She probably didn’t get any likes because she last posted in November 2022 and the new BLF format (that allows likes/thanks) didn’t exist back then. 
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For an EDC ligh,t I prefer a reflector with a 20° hot spot and a 80° spill balanced beam to cover most applications. For the rest, it really depends what the light is used for.
I’ve reviewed a bunch of lights and my consensus is reflectors are preferable. optics have their place of course and advantages (more compact, lighter, cheaper to make).
I prefer reflectors. They can produce both a hotspot for throw and a well defined spill that concentrates all of the spill around the hotspot allowing for both a throwy and floody light. I feel like TIR can do very good spot, or very good flood, but can’t do both. I feel with TIRs being used for flood, all of the spill from the hotspot has too sharp of a cutoff, and if you have a wide hotspot, you have no throw. TIRs feel like an either/or situation, whereas reflectors feel like the best of both worlds. I don’t ever need the ultra wide spill of a TIR.
BTW , what about Fresnel lens ? ;))
Diffusion film.
I got so many lights with shiite beams, whether ringy or other artifacts in the beam, beams with a piss-yellow corona around the hotspot, fried-egg beams, pretty much anything that uses those hateful little XP-G3s, that I just slap on heavily-diffused DF and get a nice smooth beam with a gentle gradient from center to periphery.
As much as I love that infamous Tacklife light that’s built like a tank, I’d never ever use it as-is, but with DF in front, it’s my most-used light that I keep in the kitchen. It’s got a retarded UI that always starts on high and goes into blinkies if you try clicking too fast, but who cares? I just click on and it lights up a nice blanket of light (admittedly cold-white) that I use for grubbling around in dark cabinets or to take down to the basement. It’s got an assload of thermal mass so doesn’t step down that quickly, either.
Same for every Luxpro light I got, too. Hateful little G3s with disgusting fried-egg beams and piss-yellow coronas accentuating the worst of the worst aspects of G3s, yet with nice heavily-diffused DF in front, I used to use them similarly as nice floody on/off lights.
For that particular use-case, I like 'em even more than what a TIR lens could give.
My only TIR lights are AAA diameter. Ordered a convoy M21H with all the available TIR options as add-ons to see what the fuss is about 
The overall question of reflector Vs TIR is perhaps too simplistic, TIR can be clear and give a well defined spot or have the honeycomb texture on the front which appears to act like diffusion film would do on a reflector.
Covering light with type so so idea. Minus brightness = less efficiency.
Diffusion film? Someone already measured it, and it’s only a few % less light.
100% brighter only looks ~30% brighter visually, so ~3%-5% less light that DF eats up would be mostly imperceptible.
People dedome lights for a smaller brighter hotspot, and that eats up WAY more light than DF ever would.
So even 5% less light, for a 1000% better beam? I’ll take it. Any day, any time.
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