Old flashaholic! Someone give me a rundown on the new flashlight technology and must haves!

Hi everyone! I was a flashlight afficionado back in the late 90s and early 2000s but stopped after coming into realization that I was spending too much money on lights. I'm hoping to find a EDC that is bright, small, reliable, durable, and of course CHEAP! I think my last flashlight was Mr. Bulk's LH.

I find this website because CPF was down and I was googling around and apparently CPF is now commercial based and not hobby based and that most of the members are here now? And that AW scammed some people? Wasn't he the guy that made all those protected Li batteries? What's the dirt?

Buy some ITP stuff before it all gets discontinued (whichever size you prefer). It's pretty high quality, low priced, and generally a safe bet. All the flashlights these days are pretty similar since they all use the same CREE emitters.

Welcome to BLF!

You said you need an EDC "bright, small, reliable, durable, and of course CHEAP"...

Ok but.. How bright? How small? What's your budget?

There are thousand of light. More details=better advice!

However, take a look here... There are some suggestion for $10 flashlight.

Where at? I googled it and came up with lightjunction. Is it going out of business or something?

They're widely available at many dealers. shiningbeam.com is one with decent prices. Lightake.com also has some slightly older models for very good price (like E50 and some C-series). Just get one you like the looks of or right size for you. For example, the A2/A3 are pretty popular for everyday carry use because they're small.

ITP is a lower-priced sub-brand of Olight, and Olight just decided to recombine everything for marketing reasons.

Well I'd prefer something that would do the best in those attributes. I'd spent hundreds and thousands on a light but would prefer something that would give me the most bang for my buck now.

I guess I'd pay a bit more if it was really truly the smallest possible with decent runtime.

How about battery technology? Is the smallest rechargeable still an AAA or is there a better alternative out there?

I don't think AW scammed anyone. He sells expensive batteries, but I don't think people have a problem with them. On CPF he tangled a little bit with someone when they reviewed some competing batteries, but it wasn't really that big a deal.

I second the iTP A1, A2, and A3 EOS lights which can now be bought as Olight i1, i2, and i3. I carry my iTP A3 EOS on my keychain. It's a nice light for around $20 and amazingly bright on a 10440 lithium ion battery (for short bursts).

If you have been out of the loop, you might want to also get something with a well-driven Cree XM-L in it. Really impressive amount of light. There are some 18650-powered P60 lights for around $20-25 that you could get. KaiDomain's C8 seems to be pretty good, though the head is a little bigger than a P60 (throws better than a P60).

CPF's site is still good (when it is working) and still very busy. You just have to make sure you don't let people steer you towards expensive lights if that isn't what you are after.

Welcome to BLF!

Tell me more

As a flashlight newb, I don't know that I could give you the technical info you're looking for but I can tell you that I recently bought an ITP A1 to have as an EDC on my keychain and it is awesome. Very happy with it so far. I also bought a Fenix E05 which is a great light too but I found that it wasn't bright enough for my needs.

i think you might need to be more specific about what you want. it's kind of hard to answer a question that's so broad - EDC these days seems to cover a wide range for different people.

usually i don't need a lot of light, so i EDC a Fenix E05. it's $20 bucks everywhere including Amazon. i use a AAA Eneloop with it. it's small, floody, and it's great.

when i need more light, i use a Xeno E03 WW XML with a AA Eneloop. it costs about $30 at hkequipment.net . it's warm, floody, and it's great. when i need more light, i pop in a 14500 for ridiculous brightness. it has terrible throw, so range is limited to about 50m, but everything within 50m gets lit up like it's being hit with a 1000w halogen work light... and then some.

i like floody lights, so my choices are biased in that direction. if you want throw, these may not be what you want.

if i wanted something with more throw, i'd probably get a Solarforce L2T host from solarforce-sales.com and pair that with one of the Ultrafire drop-ins from Manafont.

Start with a xeno e03 XML (aa) and you will be very happy to start! It is very impressive. Throw a 14500 rechargeable li-ion in and wow. As stated above, it is ridiculous!

Welcome oldtimer! I took a leave of absense from the boards for a few years too. I just got back a couple years ago.

