are hobby has changed so much

[raggie33]

lights that we used to dream about years ago and probaly cost 200 now can be bought at walmart for less the 20.but now the 200 dollor lights are just insanely cool.now we just need lights i cant lose

 

[LEDAdd1ct]

Technology itself is just like that. The upgrade itch makes it really hard to hold onto my wallet; more efficient, more dies, better/more varied tints/tint selection, multiple battery formats, a *huge* database of information...in the end, it is what you make of it. As for not losing lights- I suppose that depends on your preferred battery format.

 

[raggie33]

its crazy.yeah i got lots of small lights but im starting to become a fan of aa lights small aa cells the aaa are to small for me and shorter runtime

 

[carbine15]

Re: Our hobby has changed so much

Spelling Nazi!

 

[geepondy]

It's funny, one of the first LED lights I bought to start this hobby nearly ten years ago now was a Photon and the last LED light I bought was a Photon.

 

[JohnR66]

It's funny, one of the first LED lights I bought to start this hobby nearly ten years ago now was a Photon and the last LED light I bought was a Photon.

I bought my first LED light (Photon) in 1997. It was a white LED model and my first experience with a white LED. I thought it was the coolest thing around and EDCed it. I still have the LED from it. We have sure come so far with today's super bright power LED lights.

 

[blasterman]

lights that we used to dream about years ago and probaly cost 200 now can be bought at walmart for less the 20

That tends to happen when you xfer the manufacturing costs to Asia. No miracle of technology there.

 

[Mike Painter]

That tends to happen when you xfer the manufacturing costs to Asia. No miracle of technology there.

NO. The LED light has followed the sam path that most solid state devices do.
A $200.00 light a couple years ago was expensive because the parts cost more and they were produced by a hobby market.
When a simple heat sink costs more than an entire mag-light it's because the sink is being produced in very small quantities. Same for the other pieces and parts. The price somebody pays per LED for 10,000 P7's a month is going to be far less than what we pay, probably by an order of magnitude.
I would not be surprised if the P7's we buy are gray market.
If the industry grows enough the current crop of lights like the Eagle-Tac will drop considerably in price or be swallowed up.
Just prior to Radio Shack, Pet and Apple hitting teh market with their $500.00 machines a friend had built a CP/M machine from scratch (He started with a clean motherboard and added all the parts.) $12,000 and no monitor.
Typical machine cost in the $3000.00 to $5000.00 range (64k CP/M at 4.77 kHz)
The few computer magazines were aware that mass production would drop the prices.