Olight T-20 - I found a pair of these unpacking boxes at the new house and they rekindled my fascination with lights. I had forgotten I had even owned them. Hey, they were a big deal back in the Aughts!
Convoy S2+ SST-40 5000K - First light I bought this year after getting back into flashlights. Promptly LEGO’d with the 18350 tube, clip headband, alternate optic. Much has changed since 2009 when a 1W LED was a big deal.
FW3A - Fun UI, triple emitters, nice balance of light and runtime.
Jeers -
Lumintop Pico - I wanted to love you, you cute little thing. Perhaps I still do. But you can’t hold your electrons, and stopped putting out. Neither Lumintop nor Amazon cared, so you sit in a drawer until I dissect you. Seriously, a cool light, great for the wow factor, and useful levels of light. But it had a self-discharge problem, and stopped working completely on day 31.
While I do really like my Titanium and Copper Fireflies E07 and my all brass E07, and I expect to be enamored with the Noctigon K1 when it arrives (en-route now), my favorite is going to have to be the one I have the most invested in… DBC-08. The 8th light I’ve built from the ground up, with a White Flat that makes 760 lumens at 5A for ~600M throw off a Sanyo UR16650FTZ 2500mAh cell.
The Mokume Gane pill section and MokuTi bezel and tail cap were birthday presents to me in 2018 in the form of two 30mm x 39mm bars that I just now got around to utilizing, Thank You Sinner! The carbon fiber tubes on the battery tube are courtesy of CRX, another Thank you there! With the LD-4A driver from LED4Power this light is truly exceptional in every way. I’m going to be cherishing this one for quite some time for sure!
Oddly enough, my most pleasing light(s) this year are a pair of humble Skilhunt M200s that I picked up on a sale a while back - basically, they’re an H03 made in a straight line with a more throwy beam.
They are pure function; not especially pretty, especially powerful or especially anything, but they feel rugged in my hand, the UI suits me, and they appear so far to be utterly reliable despite numerous bumps and drops.
I find myself reaching for them first and leaving the much more ‘gracious’ lights on the shelf.
1st: Jaxman E3 w/ Nichia 5700 90CRI. 'Cause I'm weak when it comes to fine & rugged 1xAA lights.
Runner-up: FW3A WW. It's said that one always remembers their "first"; this is my first Anduril, first BLF collaboration, first pocket rocket, first time I've waited years for a flashlight.
Headlight:
1st: Acebeam H40 SST 20. See above my weakness for 1xAA. Also has the overhead strap. One around-the-head strap is a deal killer for me regardless how good the light is.
Runner-up: YLP Panda 2M CR. 'Cause very good floody, high CRI. If it had somehow, miraculously been 1xAA it would have taken 1st.
D4 sst-20 4000k updated with custom buck driver, then updated with fd2 tint LEDs. Pocket daemon convinced to work all 2019 as a amazing illumination tool.