Although I don't have the lionheart, I do have the Spaceneedle II, a VIP and couple modded lights from him. Let me tell you, there's been alot of advancement in LED's since our Luxeon days. Just about any XM-L emitter will blow away any of the above mentioned lights. So you just need to decide how much you want to spend and look for the best quality within that price range.

Before, we had to spend alot to get quality and brightness. Now just about every light is bright....just choose your quality.

cpf and cpfmarketplace has been really slow for me lately.

As far as I know, I don't think AW has scammed anyone. There is someone else AWR in the 'hall of shame' at cpfmarketplace, are you getting these two different people confused?

Kind of an open-ended question, but I was in the same boat as you and then when I came back I bought a bunch of lights.

Not sure of your budget, or what size you consider EDC, but I would look at

-Jetbeam BA10

-Olight i2

-Xeno as mentioned earlier

-S-mini in XM-L

Those are my four favorite small lights, but they are not tiny lights (although the first two can be keychain lights)

The Trustfire Z1 for 17 bucks also makes a nice EDC in a different form factor and uses a CR123 battery. Very bright light.

Ultrafire RL-113 is VERY bright and small CR123 for less than $20 as well.

You will be surprised how far emitters have improved.

Even though it is not EDC, buy yourself a p60 host and put an XM-L in it; you will laugh everytime you turn it on Hi.

Welcome oldtimer!

Some notes:

Those iTP -lights are a good starter if you prefer using AAA, AA, NiMh. If planning to get 18650 li-ion´s, there´s many good and cheap choices of really powerful XM-L flashlights available.

Even AAA-keychains pack IMO unexpected amount of light, bigger XM-L´s are really something.

If you are interested in P60 dropin lights, Solarforce is a very high quality yet low price host for them. www.solarforce-sales.com

If going to the rechargeable batteries, I recommend getting a somewhat reliable charger and good batteries.

If you spend a buck or two in the right place, you will step up quite much in quality yet stay in a decent budget.

Hi oldtimer ..

nice to have you here ..interested in what lights you have now ..? i'm assuming most can be modded to make your favorite lights punch out a lot of sweet tinted lumens .. runtimes are either going to be way up or output will seem off the charts .

depending on what you already have a modded older host is probably better than a cheaper budget light with a newest emitter ,

welcome to Budget light forums

Now thats a good idea...

I am going to also +1 the XENO E03. I purchased mine from tacticalhid.info and the shipping times were superb.

I have a neutral white and I run it on a single Eneloop. Om medium, which is the mode the light starts in, it is rated for four hours of runtime. It's very bright and it seems to run for ever! It tailstands, which is very important to me and it even comes with an extra switch which is really nice.

The build quality of the light for the price is amazing. Single piece body, HUGE square threads and double o-rings. Anodizing is flawless also. The liner driver is what makes this light great. It's very efficient for great run time and it has zero pulse width modulation for a perfect clean light output.

I would personally recommend the neutral white, but I am biased. I don't think you would regret it.

Welcome aboard! No censoring and petty rules here... AWR was the scammer, AW sells the batteries. The AW batteries are good-not like the junk China 18650's that used to fail after a month. Easy to confuse them. I'm richpalm on CPF/CPFM since 2003, but I'm enjoying it here much more-it's much looser and laid back. Last year I just got back into it after a 3-4 years' absence.

To get you started: Cree XM-L is the newest rage, XP-G is the closest runner-up, good dealers are Shiningbeam, Lighthound, Illumination Supply, Battery Junction, LED Supply (all U.S.), and Manafont (China)

Solarforce is the best P60 host that won't bankrupt you... look into the L2P. Most Solarforce can be gotten at Lighthound, so you don't wait forever from China.

Many to most of us do our own dropins-between the dealers I listed, you can get all the parts and Lighthound has AW's.

Nothing like the comraderie of the old Luxeon days though... I went to the very first Photonfests before I moved to Pa.

Rich

You can get a lot of branded stuff off of hkequipment.net pretty cheap. Their unbranded/generic stuff however isn't always that cheap.