I dont know if im using the right flashlight terms here.
I was given a led lenser flashlight at work several years ago. I work in a mill, paper maching this light is perfect for looking in long distance dark places it has a tight beam, throw. I would like to find one that has alot of distance, I really dont know how to explain how far i would like it to reach, a couple of football fields
I really dont want anything longer that 4.5 inches in length and 1 inch in diameter.
regular AAA or AA batteries would be fine. Budget friendly also.
What LED Lenser do you have? I assume you are looking for an upgrade? It sounds like you are asking for quite a bit here…
200 yard throw from a compact single-AA sized light… Such compact lights aren’t optimized for throw. Unless you have something with an aspheric/lens type of light, you will likely have a hard time finding something suitable. If you had a heavily-modded SK-68 style light running from Li-Ion 14500, you could probably get something close to what you want, but I’m not aware of much else in the form factor.
If your LED Lenser has one of the older XR-E emitters, you might have a hard time getting improvement; that is still a very capable LED for long-range throwers.
Manker T01 will throw the far side of 200m on a single 14500 battery but will also run off a single AA. No idea how far it’ll throw on that AA mind (I’ve just had some Eneloop Pro’s turn up, I should check) but I doubt you’ll get any more throw at that size without some significant modding.
Listed throw specs are for when the light is at an absurdly low level- 0.2 lumens IIRC but it’s early, I’m not into my second cup of coffee yet, and I might be wrong. And it’s taken at the hottest part of the beam so it tells you nothing about beam width and it’s consistency. Anyway it’s not much good for anything other than a rough comparison- you certainly can’t hardly use it that far in the real world.
So part of the equation here would be how much you need to see at your maximum distance, a cockroach crawling or a person’s arm waving against a contrasting background? And what would that distance be? There are a lot of smallish lights that do well at say 200M for the arm waving, but the cockroach will need more. If you are up to dealing with the quirks and expense of LiIon cells I’d recommend one of the “tube lights” such as the Convoy C2 or the Astrolux S1, though they are a bit over the length you quoted. If you can stand the larger head diameter (~45mm/ 1 3/4”) and more length (~105mm/5 3/4”) the Convoy C8 with a SMO reflector will far outperform those at distance. You’ll find few lights doing this well on standard batteries. Light, cell, and charger roughly in the $50 range for the better stuff, which could be trimmed $10-15 for a lesser cell and clone light without sacrificing safety.
These lights will not have a pinpoint beam like your LedLenser; the tube lights have lots of flood and the C8 has good spill with a wider but somewhat tight hotspot. I find that kind of light far more useful in general than a pure thrower or a zoomie, but again it’s something else to consider. Whatever your needs, there’s something out there which will meet them and we’re glad to help you find it
