Zooms are !@#$, and only for people who have weird fetish about it.
Weird fetish about Zooms? … that must be me!
I like the PZ14. It brings back memories of when zoom flashlights were everywhere and seemed to be the most common kind of light. Its construction seems very similar to all those old zoom lights, but with much better build quality.
The emitter is a cool white SFT25R and the light has much more throw than old zoomies. I have vague plans of modding my PZ14 into a side e-switch light. If the mod succeeds I should be able to remove the tailcap switch and shorten the light by about a cm.
One downside about the zoom in the PZ14 is that it uses an aspheric lens.
- This produces a perfectly uniform circle in full flood, narrowing to a tiny spot with 1 ring at full spot. Intermediate zooms are all fully usable. It is throwier than any of my other lights with the same diameter head.
- However, because it uses an aspheric lens, a large portion of the lumens are lost into the inside of the bezel in spot mode. The spot has great throw but you might lose 50% or more of the lumens compared to flood mode. In contrast, LED lenser style fresnel optics capture the light that would otherwise be lost in spot mode. They don’t lose any lumens at the different zoom settings.
- I’m still waiting for someone to produce a digital zoom flashlight in a small EDC size. The Fenix LD45R looks like it has the best zoom mechanism possible, but is too big for EDC so not for me.
1 Thank
Extends! The natural throw enhancement!
You sound like me when a manufacturer makes a great light then only offers it with 6500-7000K emitters!
Zoomies are great fun lights, but poor work lights. They have their place and they’re definitely a much better alternative to most 500ish lumen LEP lights imho. Kids love them in fog.
Zoomees were likely my first introduction to a ‘cool’ flashlight. I don’t buy them anymore but now that the round leds exist 
…I sort of love the perfect disc of light with no spill like …https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUMkcBctE7c