The optic on the Emisar D4sv2 is perfect in my opinion
Option X
diffusion film
what’s not to love about an absolutely smooth beam ?
It took me a while to figure out that the sharp cut off with an aspheric kind of bugged me .
My answer should probably be mule but I don’t have any and the light just seems unfinished . A mild frost on a lens never hurt anyone :)
I would default most of my lights to throw and then add a diffuser that I could add or subtract at will .
So I like a throwy emitter and then I beat it into submission on demand .
* Favorite optic has to be that striped optic that flattens out the beam / used for bike lights .. too cool.
Mule is my least fave. They are blinding to everyone including me. I find they kind of defeat the purpose of having a light in the first place. COB LED designs fall into this category too.
I have never owned or used a recoil light. They never interested me because with the LED “floating” up off the reflector there is no thermal path so you have to under-drive the emitter by a huge amount. A throw design with a dim emitter that fades with heat… What’s the point?
The other 4, I can go any/either way on. Pretty evenly matched pros and cons to them all. I would like to try more focus-able TIR lights in the future. It’s like an aspheric but with less wasted emitter lumens.
I was at my local costco last night and they just got these in: 3 lights for $19… Might be a good way to sample focus-TIR. I despise 3-4AAA lights though… thats pretty much a deal breaker. So again… pros and cons even at ~$7 each.
anything short and light - TIR on the DQG Tiny 18650 was good for a single LED
FW3A has a good one for 3 LEDs
Big fan of optics but when I need real throw nothing beats a reflector.
90 percent of what I use my lights for I’d rather an optic. Floody for home and trails.
TIR optics for now but they are heavy compared to reflectors. I’m worried they may crack easily when the light accidentally fall off the ground.
They are far less prone to cracking than glass windows that protect the reflector. They may scratch, but that’s the only failure mode. Reliability-wise they are definitely better than reflector lights.
I voted TIR because they have the best ratio of spot and spill (spill is often too bright in reflector lights). Especially these new larger TIR’s are nice that you have in new flashlights.
I do own a few recoil lights 
I find it surprising that mule got 0 votes so far.
Hahaha you’re an exception 
I tried to like mule lights, but I kept blinding myself and everyone else with them. I borrowed another CPF’ers XP-G2 custom built triple ($$:money_mouth_face: and I always had 3 little green dots burned into my vision. It was too easy to blind myself and others with it… IMHO of course.
Not fair, Not fair! I voted for Recoil reflector (bet you don’t own one) and my vote is not showing up! 
Well, now it is after voting from the first post of this thread. I voted from the side panel first and it didn’t show.
I have two retro-reflectors - Syniosbeam and I think my German Leopard 1 short arc tank light also utilizes a retro reflector in addition to the main reflector.
You win 
I like TIRs the most I think. There is so much variety… And only a TIR can fix bad LEDs like xp-g3 with tint shift problems.
They all have their uses of course. I own all but a recoil light…
LOL… my negative commentary regarding recoil reflector was made with lights like the one shown below in mind. These were popular ~10 years ago and were marketed using the term “Recoil” on the usual import www sites.
I didn’t notice (pay attention) Endermans signature links
I modded one of those with a White Flat, at 2+ amps, and it is still not impressive 
Yeah they were never that impressive. There is a lot of trapped, obstructed, blocked light and heat in that design that can’t escape. Even with the old XRE which has a more forward / on-axis directed light emission. I never understood what they were trying to achieve with this design. It’s like they somehow thought the fundamental rules of light and thermodynamics do not apply.
[EDIT] I have now cast a vote for TIR. I have only owned three TIR lights though, so its a small sample size.
TIR for me - Sooo easy and cheap to mass produce and so easy to get a wide variety of them. God forbid you'd start with a bad one or a bad lens/emitter combo though, or even a poorly focused setup (I know it took me soo much effort to pass my initial hate towards these pieces of plastic.. ) My D4SV2's with the XP-L HI and the Ledil Angie-M frosted wide angle has such a perfect smooth floody beam and a nice fading spill, no hard cuts, outer rings or other crazy artifacts.. I can barely wait for my Manker U22 III to arrive hopefully sometime next week to see what a thrower TIR can do (and I have it's older brother here, the U22 II with the standard aluminum reflector to compare it against - it'll be such a good fight to watch 
the only one thing is that the older U22 II has the NM1 Osram, while the newer U22 III has the bigger die PM1.. which I kinda intend to swap for another NM1 if I can easily mod the driver.. )
Can't stand aspheric simply from an efficiency point of view to begin with - sooo much wasted light simply going nowhere (I guess I'd take one in a multi reflector, multi emitter, multi purpose light tho.. )
Reflectors - I like them depending on the situation and build quality (if there's no ringing outside the reflector, that's a promising start.. ) I like shallow and small or deep and huge all the same, I just find the spill "management" is a bit.. lacking, to put it like that..
I'd say a good light should point light where it's most needed, and for a thrower, especially at higher brightness levels, there's too much wasted light in the spill.. and then there's the well known abrupt spill cut-off that gives you the tunnel vision.. That's why nowadays, as much as I initially hated the TIR's, the benefits simply outweighed my bias and I ended up liking them and seeing that they are better suited to most general tasks that I might see myself using a light for. I still think that a multi/general purpose light should have at least one big throwy optic coupled with a high Cd small die area emitter and a small optic (a quad the least I'd say.. ) coupled with some nice tint and high CRI bigger die area emitter/s. I believe that Tir optics would do just fine in either case, throw or flood alike (I do at least thus far have the floody combo to confirm it in my D4SV2)
Recoil reflectors, I guess they're just obsolete technology left around because of word of mouth and lack of understanding.. Well, obsolete would be probably an inaccurate term, as they can still be used just fine with the proper emitters.. the ones that do not really care about heat.. the ones that do actually heat up to generate light, like anything filament/incandescent/gas based.. and that is NOT LED's.. Soo, as far as general public average Joe is concerned, the recoil reflector is from a bygone era and should be avoided in most or all instances.
Focusable TIR - Pointless.. useless.. Just take what's worse in TIR and Aspheric and combine them.. You get.. to facepalm yourself at the result..
Mule - Same as everyone else said - Just feels incomplete and prone to blind everyone around, including yourself.. meh.. Can live without it, no problem.
EDIT: I believe Sunnysunsun nailed that TIR VS Reflector spill comaprison right in the head!
I have a few lights with optics, but I’m fairly green when it comes to flashlight detail. But I’ll say out if the xhp50.2 lights I have I don’t really like that led. It puts out a lot of light/lumens but often it’s a beam style I’m not fond of. Anyway all this changed when I bought a Mateminco MT01 which has a chunky fat TIR optic Infront of an XHP.50.2 emitter. It gets all that light & throws it in this even clear wide throwy beam with no wasted light. I love that light, gets a bit hot but I often grab it when going out bush walking at night. The big TIR fixed everything I disliked about the xhp50 emitter. Optics done well can really work wonders. I’d like to give one of the Jewish Mankers a go with a big TIR & sbt90.2 behind it!
No option in poll for a TIR that produces a flood beam?
I get that some people like throwy beams with a spot but I find them useless and obnoxious 90% of the time. My favorite beam is that from my Fenix FD-40 when it is “focused” for flood.