I got the acebeam w30 4000k (yellow) specifically to look into wells mostly during daylight hours. These are 6 inch drilled wells where I want to see the water level that may be 20 to 100 ft deep. Typically there is 1 in pipe and wire and often wire guides that obstruct a lot of the bore. There are some things I want to see on the walls but mostly I just want a good reflection off of the water level. Once you get past 30 ft nothing else compares to an LEP because I can put all of the light on the water and not light up the walls. I also use it to look into shallow/dug wells that are usually 30 to 50 inches diameter and less than 20 ft deep with water anywhere from 2 to 15 ft deep. On the shallow wells I want to be able to look down through the water to see the bottom to look for dead mice or other “things”. It also works extremely well looking into any deep dark hole whether it’s a cave a tunnel an animal hole a multi-story chimney etc. Daytime or night time if you’re looking at eaves under a multi story house that are in shadows or on a cloudy day and you want to see small details such as Carpenter bee holes or other insect damage that is two or three stories up it is hard to beat a LEP. It is not useful for lighting your path 3 to 100 ft in front of you while taking a walk at night. It’s not convenient to carry on your person but I don’t need to do that. Do most people need one? No. I could justify the cost because I knew I was going to use it on a somewhat regular basis. It is an amazing feeling to have one in your hand.
Also if people want to understand why less or no spill can be very beneficial you should watch all three segments of Martin’s “bunker beamshots” on YouTube. He shows many lights that most people would assume would easily light up the end of the tunnel 130 to 150 meters away and you can’t see the end of the tunnel with many of them. The camera view is not like being there but he explains it very well.
Signaling is another use .
They are not more efficient.
Their lm/W is pretty low.
They just have much higher intensity, cd/mm^2
This means it is great for throw, not for making high lumens.
Also the ANSI distance standard of 0.25 lux is not very realistic.
Unless there is little to no moonlight and you’re shining the light on a bright surface, it’s hard to see 0.25 lux.
So a 2km advertised beam is actually practically more like 500-1000m.
And a 400m beam from an LED flashlight is more like 200m usable.
So really LEP is just making it more practical and easier to see stuff at longer distances, but nothing unreasonably far.
If you’re trying to see something that’s 100m away, having the spot brightness be 5lux or 10lux is definitely more visible than 0.25 lux.
Now you can get that in a pocket sized light with a small diameter head instead of something BLF-GT sized.
Yeh, I was gonna chime in that some people I know would go visit “Der Bunker” which has loooooooong stretches of featureless tunnels, and the only way to see any distance away is to have a light with near-zero spill.
Back when, the D Mags were king in that you could tighten up the beam pretty narrow and they weren’t overly bright to wash out the immediate foreground, but even so they still didn’t have much “reach”. The beam just goes on into blackness.
Then came silly ol’ zoomies, which were better’n nothing if only because of near-zero spill vs the Mags.
With a LEP, you can actually see a long ways off no problem, several times the range of the others.
Mounting it on my binoculars. Less weight, no useless spill, smaller. But I’ll wait until there’s something like Intellibeam that dims the light down when needed. Price must be below $100. So I’ll likely wait forever.
It only throws a mile at night. Try it at noon on a sunny day and you’re lucky to see it a few hundred feet.
I dont know why but none of my lights work as well during the day.
Ok, so far we have for real world uses: (1) Looking into a well, and (2) Looking for buoys while sailing.
How about this real world use, annoying the grown-ups:
while we were out camping with a group of friends last week and the grown-ups were chilling by a camp fire, talking and guitar music, I gave my “Neals Thrower” to one of the kids, they went off with it and you could spot where they were all the time because they were shining it around like a lightsaber fight, then from across the field in the distance they discovered that it was fun to annoy our cosy gathering by blinding us and they were way too far away to do something about it 
(3) Lighting up your upstairs neighbor’s room to get him to stop making noise.
4. Lighting low flying UFO’s in an attempt to make them IFO’s. 
5. Chimney inspection.
Ok, that’s a solid five valid uses for LEP.
Unless anyone has any other valid uses they want to make known, I think we have a viable platform for future purchases from discretionary income.
Proven once again, big things happen when we put our heads together.
Here’s to more lumens and more candlepower. Long live the flashlight.
Everyone know the main real-world use of a LEP flashlight is the following:
Lightsaber battles during slumber parties. 
If ya don’t want spill cuz it interferes with a personal objective then an LEP makes sense for YOU just like wanting extra flood for a specific personal reason can also make sense.
Rationalizing and excluding either for general flash typical everyday routine applications is like saying one shouldn’t deviate from the norm becuz it doesn’t facilitate the norm therefore it’s inherently useless.
I don’t use an expensive calibrated torque wrench except for exceptional requirements. That doesn’t mean I’m stupid for owning a torque wrench.
Martin’s bunker beam shot (4) videos show that the LEP lights put more light on target then all of the other lights that he brings down there. The target being the end of the tunnel at 130-150 meters. All of the other lights are on turbo and they still can’t compete and they will step down. So you don’t have to have targets that are 1000-2000 meters out. Seeing a target and being able to see details on that target are two different things. I don’t have a need for multi emitters that put out a wall of light short or long term. I can appreciate flashlights that push the limits. The bunker shots may seem extreme but the same thing applys in your house looking down a hallway that may be 10 or 30 ft. If your flashlight is lighting up the walls right in front of you then your ability to see small details on the wall at the end is reduced partly because your pupils will be more constricted than they would be with a tight beam putting more light on the target.
Martin’s bunker beamshots
The 3 LEPs start at 5:37.
Manker MC13 (TIR) at 10:00 and Microfire H20 (zoomie) at 12:20 for comparison.
The zoomie in the video is very big but you can see that the aspheric lens has a similar effect to the LEP.
I’d be very interested to see how a smaller aspheric, like the $30 Convoy Z1 Osram (about 175kcd), compares to the slightly smaller but much more expensive 350kcd LEPs.
High beam wars? While driving this will shine through the windscreen and not light up inside the car. The bracket was designed by blenman37
That’s a clever design. How did you cut the bracket—water jet or wire EDM? Does the trigger handle control the power buttons or just used for aiming.
i would guess that Triple beams would be handy for spotting drop bears in the outback.