I only pop on here rarely because as amusing as it would be to have a shelf filled with lights, my wallet can’t afford to be bled a little more each time I read a flashlight review and find myself wanting the new shiny toy.
It’s harder being only an occasional member because as with all things tech, the world of LED flashlights moves pretty fast. The new hotness that I was drooling over only a couple of years ago has been relegated to has-been status (if not all the way to old-and-busted), manufacturers have come and gone, and apparently Samsung is now making LEDs better than Cree? Huh. And we don’t just care about output and tints these days, but actual colour rendition values? Wow.
The BLF A6 was finishing development one of the previous times I was around, and I put myself down for two, with differing tints.
One of them replaced an SK-68 (well, probably a clone) as my EDC, and I was very unconvinced about carrying a fixed lens light when the SK could flood or throw as needed. Turns out that I mostly needed a close in light, and throwing a wall of photons at distant objects in turbo mode sufficed for my purposes. I’m still half-convinced a zoomie makes for a better general purpose, jack-of-all-trades tool for when what I’ve got is whatever I’m carrying (i.e. EDC) and I can’t reach for a specialized tool, but I suppose I’d need to get a compact 18650 zoomie like a Sofirn SF30A or something and carry it around for a while and see.
I did try replacing the SK with a more pocketable zoomie (the SK really isn’t very pocket friendly) but the cheap lights I got were just bad.
Prior to the SK-68, I had a 2xAA tube light. This was… what, a decade ago, now? But it was LED! It would run all night on AAs! The light’s tint was positively frigid! I ran it with 1xAA (it could run on a single AA!) for EDC, and screwed on the extension tube with a second AA if I went for a walk or whatever and actually planned on using the light. It had a #(&@ annoying driver that would cycle with half or full clicks, so it always came on at the next setting, and it had the archaic 5-mode L-M-H-blink-SOS pattern. If I had it on high and turned it off, the next time it came on — be it a second or an hour — it would blink. Great if I just left it on, very bad for intermittent use.
I say “had”, but the reality is that it’s now in a kitchen drawer, loaded with Eneloops. It’s kinda last ditch, but it still works. Ditto the SK. And the garbage zoomies as well, though I gave those away to family (and they’re quite happy with them, oddly enough).
Regardless, I’ve had the A6 in my pocket since it came out and it’s served well. It will continue to do so until the FW3As I put myself down for ages ago are finally built and shipped. A BLF light that’s smaller than the A6 but takes the same cell and still can put out three times the lumens in turbo? Yes, please. It even has to throw better, if only from the sheer number of photons emitted. And it’ll probably have better a CRI, too. Yay. (Which will probably become “Yay!” once I test it and compare the beam versus the A6, because it’s not like a high-CRI light is going to be worse, right?)
Oh — if I’m in a suit, then there’s an Astrolux A1 with an Eneloop AAA in my pocket instead. I’ve resisted putting it on my keychain, however. (An old Photon is still hanging there, gamely bathing the area ahead of me in orange light when I turn it on. Can’t believe it still doesn’t need its 2032 changed…)
I’ve gotten off track…. The point I’m trying to make is that the lights I had before the A6 had problems, but the A6 has been completely satisfactory. As such, I wouldn’t say the A6 has ‘ruined me’, but it’s been more than good enough for me to use until tech eventually comes up with something noticeably better — like the FW3A. And if the FW3A doesn’t work out for some odd reason, I’ll happily just continue using the A6. It set a baseline of cost and functionality that acts as an effective filter for all other lights — they need to do better than the A6 in some way or I’m just not going to bother with them.
Cheers to the BLF A6’s developers. My hat’s off to you.
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BTW, what’s this ‘bump’ on the pocket clip you’re talking about?