Unpopular Flashlight Opinion Thread

[quote=elbakan1]

[quote=BurningPlayd0h]

a) The years their retail side has been open and the immediate response to emails says otherwise. Everyone’s gotta eat and I’m sure the current contract is a great one. This also says nothing about their products for the price.
b) “Very expensive. More than Surefire.” …and a proportionally better product. You get what you pay for and diminishing returns is the name of the game, especially for niche products.
c) Ditto b)
d) Good thing aesthetics are subjective and literally the last consideration for SHTF gear. Again, ditto point b)

Do people actually get excited by, and buy this stuff? Calling this a “new” flashlight should be illegal.

That’s embarrassingly garish, looks like it was painted with corrective liquid and aniline.

Made In The * People’s Republic of China

Its gotta be unpopular for me to love that red, white and blue. Yup, couldn’t care less.

I hate XP-L HI. :smiling_imp:

Last week I went to dinner to a couple of friend’s home. Some dishes like a cassoulet taste better the day after making it (flavors maturation and diffusion) so you need to prepare it the day before inviting friends.
When served, this dish looked absolutely fantastic but when we started to eat it, it had a bad taste of rotten fish and rotten rice. All flavors and aromas were mutated, mutilated.
My friends were out of town for one week and left an old dish in the fridge that they didn’t throw before storing the fresh new cassoulet.

It’s totally fictional but those XP-L HI (and this one in particular (see TM-30-18 tests)) make me think of something like the above. Sure its most obvious and global visual aspect, the tint, looks good but most colors shades are mutated / shifted and also faded (unsaturated)…or “non existant” = desaturated and mutated to the point that 2 differents shades look the same.

Most of the time, a withered but not rotten apple has more taste than a freshly picked and not yet completely ripe apple. This withered apple is just like the SST-20 FB4. It might not be appealing for some people at first because of its sligltly greenish tint, but I will always prefer it because of its deeper, richer colors shades over the unpleasing colors rendition of an XP-L HI, despite its better tint.

Sometimes you need to go through your first impression against a bad tint, to let your eyes and brain get used to it and afterward, being able to more appreciate more subtile things like better colors rendition and richer shades.

I know, a bunch of people will never taste the deep dense aromas and flavors of an expresso made with freshly moulded grains, they can’t refrain to add a sugar to “balance” the first obvious bitter taste, but sugar masks everything more subtile. Just like a lot of people will never be able to appreciate the benefits of an SST-20 FB4. A pity :smiley:

Do I need to make more comparaison with wine’s aromas and flavors ?
Nope, I only see Tint addicts vs CRI addicts.
And then the lumens addicts : “WUT wine ?! I just need this bottle of strong booze to get drunk” gimme those 100 000 lumens.

(Sorry, maybe I’m a bit drunk)

^ Nice analogy! I was thinking about noble rot dessert wine when reading your post… :sunglasses:

Being drunk maybe a good state of mind to vent unpopular flashlight opinions :beer: .
Btw, I agree with the opinion.

Hey, I still like the XM-L (dunno ever having/trying/seeing an -L2) in 4C. Yeah, it’s above the BBL, but still to me looks more “natural” as far as general sunlight balance.

Addendum: that’s behind a TIR lens and not in a reflector (annoyingly fried-eggy).

95% of us could get by just fine with a AAA light or two. We just like to overstate our actual flashlight uses and needs.

I agree with you Tally-ho.

I went jogging in the woods in the dark a few days back and took a XPL hi 5D light with me. So hard to see colors and depth like they should, everything is washed out compared a good HiCri led.

5D is still a nice tint, but only for white wall hunting.

Then I’m in the other 5%, the absolute smallest I can go for as a primary light is AA :stuck_out_tongue:

Yeah the 3D X-PL HIs in my FW3A weren’t very green at all but compared to all the high-CRI lights I have they just made colors look strange. I don’t think them being cooler than most of the lights I have helped either. I never liked the old flourescent lighting that was missing a bunch of the natural spectrum either and that’s exactly what a lot of the average-CRI emitters remind me of (and they did even before running the CRI-snob gamut).

Location: France
Ah… :beer: Wouldn’t have imagined someone from USA making that association. :wink:

Btw, had a cassoulet last year and really enjoyed it! :slight_smile:

The only thing I’m not good at is modesty…

… because I’m great at it!



Unpopular opinion: the FW3A has failed as my favourite EDC. I tried for a week and I’m back to my previous one.

1) although it is one of the smallest 18650 lights around, it still is rather large and heavy, it feels chunky in my jeans pocket, I’m often aware of its presence. My S1-mod, a 16340 light, just disappears in my pocket until I need it.

2) it engages itself easily, so for pocket carry it needs a lock-out at all times, I find unscrewing the head easiest. I use my EDC light multiple times a day, for my S1 (with BLF-A6 driver in 4-mode setting, and Luxeon V led) that implies: grab-click-ready (1 second) with one hand, for more brightness another fast half-click. The FW3A needs grab-fiddle with two hands-clickhold until brightness (at least 3 seconds).

3) I always end up mouth-carrying my EDC to free both hands. Effordlessly with the S1, jaw-tiring with the FW3A. And having a 16340 battery in my mouth feels a bit better too.

4) The modded S1 has proven to always work, and has a (compared to a Carclo triple light) throwy beam, on a Vapcell 16340 I get 1100 lumen at 30 seconds, and pretty steady too. In other words, it is a hard-to-beat flashlight.

5) I’m attached to the rainbow switch of the S1

So I’m back to the S1 and live with the limited battery life, but with daily use it is monitored well and I carry a spare battery in my work bag.

In the meantime I still like my FW3A (currently with FA3 high CRI SST-20 leds) with all its greatness very much and will buy a second one :person_facepalming:

We need a single emitter 14500 version of the FW3A

I’d be onboard with that.

Yup, I don’t have a FW3A but I tried to EDC at work an Emisar D4 that is very similar in size. 6 clicks to lock / unlock is a bit too much, not a problem in itself except when unlocking quickly I ended up clicking 7 times, more often than I would have liked. Unscrewing the tailcap instead is useful since it reset the D4 to 1x 7135 @ 100% but you need both hands and have to wait the end of the 2 flashes to turn it on.
I much prefer the JetBeam RRT01 old version, shorter, slimmer, even if it has a much less capacity. I’m also using a Jetusolis 6500°K and a tool AAA 219B that are also always in my work pant.

Considering the popularity of the FW3A, I doubt that a single emitter 14500 FW3A would be unpopular. I don’t see the point to ramp from 10 lumens to 400-500 lumens (max considering the size). 3 or 4 fixed brightness settings are well enough to cover this range of brightness.

Annnnd stepped mode is included in Anduril, isn’t it marvelous ? :-p (plus I could put a SW45 9080 219B in it :innocent: )