I think they’re excellent lights, but competition slowly bite them at the heels. Fury and G2X/P6X series are reasonably priced, but you pay a few extra dollars more for their excellent warranty, compared to other high end manufactures.
But their TIR lights are simply awesome. They are quite expensive, but once you try one of them, you can get the idea why - extremelly tough, with great, fat throwy hotspot and really high output! You can imagine how much money they invested in the development of their custom optics…
But on the other hand, Surefire P60 line doesn’t justify their high prices.
To each his own i guess, LX2 was the best flashlight i have ever owned and i’m really sad i sold it.
I looked up those models, and what I found (especially with the C2) was a bunch of threads providing something like a history lesson. It was interesting learning the back story of the flashlight world and getting more context to understand the current state of things. I’ll be paraphrasing heavily, and I may have misunderstood some things, but… the story: (not just about SureFire, but also about the state of the torch world in general)
What I found was a tale of a leading-edge torch company trying to re-brand itself from Timex to Rolex, sort of, moving from “good” to “extreme” or “elite” and raising their prices to the level of status symbols. I mean, the average person doesn’t really need a military-grade light. Their products reflected their explicit purpose though, and it sounds like the P60 was a pretty good design at the time, able to make a fragile incandescent bulb withstand the kickback of an assault rifle. But meanwhile, the world moved on without them. LEDs kicked incandescents out of the market, and it seems SureFire was a little late to join in… and when they did join, they found that their designs (although great for incandescent use) were terrible for LEDs. So they produced a lot of low-spec lights with outdated designs. And the world moved on. And they finally retired those old products and started making more modern lights, but the price tag is high and the feature set is low because of the military niche they carved out for themselves.
It’s particularly unfortunate that their efforts managed to create a whole new fashion. And between their efforts and Chinese cloning plus one-upmanship, things got more and more ridiculously “tacticool”. Instead of plastic or rubber, we got aluminum. But that wasn’t enough so we got anodized aluminum. And then HA-II harder anodized aluminum. And then military-grade HA-III. Complete with choice of black, military drab, or camo. But aluminum just isn’t that strong, so we got stainless steel bezels. And then stainless steel everything. And then titanium. Flat bezels weren’t very tacticool though, so we got crenelated bezels. Then deeper, sharper crenelation. Then stainless steel bezels. Then crenelated stainless steel bezels. Then sharp serrated stainless steel “strike” bezels capable of impaling things. Then the titanium glass-breaker spike. And so on. And a side switch isn’t very tacticool either, so we got the rear clicky. Two or more types worth. And to further distinguish the products, they got both a high and low mode. Of course, it wasn’t long before we got 3 modes instead of 2, or 5 instead of 3, or 8, or 11, or smoothly variable. To be really tacticool though, it needed a good strobe mode to disorient attackers. I know i use this all the time when I’m walking around at night, because everyone is out to get me. (actually, I just use it to signal to my cat to come inside) But strobe got old so we got SOS too. And a beacon. And infrared, since I know you’ve all got top-of-the-line night vision helmets. Oh, and I didn’t even mention the extreme end of the cooling fin fad.
And people ate it up. Marketed to the government, the police, and anyone who feels the need to own a Hummer inside a city, it was a huge success.
But personally, I just like things that glow in the dark. Preferably things which won’t hurt me or tear the inside of my purse or attract unwanted attention.
bibihang,
Chinese lights rock im sure i own more Chinese lights than American! In fact mounted on my M4 is a MTE ssc P7 with pressure switch and it rocks! Perfect beam pattern for CQB… ANY light must meet extreme standards for me to use them on home defense firearms, NONE of us want/need ANY light to fail at the most critical moment we ALL hope never comes. I do feel that the Surefires have better cut threads in most cases i’ve seen and most are VERY simple on/off switches and no SOS or strobe mode that I’ve ever used. I have a trustfire X9 that I absolutely love! I’ts about 7 months old and the driver started acting up only coming on in 1 mode and now completely dark, no love from it at all so im gonna replace it with a 3 mode high amp driver and change the emitter to a xml u2 bin, those X9’s sure have a lot of throw and are very well built!!!
I have a soft spot in my heart (heart, not wallet) for Surefire, as they got me started in xenons a few years back and seemed to have set a target for countless other manufacturers and sort of created a whole new industry for themselves when Mag sort of lay down a bit (and I love my old Mags too) and hey, its all about marketing.
Not so much about application of the latest or the highest technology. I have a fondness for Streamlight as well, as a better than average quality and design outfit for years, more value priced than Surefire, but they too ignored the budget to mid level market and their current LED offerings are just so-so.
Been a long time since I really coveted a Surefire or Streamlight product.* Maybe that will change again.
*that I could reasonably afford or justify in my BLF mentality.
CPFers LOVE to rant about reliability. Apparently 100% of the population lives on the edge where a flashlight failure is almost always fatal. Hence, you NEED the surefire because it is slightly better made than lights 1/10th the price and has a slightly lessened chance of failure.
I pointed out on CPF once that I have yet to have a flashlight fail on me. Apparantly I am the luckiest person in the history of the earth because all the CPFers lights keel over on a regular basis. I am shocked that so many of them are still alive after enduring such a failure.
If you REALLY want to be entertained, go read some posts about some of the top tier lights like McClickeys and such. They crack me up! One topic “THE most important flashlight in my life” or some such talks about a 30 lumen light that costs 400 bucks and how he literally WEPT FOR JOY when he saw its amazing beam profile.
maybe its just luck, but i have never had a flashlight “fail” on me from normal use… ive bought and sold well over 75 different lights over the last year too…
now if we were to include the lights that i have accidentally broken through modding of my own… well … J)
I have yet to have a light fail on me as well. Well there was that time I crushed three T6 emitters with a heat shield… But we wont hold that against the lite…
Dale, if your coachgun is like this, you need to get that BTU on it and take a pic. The duct tape will work if you use a piece of wood on the tail end to align the light.
Good luck finding a BTU compatible remote pressure switch.
You might not need to pull the trigger if you shine it right in their eyes.
My old, original 1xAA CMG Infinity failed… less than 24 hours after I received it. I was pretty bummed about that, too, since it was sort of a premium light at the time and was built like a tank.
My cheap dynamo crank light failed, because its built-in battery died and it’s not really replaceable.
My original Excalibur Forever Flashlight has mostly failed, because its capacitor no longer holds a charge. It wasn’t very useful anyway though, ~3 lumens from something the size of a big old Maglite, with a large magnet so it can’t go near any electronics.
My EternaLight ErgoXRay still works fine, but is no longer waterproof since the adhesive loosened on its face plate. I also had to fill its screw holes with hard epoxy because the metal screws stripped the plastic holes on the first battery change.
Otherwise, my problem is more that lights usually keep working far past their technological expiration date and now I have a box full of functional but outdated torches. Even the little red LED light I made from Radio Shack parts in the 90s still works fine, and with its original CR2032 battery.
