A lot of great lights this year, but my favorite is Emisar D4S XPL Hi. Nearly perfect.
Lumintop tool AAA
Manker U21
BLF GT (First group buy)
Lumintop bike light
Jetbeam RRT-2
Fitorch P25 (Won the giveaway)
What was your best flashlight of 2018
The D4S Is the Best for 2018 
I’m not sure if this thread is for lights that came out in 2018, or just ones you bought in 2018? I got a Convoy C8+ a few weeks ago and really enjoy it, nice output, great throw and great knurling/anodizing…just feels great in hand.
Also enjoy my Nitecore Tini although the 2 second hold to turn on is not ideal, it makes up for it in size to output ratio.
Chris.
I use the DN35 2016 model. and find my S41 gets too hot too quick,
when you take it over 4 of the 7 settings.
I’ve pulled out an old(ish) Solarstorm SC02 out of the cobwebs.
and find it does a very nice all round job as a local home walkabout
alternating with the C8+ for wider ranges.
Then again. the 4 x tiny, midget torches I’ve bought in last yr,
running AAA do a great job round home and garden.
80 to 130 lumens.
I have NO idea why I bought those thing’s. They just APPEARED.
I tend to make more lights than I buy these days, so the CRX Rotary is my best of 2018.
Emisar D4, Emisar D1
Zebralight SC64W HI
Haikelite SC26
Armytek Wizard Pro
Lumintop Tool AA 2.0
I’d have to say my BLF Q8 but my new Sofirn SP32A V2.0 is gaining ground rapidly. Way more of a light than I expected it would be. Dollar for dollar, it’s probably the most impressive light I’ve purchased.
For me, it’d be the X65.
I still have quite a few flashlights in the mail, but I don’t expect that there will be any change now. For me, the best flashlight, I’ve bought this year is
Nitecore SRT9
Most fun and versatile flashlight.
Well, if self built/modded comes into play then I would probably have to say my 458 Ham’r is going to be my champion. The most complex light I’ve modded to date, virtually qualifying as a build due to it’s level of difficulty. And in the end the performance level raised the bar significantly. Still waiting for Sofirn to get battery tubes and carriers made for this one to be classified as finished but I really like it in it’s 4 cell configuration and to be honest, may leave it like it is.
While the neutral tint and blended flood/throw really works for me, it may well be the 25,427 lumens at start 22,700 at 30s that trips my trigger!
By the way, it would be nice if everyone used the Optional image width sizing at 100% or less in the second line of the insert image window…. quite a few pics here are really compromising screens on tablets and phones… just sayin. 
That 458 Ham’r has really evolved since I last saw it. It just keeps getting better! 
Image sizing on BLF still doesn’t really have an ideal solution. Set an image to 100% and it’ll look ridiculous on a fullscreen desktop browser. Set it to 50% and it’ll look teeny-tiny on a phone or a tall narrow browser window. Neither is ideal since the viewer’s aspect ratio can vary dramatically.
The best compromise I’ve found is to scale images to about 800x800 and post them with no explicit sizing hints, then make them link to a larger version when clicked. Or for large images hosted elsewhere, I set the sizing hint in pixels so it’ll be about 800x800, and link it to itself for a full-size version. It’s not ideal either, but most browsers seem to figure out a way to scale that to a reasonably appropriate size onscreen.
And your images , so sized, blow out my original iPad screen size, making my BLF type window very small with extremely difficult to touch button sizes.
When I get up early and let Mary sleep in I use the iPad or my i8 to access the web, if posting a picture I will use 62% in my own threads and 40% or less in anyone elses. Sometimes even 30%… also allowing for a right click to open larger in a new window in case someone wants a larger look.
After using my Sofirn SP36 for the past couple nights I think I’ll add it as my favorite light of the year. Yes, it’s still the honeymoon phase, but I’m coming from a good deal of experience with my Q8 lights. While I love my Q8 lights, this one performs nearly identically to my eyes, but it’s smaller and more comfortable to hold without the milled flats on my BLF Q8 lights. Sofirn made a wise choice leaving them out. The tint isn’t my favorite but it isn’t bad by any means. If it was only moddable without resorting to extreme measures, I’d guess it would be more popular. It does get warm, but not like some of the smaller hot rods.
Ah, darn. I tested it on a couple old phones, but I don’t have access to any Apple devices.
On some screens, width=“50%” makes images so small that each one must be clicked individually to see what’s in the picture, while on some screens, width=“100%” makes images so large that only half or a third can be seen at one time, also requiring extra clicks to scale it to an appropriate size. I thought I had found an okay compromise, but I guess even that is an inappropriate size on some devices.
It’d be nice if there was a simple and widely-supported way to auto-fit web images to their parent element in a way which worked on all devices, didn’t require javascript, was guaranteed not to require scrolling, and wouldn’t cause the parent element to expand.
Maybe I can figure something out using CSS, but at a glance, it looks like the relevant features probably won’t work on older devices.
Lately my favorite for 2018 has been a Astrolux E02.
It’s a little smaller than the A6 and seems to have really good runtimes.
The beam pattern and modes work well for my bike light and it was only $9.68 on sale.
I pulled up behind a couple of people walking in the middle of the street last week and one said to the other “get over there’s a car coming”.
(and that was on medium)
I have not used it much but my SP36 sample that houses sliced LH351D leds (4000K90CRI sliced to 3500K 92CRI on top of BBL), output around 3000 lumen, is one of my 2018 favourites.
Best one, pants-carried and used daily, is my Jaxman E2L shorty with SST-20-W 3000K 95CRI leds,BLF-A6 driver and red lighted tail.
Considering the only light I bought this year was a Fenix TK75 2015 I would say it was my best light of the year. I caught it on sale for $99 so jumped on it. The light plus 8 3500mah batteries from MTN still didn’t cost me what the light would have at full price.
The TK75 2015 is an awesome light.
And $99, that’s amazing! :+1: