up on the theme with tonight's revisited man of the hour, the Cabela's XPG 12 Volt Xenon 4 x cr123 old tactical light. It saw its share of duty use for sure, but due to its exposed tailcap causing accidental activation and 7 3/4 length, it got shelved for a while. Plus, it is a flooder, but has enough of a hotspot to get noticed, but not be useful at distances. I still pull it out occasionally, but tonight found that it needs new batteries (of which I have none for it). So, it will have to strut its stuff with just over half power--and it is still gosh-darn impressive.
I got this as a gift to myself at Christmas time of '06 and it has remained a retina-smoker, despite 6 years of LED progress. It is identified as the 180 lumen 12 volt light on the Cabela's site, but is the bonus turbo head option as pictured (rated at 240 lumens). I can't find the turbo head on the site anymore.
Cabela's reviews are here and the light is still being sold, though they've been sold out for quite a while..
http://www.cabelas.com/flashlights-cabelas-xpg-xenon-flashlights.shtml
This light equals or surpasses the old Surefires like the Devastator and other big-name incans. The police force came out to a call one night at a retirement home where I worked and I had the 180 lumen head on (not pictured) and we compared beams with their Ultrastingers. By a nearly clear margin, my 180 lumen had theirs whipped. I can remember saying to myself, what if I had had the Turbo head on that night? This clearly beat every other incan I've put it to with the exception of dedicated spotlights. And that has yet to change.
Below is my trusty Ultrafire C8 XR-E Q5 (250ish lumens I guess) and it is unleashing its fury against the tired-out XPG...
But just like Batman, the old dog is hard to beat!
And then comes the Coleman MC-E "500 ANSI-rated" light on freshly changed cells. I'll say the MC-E has the advantage, but when you go to light up the room with the dingy, green tint, it doesn't illuminate like the XPG does. Never really has. And remember, this old guy is at half power and shouldn't be able to compete!
And this brings up the question asked a while back--are ANSI ratings trustworthy? I know some of the most staunch reviewers on CPF have gone on record when the P7s and such came out that the most they'll give is between 250-450 lumens, and I'm assuming they were speaking out against the radical "900 lumens" claims we kept getting when these things emerged.
The standards seem to have changed and I've noticed it through the years. Surefire is still measuring their lumens as they always have, and apparently, like Cabela's were with these incans. And now, everyone seems to be jumping on the bandwagon of "it's the new emitter X, it's bad-@ss!"
I'm leary of doing so, and that kind of strikes against what we've been taught. It's not how bright a light looks that determines how many lumens it has, but what is measured, right? I want to beg to differ. Even with the rather wide margin of error of the human eye, I still say there is no substitute for that squinting discomfort that comes from a bright, bright light.
LEDs have come along and have so many advantages over incans, but do they really illuminate better? I can't help but feel we've been sold a bad bill of goods with some. Sure, it's nice to not have to worry about getting a light hot and dropping it and having the bulb pop, and it's nice to not have to spend more money feeding these inefficient gluttons, but I have found that the more power a light runs off of, the brighter it seems to be, regardless of "LED efficiencies" and what-not.
It is so hard to resist praising the new thing. It really is, and honestly, I've known few people who had that ability to look at a beam of light and say: "Doesn't look that bright" when I just got through talking it up. I compared the 120 lumen light reviewed in the first post against the Inova 135 lumen, and at work, against the Inova 170 lumen. They are all three a virtual tie (and run on near the same voltage). What gives?
Not that I don't love LEDs and relish having that above-and-beyond XM-L power that is much easier to produce, but those are a recent achievement, and that makes me wonder if our battles over the specs and output of the budget lights we praise go beyond those to the name-brands and still rest in some hype? If I don't get that near-primal reaction when firing up a light, I almost have to take depressing meds. And I think it should be so! lol