Strong signature to picture relation.
$60 an hour to light up something! Dang! After I bought my Eneloopes AAs, my guess is I am only costing pennies an hour. That is the reason I moved away from incandescent bulbs and CR123s.
My old Surefire gave 60 lumins for 60 mins at the cost of $10 for the two CR123s. I have cheap Chinese lights that pump out 2-3 times the light with AAs and last 2-3 times as long and cost 1/5th the price.
because we humans are flawed.
and that's as close as I will come, to being serious.
IMO the perfect light does not, and never will, exist. Your ideal light would just annoy me. My ideal light would drive you mad.
The fun is in the quest. Speaking as an idiot who already owns around 150 lights after giving away a lot of lights.
If you find the one that is perfect for you, I'm glad for you.
If you haven't yet found it I hope you enjoy the search.
I do.
After a lot of money (and my salary is below the national average) spent, I've not yet found the ideal light.
And this is not a problem as the fun is in looking for it, not in the finding of it. I fear that the assorted XM-L lights are close enough that there is no point in looking any more. There is only so much more light an AAA light can give.
Zebralight SC51W is about there for me. Haven't had much of any issue with accidental activation...yet.
I’m rethinking my position on the perfect light …
https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/5611#comment-105977
My name is
Hecktor Hermmanez
I live at 33chickenchit lane
los Yuavoz New Mexico 834345
My phone# is 426185642784 ext.32
MysisterusethephonealotsojuststopbycordiallyHecktor
:Note to self *.... Buy upgraded lens for nitecore
I was always saying that the women I loved, I loved them for their imperfections, same goes for everything else.
An almost flawless flashlight that I like is sunwayman V10R. Its flaws are that it is big-ish for a 16340 light and it doesn't have a - hidden - strobe (so I can't use it to notify traffic in case of accident).
So, it is perfect enough to like it but also has imperfections so I can really like it 
The main reason we say we need different lights for different occasions is so we can B.S. our spouses .Why else would we need 30 more lights ?
One light seems to work sufficently well for them , but truly they don't have the perceptive eye that a well trained flashaholic has .Neither do they have the uncanny ability to see and know the precise light that will be needed in the near future ..We are just visionaries
A woman has to be pretty smoking hot before I search for flaws ...
Of course, she has to be "almost perfect", just not "perfect".
Every time I am seeking for something perfect I remember something I once read about Persian carpenters. It said that they always make sure each carpet has an imperfection because they believe that humans insult God when they are trying to make something perfect (because only God is perfect). Doesn't matter if someone believes in God or not, I like the philosophy behind this. Love your wife / family / friends and - of course - flashlights with their imperfections
Perfect flashlight? Kidding right? Almost perfect, plausible. The closest to perfection are just a few for me among them the WK21 meteor and D01 (if you do scuba diving), ultrafire UH-3D and a selected very few others. Good flashlights? Way too many to list.
Honorable mention the lovely sipik SK-68 in the ultra budget category - not by any means perfect but alot for the money.
Unfortunately i never owned zebra, fenix or other higher brands.
Yes ! unfortunately ….
Food , electricity , Petrol , there reaching for the sky !
Every light that I own has been modded to be the best it can be. There are some which have modes that I don’t care for, or a single mode when I would have preferred two or three, but those limitations can’t be overcome for lack of a driver that fits and has the right voltage range, and so they are as perfect as they can be. That doesn’t always happen on the first mod, of course. Some of them have been modified numerous times before I was finally satisfied with them. There are a few however, that are, in my estimation, perfect. Those would be my go-to lights and my EDCs. That doesn’t stop me from buying/building more though, it just raises the bar for every future purchase and project. I crave perfection AND variety. 
Not I , said the cat…
There are things about every light I own that could be better.
Really flawless is only my XinTD C8 NW 3-mode... the rest has at least one thing that I would like to be changed (raise PWM in low mode on the S-Mini, get rid of the glow-dot/magnet on the DQG III)
For me JBPA40W & Klarus MiX6 would not change a thing on either. My new edc Balder SE-1 love it as is. Would change something on every other light I own.
Keith
thx! i esteem your critical assessment. you only buy high value-for-the-price products. if i ever think of buying a C8, the XinTD shall be it. ( C8's are throwers, right? well, my RC-29 throws quite far.. )
there’s no such thing as a perfect flashlight
but there certainly are lots of flashlights that are obviously stupidly flawed:
1) clips that “land” on knurling or on ridges (eats up your garments grrrr!)
2) forward clickies that change modes!!!
3) tail switch boots that protrude 2 or 3mm. wobbly tailstand!
4) utility-oriented lights that lack a proper low mode!
5) etc!!!
Nice combo of throw with flood from the XML . . maybe similar to the R5 LED in a P60 format but with more light. The only real downside of a C8 vs a P60 light is the head size being slightly larger and not good for pants pocket carry. Good all round light for coat or holster carry.
There may be no such thing as a perfect flashlight but "flaw free" as in; a light delivered to the customer without a single flaw, I've had several. Shadow VG-20, XinTD L2, Shadow JM07 and about 75% of my Solarforce lights arrived in perfect condition.
The "perfect" flashlight would weigh nothing, be invisible, have eternal run time and would be instantly as dim or brighter than the sun as needed, controlled by thought alone, inside our eyes.
/nerdmomentFoy
Remember how I said on Friday that there were a few lights in my collection that actually were perfect? Well, the following day on Saturday, I modded one of them. I still maintain that it was perfect before, but I guess sometimes, perfect just isn’t good enough.