Flashlight Search Engine

Did you even click on the link??
Do you not see the button that says “length” ???

Thank you for the kind words Firelight2 and LloydV :slight_smile:

Manker is a solid contender. It would be nice if their specs were ANSI FL1, but the numbers are close enough to community measurements.

DQG, absolutely. They innovate. I’m willing to overlook their almost total lack of a website.

Astrolux is a house brand and also lacks a website. Kind of generic and nothing really exciting about them I guess? I don’t like the idea of listing house brands very much either.

BLF isn’t really a brand per se. More like a limited edition of a light and I generally don’t list limited editions. Maybe once manufacturers step up and treat BLF lights like a normal product instead of making people pre-order into a batch? We’ll see.

Thanks, Parametrek. I love your site. I am sure it has helped many thousands of buyers. I think it is particularly valuable for newbies to high-powered LED flashlights.

I don't mind the slant the site gives to "mainstream" brands, even when their products sell at the high end of mid-priced. My two ZebraLights remain among my favorite flashlights. The same goes for my Nitecore P36, a highly underrated light.

One problem with including budget brands is that the quality from some makers is not uniform across their entire product lines. With Manker, for instance, we have the wonderful BLF A6 and BLF X6/X5, but Manker is also the manufacturer of the flawed CPFItalia Cometa. Manker also produces the Astrolux flashlights for Banggood.

That said, excluding all budget brands/products from your site is also a problem. The same n00bs who probably benefit most from a site like yours are missing out on some of the best deals around. Convoy, for instance, combines excellent build quality with very low prices. At around $55 USD, the Convoy L6 is a real gem. So are many other flashlights in the Convoy lineup. The same goes for ThorFire, especially its newer models.

Below is a short list of budget flashlights that I own and use on a regular basis. All are worthy of inclusion on your site.

  • Astrolux A01 – AAA keychain light, with Nichia 219B
  • BLF-348 – AAA steel-body "tube" flashlight, also with Nichia 219B
  • BLF A6 – floody, 18650 "tube" flashlight (also sold as the Astrolux S1)
  • BLF Kronos X6/X5 – compact throwers based, respectively, on 18650 and 14500 batteries (also sold as the Astrolux S2 and S3)
  • Brinyte B158 – 18650 zoomie
  • Convoy L6 – 2x26650 general-purpose "flooder"
  • ThorFire C8s – compact thrower fueled by 1x18650

The BLF A6 has become a production light, as has at least one other.

Great job on the search engine, my bad that money for flashlights isn’t as easy :stuck_out_tongue:

Phil

Thanks, KeepingItLight. I was kind of dreading writing this reply, wondering if I should deflect, but I’ll rip the bandaid off instead:

Convoy, despite making a great product at a great price, doesn’t meet my standards. They don’t have a website listing their products, just an Aliexpress store. The store doesn’t list lumens or runtimes or really any of the numbers that I need to describe a light. For the final nail, right now they don’t even exist on the internet! They’ve completely removed every single page. Every. Page. For. A. Month. This is unacceptable to me. I can understand removing pages for products you no longer make. I can understand sites being down for maintenance. I can understand not accepting orders while on vacation. I can’t understand this. This sort of thing in 2017 is just as bad as making incan lights in 2017.

Okay, so.

Manker actually doesn’t produce any Astrolux lights for Banggood. They had a falling out a few months ago. Banggood was very quiet about this, and which lights were made by their new manufacturer. A lot of people got bad A01 lights during the transition.

While Thorfire has a website, they don’t give any hard numbers. Going to have to pass.

I’ve been following Brinyte for a while now. They seem to be doing everything right and they’ll probably be added at some point.

It’s really hard to make search engines for products that do not have a static website. It’s also unreliable because things can change unexpectedly like what products are available or not, product specs, etc.
With a proper manufacturer website (eg olight) the products do not change, if something is modified or improved it receives a new product page rather than modify the old one.

Wow, what a cool resource! I don’t know why I never saw this before. I added it to the “Related Sites” links in the sidebar.

Wow thanks a lot Parametrek! Great Work!! :beer:

sb56637, thank you! I am completely gobsmacked.

Holy cow……. I had never seen this either! Thank you ‘Parametric’ !!! :+1:
Welcome to BLF also…… :slight_smile:

Thank you for adding that ’sb’……… :+1:

By popular request, Skilhunt has been added to the database. I didn’t realize all their lights were so easy to disassemble and upgrade. That alone makes a pretty compelling case for them.

I’ve added a search engine for batteries. For example, here are the highest capacity 14500 cells.

There might be some rough edges and omissions since it is brand new. If something feels wrong or confusing, please say something so I can fix it.

Enjoy!

Maxtoch request to be added, please

Nice work on the Search Engine!!

@ Parametrek ……. Battery Search… Thank you sir!!! :+1:

Very nice………. :slight_smile:

I added the links to my sig line also… that way they are only a click away. :wink:

That is definitely a nice search engine. I’m disappointed not to see Convoy in there though. I realize Convoy only has their Aliexpress store and not a true website but any list of quality flashlights that doesn’t include Convoy seems incomplete to me. Quite a respected brand in the budget flashlight world. Only the very largest of Chinese brands can actually setup a website that isn’t crippled by the Chinese firewall.

I don’t disagree and I’ve spoken with Parametrek about this in the past, or at least seen him address it. He says its really hard to index certain brands like Convoy because the specs aren’t easy to find, which is also a valid point. He’s not snubbing them on purpose, its just not a simple problem to solve.

Yeah, I suppose I’d have to grudgingly concede that point. Simon does pretty well about listing the specs on his lights in the Convoy store but it’s not perfect and not in a very standardized format. I’ll still cast my vote to add them as a brand though. It’s quite a nice flashlight search tool.

Simon has some limited information, but the ANSI FL1 is the only reason what I do is possible. It would be a massive expense to actually have every variation of every light measured by a certified lab and I don’t expect Simon to bankrupt himself over that. As long as Convoy provides data measured in the spirit of the standard, that is good enough.

Lumens for the modes. Runtimes for the modes. Candela. Those are the major missing specs. Runtime could be optional since that can be estimated from current. Though it should probably be tested for the max modes, since the current is usually high enough to act weird and diverge from the estimate.

The impact testing that Simon does is a start but the standard requires multiple drops from each direction. Maybe he already does that?

There’s plenty of other brands that I don’t include for lack of specs. The next biggest name after Convoy that I wish had specs is Peak.

That seems simple & fair enough if Convoy will do it.

LMFAO!

Sorry to drudge up an old thread, figured I’d try here before a PM, and maybe others know the answer.

I can’t figure out how to search for Aspheric or TIR flashlights. Is that a feature, or, Parametrek, could it be added?