+1
In fact when Sir Issac Newton first invented the Reflector Telescope it was a great improvement to the telescopes made with lenses up until that time.
Less loss of light, no Chromatic aberration
Having said that though, zoomies are useful and practical. My EDC is an SK68, a zoomie.
Well, came back and edited my previous post's penultimate question, clarification wise.
Would a narrow angle TIR + aspheric work good, providing better throw (less losses)? Would that screw the flood up? 
Mmm, elastic reflectors… anyone up for the task? 
Cheers ^:)
Most of my experience with zoomies are from cheap garbage lights like Maglites, sk68, dept store tac zoomies, etc.
After dealing with that junk, I really lost any interest in buying more expensive zoomies. Maybe that’s part of the reason why there’s not much interest in them. Tunnel vision and losing over half the lumens when zooming does help. Flood is also sub-par beams, compared with fixed lens lights.
I’d like a zoomie, but it would have to work just as well as fixed lights, both in flood and zoom mode. And, not overheat the LED when putting out 500+ lumens.
Zoomies, especially ones using an aspheric lens, also tend to be heavier and bulkier. I have an old Coast adjustable focus TIR light, and it is not too heavy or bulky. I agree with Chicken Drumstick above in that I think these TIR lights have the best qualities. The TIR provides a more reflector-like beam; some corona around the hotspot instead of abrupt transition between hotspot and darkness like with a lens.
For throwers, I do like aspheric lens lights since the lack of spill becomes an advantage. I have a UF 1504 with dedomed XPG2 that gets around 500kcd. The poor light collection efficiency of lens lights can be fixed by using an appropriate pre-collimator lens. I was able to more than double the beam area in this light by using the pre-collimator lens, while keeping beam intensity nearly the same.
Zoomies are far better for everyday use at home, how you can you beat an adjustable beam width with uniform brightness and no hot spot!
I think that part of the dislike for aspheric zoomies is caused by bad design of the smaller ones, both in build quality and optical lay-out.
Optically one of the best ones is the sk68, but the design is extremely plump. Same for the dreaded G700-type lights, lots and lots of useless aluminium.
Even the quality zoomies suffer from too much material where it is not needed, i.e. the Brinyte B158.
I like the expensive Sunwayman T25C for its ok optical quality without being overly bulky (can still be leaner though).
Finally a very small (16340) and quality zoomie is made: the ‘on the road’ i3. Optically they nailed it: good quality glass lens (does not scratch in your pocket), XP-G2, wide flood that is as efficient as a reflector light, focus goes a bit beyond sharp focus of the die for a smooth hotspot without loosing throw.
I use it as my EDC atm, but must confess that I modded it with a 90CRI XP-G3 and BLF-A6 driver (700lumen flood with a fresh battery). It is my best EDC to date.
The concept of putting a lens close to the LED in order to collect more light can work, as I described in my post above. The TIR + aspheric would not work well; although it would succeed in collecting more light, the light would not all be concentrated in the hotspot.
If a suitable pre-collimator lens is used, the hotspot becomes about twice as large (in area), while staying about the same intensity.
That’s a big part of it here. People get excited about lights that give crazy numbers. You aren’t going to get crazy lumens with a zoomie, but you might get crazy lux numbers.
Like keltex I also just prefer the reflector beam profile in most cases. I have zoomies, and in my head I know they are versatile, but they’re never the light I grab first.
even for close work I prefer a floody TIR instead of an aspheric
Not really sure why you think Maglites are junk??? And a good SK68 will perform very well for it’s size and out throw many a high lumen output light of similar dimensions.
I also don’t really understand your reference to tunnel vision, that is just missing the point entirely. Bit like saying you don’t get the point in soft top cars, because it’s too windy.
TIR optics are also very efficient, so lights using those do not loose half the lumens. And if you think all zoomies produce sub-par flood beams, you obviously haven’t tried many. Never had a zoomy overheat ever —- do you have some reference material to support such a claim?
Zoomy flood…
The last good Mags I bought were their 4D and 4C incandescent lights. After that, they went into a decade or more of darkness with all their LED designs. All the LED Mags I bought (they were zoomies) had poor output, bad beams, flickered occasionally, and when zoomed they were dim (overall) except for a tiny spot that was too small to be of any use. Junk.
