I want real sustained run times, I am tired of spending hundreds and thousand of $$ on these BS lights that claim thousands of lumens but can not hold its highest output for more than a few seconds or a few minutes.
I put it to manufacturers to step up the game and build lights that have real cooling solutions, no more passive BS coolers, CPU coolers are the future for monster lights with multi and single led’s.
I mean I have many single emitter lights that cant f(I(&* run on turbo for more than 10-40seconds without stepping down to 50% output. Forget about the multi emitter lights, they piss themselves, and burn your hands if you run them at maxoutput or even high as advertised.
Would love to see an INSANE sustained light like a 6x XHP35 Hi thrower with fets (no boost/buck), with CPU style cooling.
Yes I know biggest problem is cooling and drivers. Make Fet drivers, just stay away from boost and bucks, IMHO they take too long to get them right, and most companies like Astrolux, Haikelite, Imalent … barely gets them right. Etc. their lights get a lot of heat generated from the drivers not just the emitter/s. The dd fet drivers just plain work the most efficient.
Make PC style cooling, with copper cores and BB fans for the emitters, they are cheap to get. I spent $400 on a light and did not get a cpu fan cooler built in that can run INDEFINITELY on turbo until battery runs out. I spent another $240 on another large single emitter light that can not handle its output of 6k lumens more than 45 secs without dropping to 50% output. The manufacturers can do it and better step up before people get tired of these BS output sustained times and the market gets stale …
Sick and tired of BS lights that put out 10k, 20k, 30k 50, 60k lumens and cant run for more than 10-50 seconds on highest output and without burning your damn hands.
$600 for 60k lumens light that run for only seconds!?
WTF!
End of r.
One line of models with sustained highest mode capability till the lvp kick in, then the other like most, if not all, lights currently in the market ie: bragging rights, then boom, half of that.
While I understand want turbo, I agree with your rant.
If they can no longer diffrenciate with turbo-lumens they are forced to put focus on more useful things.
For me that’s lm/W.
For you cooling.
As an example: A light currently has a 5k turbo and 1k sustained.
Fancy cooling is added and it will become 5k turbo and 3k sustained.
No matter how fancy the cooling the heat has to go somewhere. There are limits to that.
I think the light will get pretty big and sensative to drops if you use cpu fans etc. And boost drivers are needed if you want single cell xhp35 lights.
When do you need a 20000 lumen turbo light for more then 45 seconds?
There is a place for both lights. Especially for smaller lights where size and weight is important (EDC) the turbo feature is a nice thing, because otherwise you would not have that much output (for a short while), because its just physically not possible.
I think unsustainable turbo modes have a place, especially on carry lights. Walking around with my D4, I have several hours of regulated output which is plenty bright for most tasks. In fact, I used my D4 for hours last weekend while working on my car. But it's also nice that I can have that momentary 5,000 lumen burst when I want it. It's good for when the creepy dude pops out from behind the gas station dumpster asking for money and scares you, after 10pm. Suddenly he's blind!
Even olight or acebeam ditched the idea to make their biggest lights with built in fans for greater runtime even tho the prototypes had them, its not the easiest thing do a massive light and just throw in a few fans i dont know what it takes to give us better runtimes max? the hosts must get alot bigger then those we have now…
I love having turbo modes available - any cooling system which can sustain X lumens can also handle anywhere between 2X and 10X lumens for a while until it heats up. This is even true of a water cooler and radiator setup. Dumping a bunch of extra power until the cooling system warms up is basically free light when I just need a short burst to look into the distance, and I don’t have to use those modes if I don’t want to. However, I do wish marketing made clear what modes were actually sustainable and emphasized those modes more heavily. That is a failing of FL1 more than anything.
In the particular scenarios described in the OP, though… Maybe you should look at reviews before spending $600 on flashlights that don’t perform the way you hoped. I can’t think of many industries or products where you can just take the manufacturer’s claims at face value without independent verification. There’s a reason runtime graphs are part of a good flashlight review.
You can get what you want, but you’ll carry a 10 pound light in one hand and a briefcase-sized battery unit in another.
I don’t understand the need for max power with unlimited run time - unless “unlimited” means for the duration of the battery charge, which won’t be a lot running on max. Just like high performance sports cars. A Porsche GT2 RS does 670BHP at 7000rpm. But no one (except Indy500 and F1 racers) run their engines up at the redline constantly - you’ll kill your engine. Plus it’s not necessarily the most efficient way to drive the car. We start and stop, speed up and slow down, and for me, my flashlight use is just that. Crank it up when I need to, then drop it down to a sufficient level. Same thing when I drive - I only crank up the high bean when necessary, and it’s almost never necessary to keep them on all the time.
For max power with long run times, a portable scene light would be great, but they’re not necessarily convenient for handheld use for long periods.
Just give me direct access to the highest sustainable level, rather than making me wait for turbo to step down to get to the level that’s sustainable for an hour.
This just makes sense to me, but most UIs don’t allow for it.
Regarding turbo mode:
A small pocket light like the Emisar D4 might run sustained around 500 lumens, but can turbo for 4300 lumens.
Sure I could just get a light that can sustain its max output of 500 lumens. But in my opinion, that would be considerably less useful than also having available a turbo mode.
The D4 can already run at 500 lumens for an extended period so I wouldn’t really be gaining anything by buying a light whose peak output is a sustained 500 lumens. All that would happen is I would lose the very useful added functionality of being able to burst extremely high lumens for brief periods.
Regarding active cooling:
I admit, I would like to have active cooling in my lights to provide higher sustained output. A small fan would be pretty nice. The problems:
Pocket-sized EDC lights simply don’t have room for a fan
A poorly executed fan system probably wouldn’t offer any benefit over a well executed passive heat removal system (like on Zebralights).
PC Fans aren’t waterproof. Would a light with a built-in fan have zero waterproofing? … not even against rain drops? I’m not sure how useful that would be.
Water resistant fans are probably available, but I expect they would be more expensive and harder to find. I haven’t looked.
This is one reason I like Anduril UI over the default UI in the Emisar D4.
In the D4, double-click takes you to turbo which then rapidly ramps down. With Anduril, you can set double-click to any level you want. So the highest sustained level or maybe the highest level that won’t burn your pocket. You can still get to turbo with a double-click when the light is on.
Still hoping to get Anduril onto my D4 lights. Hopefully this week if I can get the software and hardware to work.
You know, in high school, I learned that in weight training, there was such a thing as “reps” and such a thing as “maxing out” and that those were two totally different things. Why is it hard for people to understand that “unsustainable” Turbo mode is useful and desired by many, while there are usually PLENTY of lower modes you can use if you want a “sustained” output level? Just turn the light down to a lower level! How hard is that?!
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