Of course you could also get one of the cheapo SRKs with 7x LEDs that go on sale at around $24-29 sometimes if you want a ton of flood to clean up a field. Convoy S2 pictured above is really nice and I like mine, but if I’m to imagine cleaning up a field, a cheap 3x, 4x, 5x 6x or7x SRK would blow it away, even if its with no heat sink and crappy by our standards. The low A per LED without mods is going to make the runtime good for you too. Its also parallel 4x18650, so you could buy some of the cheap laptop pulls various users are selling on this site for around $2 a piece and have enough power for it too without much of any real added risk as long as you dont run the light till it gets very dim…
When you say floody, what sort of use do you actually want to use it for? I’m guessing walking through a park/field in the dark and looking for stuff on the ground?
Do you have a preferred size? As in, are you wanting something pocket friendly, or is something a tad larger chunkier going to fit the bill?
Zoomy lights will light up the immediate ground with nice even illumination and would be ideal if you want to see 10-20 feet in front of you. But in flood mode they won’t light up much beyond that. When zoomed in, the beam is then quite narrow. But these types of lights might serve you well for this kind of use and are often quite compact.
Seems popular for the money. It might get a little hot on high, but it’s cheap enough to be worth a punt. It’s on pre-oder at the mo, although there has already been one batch that people have received.
Another option for flood is a multi emitter light. SkyRay King and clones of this light are available with 4, 5, 6 or 7 emitters. These chuck out a tonne of light and would probably work brilliantly for you. But they are a bit chunky, a little bigger than a can of Coke and heavier, as they require 4x18650 batteries. The advantage with a light like this is it will still give you some good distance too.
Oh BTW, ignore “Chinese” lumens. They basically lie about outputs. So take any listing for any torch than isn’t claiming ANSI FL1 statistics are potentially bogus. They can still be good lights though.
As others have mentioned, compact tube lights offer floody beams. And due to their size they are very pocket friendly. The only downsides are, while offering good flood, they may be restricted on how far they can light up an area. The other down side is, if they are driven hard for high output, then they get very hot, very quickly. This is ok if you only use it in short bursts, but if you think you’ll use the light for extended periods, then you may find you have to use a lower output mode to keep temps down. The lack of mass means these small lights just don’t handle the heat as well as larger ones.
Of course, you might be completely happy with a more throwy light that has plenty of output. While such lights aren’t what people round here call floody, they still put out a lot of light and are very useful.
The “C8” is probably one of the most well known models. And sold by many makers. It’s a nice sized light (I have a couple), as it’ll just about fit in a jeans pocket, but has the ability to light up a wide area and be on high output for prolonged periods.
On this note I think it’s worth mentioning tint. Tint is the colour of the light and affects the CRI, the colour rendering. Most LED lights are known as Cool White (CW), this is the ice white, to blue white most people associate with LEDs. The trouble is, CW doesn’t render colours all that well and especially outside, it will make things look like they have less colour saturation and make everything a little bit grey. In a grass field or somewhere with trees this can promote more eye strain and is simply harder to ID certain items. A Neutral White (NW) light might be a couple of lumens less output (not enough to notice in reality), but will offer a much more natural light that will make colours more vibrant and realistic, if you are searching for items in grass and brush areas or in fields, then I would highly recommend NW. Although maybe what you need to do is buy something CW and something NW so you can see the huge difference first hand.
Yes exactly this. So displays normally have multiple launch sites spread over 100-150m width + depth. So it would be nice to have a go to light in my toolbox that I can pull out at the end of the night stand in the middle of the field after doing the general pack away with headtorch to do a quick scan of the surrounding area like football field size just to spot any large shell casings that might need cleaning up before we leave. I’ve been using a LED Lenser h14 for the last 18 months but find it doesn’t cover enough area for this final check as its too small coverage in zoom mode and not powerful enough in spread mode to be able to just do a quick scan across a large area.
As its only for a final check I’m not expecting to run at full power for more than a few minutes but equally in November we can be doing 8-9 nights in a row and I don’t want to have to charge batteries more than every 3-4 days. Skyray King is looking like it might be a good option.
Get yourself a Sky Ray King and I think you’ll be bowled over by how much light it produces. You’ll need 4 matched batteries though, however they run in parallel, so you can run say 2 batteries. But it’ll hit them harder and won’t as long and maybe with less output.
So looking through the recommendations and have decided to increase my budget slightly to open up supfire M6 and sky ray king. At the moment looking at the light comparisons of each ( SupFire M6 - Beamshots (Night pics uploaded)) and the reviews of both sounds like the supfire M6 might be worth the slight premium for the better build quality. Unfortunately cant justify the extra to buy from Richard at mtn as shipping to UK adds $20 on straight away before I even look at his modified versions
So the shortlist is:
FarFar seem to have SupFire M6 at $47.29 delivered.
compared to 3 x XML2 SkyRay King at $36.99
or even SkyRay King 4 x XML2 at $39.99
So which should I splash the cash on?
edit: tripod mount on supfire looks like it could be handy as normally we have tripods on site for videoing the displays.
I have mine fully modified and with 4 Samsung 25R button tops it makes close to 5000 lumens. Gets hot VERY fast! Of course, it has modes…
Crazy as it seems, this triple XM-L2 light has the lowest moon of all my lights, only making a fraction of one lumen. With 7 mode levels and a reversing UI, this is one of my favorite lights. It’s robust build quality and superb finish set it well beyond the normal budget lights for sure.
Based on the use case you described, I think you’ll find the M6 more than adequate. Even in stock form it should be able to shine for 300 meters or so, and you’re looking at maybe half that at most.
I’d like to have a M6 too, but I already have two others in that class and don’t often need anything so bright or large.
FWIW, I’d recommend aiming for a slightly cooler average tint than I used, or perhaps putting the tints a little closer together. Mine looks a bit too warm. I’ll probably choose new emitters for it eventually, though it’s not a big priority.
My BST-wide turned out really nice, but the SRK-wide isn’t quite the right mix of tints.
I really like about 4700K to 5100K though, the “daylight” spectrum. Your preference might not be the same.
I’m not sure if I should replace the 1D with a 1A, or replace the 4C with a 3D, or perhaps both. It still might be too side-heavy with not enough light in the middle neutral range.