That’s been my experience with other zoomies, too. But like I said, I haven’t ever tried a quality brand of zoomie. My bad experiences with junk zoomies have turned me off them entirely. I’m just saying that may be part of the reason they’re not well loved; too many junk ones.
Yes, but again, extreme tunnel-vision. It’s no use having extreme throw (if you call that extreme), but a spot so small you can’t see anything with it.
A bit of corona or spill is needed to illuminate some area around the hot spot. It gives context to what you’re seeing.
An example of a super-throwy light with extreme tunnel-vision is a laser. Great throw, but pretty useless for seeing anything. A junk zoomie is just a better version of that, but still not very useful for seeing stuff.
Then you’ve never tried to hotrod a zoomie with this style sliding-pill-in-a-plastic-light mechanism:
The typical zoomie design is a poor thermally, because the pill gets covered up by sliding parts in most cases. Even the nice B158 isn’t very good thermally.
It all depends how hard you drive it though.
I once left a SK68 on high, on a shelf, to floodlight the area for a plumbing repair I was doing in the crawlspace under the house.
It was too hot to hold by the time I got back to pick it up.
Never risked that again.
I guess it depends what you want to use the light for. Personally I use the flood mode because I want the even illumination within the beam. The edge of the beam is far less important, because you just move the light if the subject matter is of importance.
Using reflector lights, even very floody ones, will always have an uneven beam profile. This means chance of glare from the middle of the beam, and not enough light near the edge. If you are using the light for working on something technical, this can be a pain.
The only real limiting factor for me with zoomies, is how big the flood are is. Some lights have a small illuminated area, while others are much bigger.
To be fair, no I haven’t. I have some Zeusrays that will pull about 5amps at the tailcap with a 30Q though. And apart from the switches burning out, I’m yet to have an issue at the emitter end. Even using crappy aluminium stars.
But that has nothing to do with it being a zoomy. That is just regular heat as a by-product. The same light with a reflector would likely have resulted in exactly the same outcome.
Torches that use aspheric lenses perform nothing like focusable Maglites with reflectors. I’m completely struggling to comprehend how you are likening the experiences as the same.
Can see plenty with it.
Lights up the Land Rover pretty well at distance.
Another example:
Comparing a zoomy to laser and meaning is somewhat daft, as it’s not even a close comparison.
This is what a laser looks like:
This is what a good pocket zoomy looks like:
And a powerful zoomy, at range it’ll light up a wider area. Which frankly is what you’d use it for anyhow:
To be honest I was surprised at the quality of the sk68 I just bought. I’ve spent more and got less from the hardware store. The fins are nowhere near the led, switch is cheap and the cool tint of the led only increases the cheap factor but you cant deny the versatility they bring and lumen loss is only missed if you know to miss it. I may get around to modding it to a 16650 and might try it with a led lenser optic if I can make it fit but functionally my biggest qualm is with the clip and snaggy tube. The B158 is nice, I have two of them now and at least one will get the woody treatment but I prefer smaller single cell tube lights in general or ones with minimal head swell like the M1, even 26650 tube lights seem unwieldy to me.
Zoomie- meaning something like the SK68 series. Cheaply made, no good thermal path to take heat away from the led. Square die when focused looks like hell. Full flood costs almost 50% of output and makes it almost useless other than very close up.
Zoomie- like the, dare I say, Jaxman. Better, but heavy and still has some of the problems with focus and flood.
Overall, it is just a mediocre result of making two different lights into one. It works, but Meh, I would rather leave it than take it.
Mod a Jax with an SBT70 led and push it to 10 amps and it's a whole different story, but then again, the cost just went way up and the modding has to be done to get it there.
I just prefer a light with an XHP70 pushed hard, with a big OP reflector, for great throw of a large beam and good spill from the OP coating. It's close enough for some and I prefer it to a zoomie.
Hmm it depends on the light
One click and full zoom in and out on a Jaxman Z1 and I highly doubt if people not liking zoomies that much are not going to be impressed.
Looking at the pics of beamshots with an MTG2 in there made me order a host in a heartbeat to create such a light myself (I like the NW XML2 stock too much to use that.)
But well I am a noob in modding so maybe it suits me 