What flashlight trends would you like to see in 2023?

LED Flashlights – General Info
18

Efficient drivers
No blinkies
Less Androol
More mechanical switch lights, side or tail.

One of my most favorite lights ever is a Convoy BD06 that was given to me as a gift. It wasn’t perfect but I eventually got it that way. Stock it wasn’t that great but, with a bit of work it’s now bullet proof. Make a light like that. Make it right the first time and never leave anything on the table.

19
  • Availability of custom/DIY drivers as pre-populated boards for those of us who don’t own reflow capabilities.
  • Manufacturers producing more efficient drivers as standard
  • Warm white lanterns, to get some sofirn competition going
  • More lower cost AA/AAA lights, the category has been stagnant for a while
  • More lights with fun/unusual LEDs: Phosphor converted colours, UVC,
  • “Super LEDs* (SFT, osram nm1, SBT90 etc) in warm CCT options
20

Better QA/QC.

Not shipping lights until they’ve completed development, nor expecting paying customers to find bugs for you.

21

More and better throwy floody combo lights,.

22

I love how contradictory the “wants” are in this thread :laughing: :zipper_mouth_face:

23

A minimum standard for quality control.

Getting a quad with one LED defective should not be acceptable.

A manufacturer offering you a discount or swap on BLF for publicity should not be considered compensation for bad quality control.

Really guys, let’s make it clear that we are willing to pay extra to get something that works.

1 Thank
24

More colours from Maglite or even from Streamlight too.

25

+1

26

I’d like to see that…but corners must be cut when building a product to a price point. Budget lights have gotten a lot better, but a budget light is budget for a reason.

27
  • Anduril - or something like it - with out of band configuration via a config file. Could be USB, serial of some flavour - even if it uses a USB adapter - clever “use the LED as a photodiode” programming, I shudder to say … bluetooth, whatever.
  • 1xAA angle lights have seemingly shrank from the market at a time when I’d like some - and ideally in dual fuel
  • 4680 lights - kinda dumb but I’d like to see what the market can do with that kind of energy and power density
  • More reflector lights optimized for flood/hybrid beam. The concept of reflectors maximizing intensity has its roots in the origins of the flashlight - literally a turn-of-the-20th-century dim incandescent bulb powered by feeble carbon-zinc cells that could only flash the bulb for seconds at a time; concentrating that small amount of light was the only way to make it useful and was a formula that prevailed until LEDs starting getting capable ~20 years ago. Nowadays we have more lumens from a small LED than the average mains-powered incandescent bulb puts out and most of us need light for our immediate area, not lighting up a fence/treeline, sweeping fields, etc. Living in the city on ~⅛ acre and generally needing a flashlight to perform household tasks, walk dogs in the neighborhood, etc I only need to light up things more than 3m from me ~90% of the time, perhaps 10m away another ~10% of the time, and <1% of the time as war away as 30m.
28

2 switch like sofirn - forward clicky tail switch with momentary on.

No charge port / power bank or on board charging (more simple and more reliable)

Use of generic batteries

29

Efficient boost/buck drivers with a proper moonlight! I keep coming back to the blf a6 driver just because it has good max output and a very low moonlight. Even lots of linear drivers from convoy etc still have a lowest mode of several lumens. I built an s21a with a kaidomain p4000 buck driver and a 519a and it works well, but the lowest mode is slightly too high and it has some questionable mode memory.

30

I would like to see a flashlight with 3 or 4 switches to press. Each with it’s own version of Anduril. Anduril 1 , 2 , 3 and 4 and maybe Turbo Anduril or a Warp Factor 1 switch

Not so much for me as I am a muggle who is happy with low, medium, high and off, but for the manic button pressers who think a lightning strike mode may someday save the planet.

31

A 16340 version of the Wurkkos TS10!
A 16340 version of the Olight Warrior Mini!

:innocent:

32

I think 18350s are a lot better for a very marginal size increase

33

Interesting but not unexpected requests.

More Budget Lights - Fireflies

More Buck/Boost Drivers becoming the norm (even in LEP’s) - Fireflies

21700 SFT40 Thrower (with Buck Driver) - Fireflies

Buck Driver with Turbo - Fireflies

Buck Driver with Proper moonlight - Fireflies

Multi emitter TIR Buck Driven lights - Fireflies

Fireflies is obviously my favorite, for tons of great reasons.

34

Using an 18350 in the “coin pocket” is harder than an 16340!
The diameter increases more than what my pockets would like! After being used to carry 14500 or 16340 lighta for EDC I can tell that an 18350 is larger than what I would prefer, hence my suggestions :wink:
I’d particularly happy with a smaller Warrior Mini version :laughing:

35

100,000 lumen LEP focusable from a wide beam down to a pin point for close range burning

36

It’s been said before I’d like more muggle UIs. I may be a Luddite but even if I wanted to use lighting mode all the steps to get to it is a pain in the butt and with all the options I’m always worried the settings might be changing in my pocket.

37

More Hi CRI throwy-LEDs, and LEPs.

Get rid of the odd UIs. I like Anduril, and Toykeeper is our hero! (though I don’t want it in every light.) The UI for some of the convoy lights is a tragedy, and Acebeam UIs, WTF?!?

More lights with control rings.

Better heat-sinking and cooling in high power lights without needing fandles so that flashlights can run at a couple thousand lumens for an hour-ish. This goes double for lanterns.

More AA headlamps that can take LR91, Eneloop, and 14500 cells. Ditto for AA flashlights, but let them have 2xAA tubes as well.

No more frelling proprietary and non-replaceable batteries.

USB-C (or even Bluetooth) customizable-UI lights, especially ones with multiple channels and multiple color emitters.