What gives? 200 lumen vs. 700 lumen

I have my Surefire E2DL. Fantastic, love it. It is 200 Lumen. I wanted a light that would well out perform the E2DL. I bought a Tiablo ACE 700 Lumen. It should be 4 times brighter. I do not get the holy crap, that is much brighter than my little E2DL feeling. It is a little bit brighter.

Am I looking at lights the wrong way? Ultimately I am looking for a helicopter search light brightness but obviously can't afford the HID's.

The eye has a logarithmic response to light (as opposed to say, a camera, which has a linear response). That means that a light must be 4x as bright as another to appear 2x as bright. Whereas the camera will make the brighter light look much brighter.

Beam profile and throw will also have an effect, with a throwier light generally looking more powerful, even if it has less overall output.

+1 to the previous response. If the beam of your Surefire is quite tight, the lumens will be concentrated in a small area and will appear quite bright. If the beam of the 700 lumens light is much wider, the lumens will be spread out much more, illuminating a wide area, but appearing not so bright in the middle of the hotspot.

I'm not familiar with the Tiablo, but the 700lm spec may be emitter lumens, and not out the front lumens. The Surefire is 200 out the front (OTF) lumens.
If the Tiablo spec is emitter lumens you could only be seeing 450 out the front lumens or even less!

If, in fact one light is 450lm and the other is 200lm, you will not be perceiving 2x more brightness.

As an example (if I still understand physics correctly) - All things being equal, a hot spot that is only twice as big would actually need to be 4X as bright.

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I had the same response when comparing a SureFire P91 vs a Phillips 5761. The 5761 is certainly brighter, but it didn't seem that much brighter. Well, the P91 is under-rated and the 5761 was in a small reflector so they were just that much closer in perceived brightness.

take them both for a walk at night somewhere dark,

you will see the difference.:candle:

i just bought the new E2DL for my gf's father. I tested it vs my (older) version of the E2DL. the new one IS brighter, but by a narrow margin. Not worth the switch IMO.
What I'm getting at is, don't get caught up in the numbers.

Surefire always understate their lumens in a business where it's common to overstate them.

Also, everything else people have posted here matters. Take both lights outside and see how they perform. It's always more or less misleading to compare indoor beamshots.

waddup said:

take them both for a walk at night somewhere dark,

you will see the difference.:candle:

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first thing i always do......

you can also shine one in your right eye and time how long it takes you to go entirely blind in that eye, and then repeat for your left eye and compare the results....note: you can only do this once

disclaimer: do not under any circumstances take me seriously, don't shine a light in your eyes ever! they make hearing aids, but not seeing aids

yup i think the earlier posters hit this on the head. A 700 lumen flashlight is not going to seem over 3 times brighter than a 200 lumen flashlight. I think it just has to do with how your eyes adapt to the amount of light accordingly.

DVN said:

yup i think the earlier posters hit this on the head. A 700 lumen flashlight is not going to seem over 3 times brighter than a 200 lumen flashlight. I think it just has to do with how your eyes adapt to the amount of light accordingly.

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Don't forget to recognize the probable fact that this is not a 700 lumen light in the first place. It's probably closer to 450-500 lumens at best.

Hmmm this is strange. I don't own the E2DL but I do own the LX2 and let me say that my Tiablo ACE (1st gen) blows it away in brightness! It out throws it, it has more spill, and doing a ceiling bounce test it lights up my room MUCH more than the LX2 does.

jamesmtl514 said:

i just bought the new E2DL for my gf's father.

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Very smart. You're in like Flynn.

Does that Tiablo need 2 x 18650 for max brightness, and if so are you feeding it 2 cells?

The weird thing is, that most of us flashaholics know about the logarythmic and that...

If a new model comes out though, which had previously a Q5 and then gets an R2, we get enthousiastic and want to sell our Q5 to get the R2! :naughty:

Weirdest thing is, that I have an EX10-Q5 and an EX10-R2 and that there really is a really noticeable difference. I would have to investigate that difference though. The Q5 shifts to greenish while the R2 shifts to purplish, the reflector maybe different as well (don't really know) and we are at it : Tighter hotspot means more LUX in there and the comparison will fool the eye. Worse, it could be that the Q5 is floodier and provides the more usable beam. :thinking:

It's the same thing with cars, 170HP are more powerfull than 150HP, but it tells you nothing about which car will be best to drive, you have to try them to find out or at least know a few other parameter, like the weight, the torque, the sort of engine and so on. To compare two flashlights only by the total output of their emitter doesn't work as well.

We also must keep in mind that the difference between 100 and 200 Lumen is much bigger than the difference between 600 and 700 Lumen. Even the hardcore flashaholics tend to forget, as theoretical specifications may blurr your objective view. I just saw it in a sales thread of a custom flashlight, which uses 2 x CR123A and has a quad-die emitter (no Lumen provided). This light is bought by hardliners only who even use flashlights in their dreams, so everybody knows that the battery configuration can't really drive that emitter to its maximum. Well, know a six-die emitter is offered on the same light (costs more of course), he manufacturer explains that the emitter will not reach the output it could provide with more battery power. Nevertheless, even those who got their quad-die fainted when they saw it, and for sure that wasn't because of a different beam profile!

FYI, helicopter searchlights are orders of magnitude brighter than any handheld light. There is no way that you will be able to match a 1.6KW Xenon short arc spotlight without actually buying a 1.6 KW Xenon short arc spotlight.
The problem with the ACE versus the surefire is the fact that the ACE uses a quad die LED that has a much larger surface area than the surefire. This means that it will not be as focused as a smaller light source with the same output in the same reflector. Of course, the ACE does have a fairly large reflector. If the ACE had a 700 lumen small single die LED (which doesn't exist right now), then it would be more impressive. For me high output LEDs just aren't that impressive as far as brightness intensity goes, since they tend to be mostly flood because of the large die sizes. In addition to having more output than most LEDs, HID lights also have a smaller light source, giving them a more focused beam that wll probably make the light seem "brighter" overall to you.

Go do a ceiling bounce test with both of them.

You will notice the difference more then.

+ as other have said, the surefires lumens are probably slightly underrated and the tiablos overrated.

I would describe it following:

1,5times brighter: slightly brighter
2 times brighter: quite much brighter
3 times brighter: much brighter
4 times brighter: very much brighter...

With other words: 700 lumens is much brighter than 200 lumens. These brightnesses are closely corresponding to a 25W and 60W home incan bulb. And that's a significant difference!

Regards, Patric