We went to a night Geocaching event over the weekend, and got to use a bunch of lights for the All-night adventures.
Some of the Lights myself and 2 other friends/Geocachers carried on the night runs were:
most of the night i used the SR90 on Low, ( which will run the entire night on Low, ans still brighter than most small lights on high) Also i used my Kung for bursts of sunlight and gobbs of lumens when searching for the hidden Caches, ( and wowing the rest of the group when i turned it on.
and we used all the smaller lights for the trail walks and bushwacking duties.
for the smaller lights, we found the reactors needed battery changes every 3 hours of continous runing, ( using generic Alcaline AAAs.) The TK Clone had a good run time of almost 5 hours on continous high, and never really kept the Skyray on to long because it burned everyones retinas and heated up in a hurry on high, ( though on low it did not heat up to hot.)
- My question is what do you believe would be the best lights availiable for great run time plus good output for night trail walking for long hours ?
it comes down to emitter efficiency and driver efficiency
LEDs get less efficient as current goes up so an xm-l2 or mt-g2 will give best efficiency and as for drivers there is not a lot of information out there but dimmer with more efficient driver is going to win
I don’t have any examples of lights to provide though
True, it definitely depends on the efficiency of the driver and emitter, even with modded lights. Im looking to see what others have experienced with “stock” un-modded lights that have a good balance or run time + output.
I just got back from a night hike. It was a little less than two hours though. Definitely not a long hike.
It's looking like the Zebralight H52w with Energizer Lithium AA will be my preferred light for long winter hikes that last up to 5 days, or at least that'll be the longest increments of a longer hike. There will definitely be lots of hiking in the dark early in the morning, maybe a little in the evening, and lots of time at low illumination in camp to pass the long winter nights. On these long hikes, less weight is better. This light looks like my best combination of runtime, min & max output, beam pattern and low weight.
If that proves to have insufficient run times, I'll bring either an Armytek Wizard Pro or Zebralight H600mkII. I have plenty of experience, so if these lights perform like their spec sheet says, any of them should provide more than enough for the hiking portion of the trip. The wild card is what happens in camp. If a big critter comes to camp and harasses me, I could end up losing a lot of battery life before the sun rises.
For night outings without camping, or car camping, I can bring a bigger light. It's really only limited by what I can afford and what I'm able to carry. The biggest I've used on the trail so far is the Eagletac MX25L3 MT-G2. It uses 3x18650 and has about 2400 lumens otf. It has way more output and runtime than I need for a single night. It's glorious excess. It can run on high until the batteries go dead, and it'll barely even get warm. It can also run on turbo indefinitely, but that'll probably get hot. I haven't tried that yet because the low capacity batteries I've been bringing on my night hikes might not last long enough.
I'll be picking up a Trustfire TR-S700 soon too. It puts out nearly 4000 lumens otf. I'll mod in hopes of getting it up to at least 4000. It uses 3x26650, so runtime should be excellent.
In terms of power to weight a good high capacity 18650 will definitely outperform a AA lithium primary. So I’d say if you don’t need tons of light modify an 18650 XM-L flashlight with 2 x AMC7135 linear driver. They’re pretty efficient and 2 of them make a 700 mah light. Which on an average XM-L at 750 mah should put out close to 300 lumens. And at that current will easily last 4 hours with a single 2800 mah li-ion. Definitely better than a AA primary single cell light. Plus on low which is about 35 ma you get about 20 or so lumens which is plenty for walking around at night with night adapted eyes and the amazing part is runtime would be extended more than you’d think. I’d guess somewhere around 80-90 hours easily if not more if you use unprotected cells and are willing to kill the battery for say emergency use. So carry two or three extra cells and I’d bet you be plenty lit up for most situations.
In the tradition of two is one carry an actual high powered light for when you need more than the 300 lumens of the customized light you make. This is of course assuming you can make the light listed above. If you can I think you’d be well set but if not I think there are several people, including myself who could modify a generic Chinese light to suit the specs listed above.
Based on listed run times with just the single battery holder it looks like the Fenix TK75 may be hard to beat. With two of the optional battery extensions for twelve 18650 batteries installed it looks like 1200 Lumens for 12 hours + or 450 Lumens for 36 hours . Even 2900 Lumens Turbo for about 4 hours and 25 Lumens for 600 hours. Should be adequate times for most people.
Agreed the TK with 12 18650s are hard to beat for output + runtime.
Right now i’m discovering my new Supbeam X40 on the lower settings runs for hours at a good output of around 500 lumens, for a single 18560 class my Olight S20 with 219 mod, or my P25 on medium, and for a single-AA class a Solarstorm SC01 with a 219 on medium setting all have a good balance of output vs. run time for the battery configurations.