Are we likely to see a new generation of “face melters” OR pencil thin 1,000+ lumen shirt pocket lights??
Better batteries equal better flashlights.
I don’t see the next step as LEDs actually. I think what’s next is more efficient drivers that produce less waste heat, and better thermal paths or cooling solutions to maintain a higher brightness for longer. All of the large heavy hitters currently end up being thermally stable at 30% or less of their max tested output. Increasing lumens/watt is one way to boost usable output, however, you would see much bigger gains in these lights if there were some sort of active integrated cooling. Seeing lights with incredible all-time-high turbo modes is exciting, but I would be much more excited for lights with all-time-high sustainable brightness.
Depends on what you call a heavy hitter. Imalent DN70 can maintain nearly full 3800 lm output as long as battery allows. For the size, I find it impressive.
Driver improvements? Some lights are at the point where there’s little to be improved, but that’s the high-end of the price range. I don’t expect that to change soon.
We may see LEDs getting better. Batteries too. Hosts? Maybe.
There’s a lot to be done on the firmware/usability side though.
if noone develops a practical cooling solution I see not much improvements for sustained turbo output in EDC sized light
for normal use we got like 1-4 hours runtime even if used often at a high brightness from a single 18650 cell
I don’t know what an EDC is (every day carry doesn’t seem to make sense). But, iirc, the theoretical maximum lumens/watt you can get from any device, it about 650 lumens/watt. That assumes a green light source, which our eyes are most sensitive. A white light is probably around 400 lumens/watt, or perhaps 450 max.
So, LED efficiency might improve by about another factor of 2, at most. Far less than the efficiency gains over the last 10 years. In practical terms, there’s not much more efficiency likely to be gained from current state-of-the-art. A few “bin” improvements to go, then we’re done.
Anything that paints a wide area with more than 100,000 lux, is likely to be bad for your vision. That’s about what noon-day sun in the tropics is delivering. But if you’re using a light at a distance, you’re never going to get that high (for any sustained period of time).
For example, if your light produces 100,000 lux at a distance of 100 meters, then that would mean a candlepower rating of 1 billion! If it lights up a circle 10 meters in diameter at 100,000 lux, then that would require almost 8 million lumens coming from your light.
Or maybe my math is off. Whatever the case, it’s a huge amount of power to damage your vision just from reflected light. Long before that happens, your hand will be melted and burned to the surface of your flashlight.
higher efficiency would mean less heat though - that would be the best way to solve the heat problem…
wle
The key to disorienting someone is to not look at it yourself. You only want to blind the offender or else there’s no gain. Much like with a flash stun grenade you gain no tactical advantage by blinding yourself.
Higher efficiency is the ideal, but it’s not realistic as the gains each year are not gamebreaking and rather on par with a higher tint bin with a small percentage gain. What I meant by more efficient drivers may have been thinking of making constant current and boost drivers more compact and inexpensive. Driving LEDs with PWM isn’t ideal, it’s convenient.
Oh, okay, you’re talking about temporarily ruining someone’s night vision, not literally blinding them.
Yes, there’s a lot to be said for just using enough light for the task, and no more. That way, you preserve as much of your night-vision as possible.
The problem I find in practice, is that if I’m using 20 lumens on a walk, and I want to see something a little better, I’ll bump it up to 50 lumens temporarily. That makes my night-vision worse, and so 50 lumens becomes the new norm. Then 100 lumens, etc. Eventually, I’m just shining a bright light in front of me, and can no longer see stuff in the dark elsewhere.
It takes about 20 minutes for your eyes to dark-adapt again. Far too long to be stumbling around in the dark with a light not bright enough to see with.
If your eyes are fully dark-adapted, then a moonlight mode on your flashlight should be bright enough. Until you need to see something a little more clearly….
It’s easy to keep lights in moonlight mode in the house. Not so easy when you’re outside on an uneven trail.
Interesting. I tend to do the opposite. At first, I start low, so I don’t see great. But after a while I notice that I see better than before, I back off a little (visually 10-20%). A while later I can back off again. After an hour I use significantly less than what I started with.
Yes, that’s certainly a better way to do it. I just don’t like the intermediate period where I’m not seeing well enough. And when I hear something go crack in the brush, I can’t help blasting it with a thousand lumens. There’s goes my night vision!
that will improve as the led becomes more efficient.
higher lumens/watt=less heat/watt.
Improved LED efficiency and improved CRI for sure.
I also hope for improved user interface - we’ve gone from plain on/off, to having several levels, and now ramping UI is the flavor of the month. Maybe in the future there can be digital read outs that let you select the exact lumen.
Or how about adjustable reflectors that can focus the light for more throw or spread it out for more flood.
Why not incorporate electrified glass that can go from clear to frosted or change tints.
That link just looks like another one of those clickbait “NEW BATTERY TECHNOLOGY DISCOVERED!” articles which never actually make it into production.
Companies like cree are working on making LEDs more efficient. This will make cooling less of an issue for high output lights, and also make super high capacity batteries unnecessary.
Lithium is still going to be around for a very long time, don’t expect any of these new battery technologies to exist for consumers any time in the next half decade or so.
Maybe lights that incorporate super-capacitors, with extreme burst mode for a few seconds. Or, they could just use supercaps alone, for almost instant charging. Run time and storage drain would suffer, which is why right now a lithium-ion battery as a reserve would be needed.
But I’d be content with a small 1000-lumen light that could run at full output without overheating. Something in a small 1xAA size, or even smaller. Even something in a small 1x18650 size would be a start.
Nuclear/Flux-Capacitor powered flashlight with built in Time-pod and a 1000 year runetime at 10K lumens and no heat.
You don’t need supercapacitors to overheat the light in a few seconds. Li-ion is enough for that.
Another (actually possible today) idea 2-output driver, 2 sets of LEDs, one for flood and one for throw. Enables making a zoomie without moving parts . It would be floodier, but more powerful than a regular single-led zoomie of the same size.