Zoomies are a divisive topic. Some love them, some hate them. Some love certain kinds but despise others.
I view zoomies like that:
Aspheric zoomies:
- are typically not waterproof
- are often of poor quality
- are thermally challenged which reduces their performance
- often have somewhat ringy beam
- some hate seeing die projection at full zoom
- lose about 1/3 of the lumens in throw mode which means that they have a very narrow throw beam
- have no spill which, as you expect gives you great control of where light goes and where it doesn’t. Myself I love this control.
- have excellent flood
- usually have excellent throw. You can see farther with a zoomie than with a reflector thrower of the same throw because reflector spill distracts your vision
- usually have excellent intermediate beam, free from any artifacts
- as you look around you need to adjust focus a lot, you see either close or at intermediate distance or far - but never both close and far
TIR zoomies:
- are typically not waterproof
- are typically of mediocre quality
- are typically expensive
- are thermally challenged which reduces their performance
- often have somewhat ringy beam
- have nice round or roundish throw beam, they are efficient in throw which gives them very wide beam
- most have bad intermediate beam but outdoor - fair enough
- flood beam quality varies from excellent to bad
- as you look around you need to adjust focus a lot, you see either close or at intermediate distance or far - but never both close and far.
There are also differences about what do you have to do to zoom a light.
In some you need to twist the bezel left or right. They are more waterproof and better thermally (thought not as good as a fixed focus light) but zooming is much more effortful. Myself I consider them useless for walking. In some you push or pull the bezel. These are faster to adjust though exactly how fast - it depends; some have tight o-rings which makes them fairly waterproof but very stiff in action. Push-pull is quite bad thermally.
There are also electrically zooming ones which is a gimmick. I haven’t seen any light like that being recommended yet.
Overall indoor and for EDC I prefer aspheric flood-centric zoomies. Outdoor I prefer TIR ones.
It’s hard to suggest whether zoomies are for you if you’ve never tried one. Really it would be best if you could borrow the lights in question to figure out whether they are for you but it may not be possible.
You could buy a cheap zoomie to try (f.e. Skywolfeye B16) but you’d need to take into account how it’s different from your target light in size (and therefore performance) and quality (which affects performance as well). I think it’s going to be hard to predict how much more performance you could get for a larger size. But at least for $3-4 you could tell whether you like the beam shape.