The only LED I EDC is the Aeon on my keychain. Else, it is an incan for nearly everything else. I simply do not believe that most LED jockeys (particularly the DX/KD groupies) know how much more powerful a simple incan can be. A friend brought over his Elektrolumens P7 (C-Bin) over the other day
, only to be beaten up near and far by an M6 1185
.
For a while I was primarily into LEDs and considered them super impressive compared to "normal" flashlights. Then I bought an N30 which totally blew all of those out of the water and is still king of my collection for throw.
When I first built my ROP, I was honestly underwhelmed, I expected a lot more, and I'd already been spoiled by the HID for sheer "shock and awe" value. However, while it may not have been my "coolest" light, I found I was using it a lot, especially as I'd taken care to preserve cam focusability -- with a MOP reflector and a custom-ground cam I was able to eliminate any "donut holes" and limit the range of focus to a usable range. 2C also meant the light was reasonably easy to carry.
The ROP became my second most used light, and a 3.7V incan running on an 18650 became my #3, as I preferred it to all my comparable LED lights due to improved color rendition. The fact I never use lights for more than 50 minutes at a time made the extra battery life on the LEDs moot, as well. I found my keychain LED was the only LED I was still using. Admittedly that single LED accounts for the majority of my actual flashlight use.
Now however the tide is starting to turn back to LEDs for me, now that LEDs are available in warm and neutral tints. The 18650-size incan (my #3) has been replaced again with a Q2-5A (4000k LED), because color rendition difference is less, and the LED offers variable output. When 5A MC-Es, there's a good chance my ROP's position as #2 could be threatened, as the main way I use the ROP is de-focuesd. If I could get similar output, beam profile, and runtime with acceptable color rendition in a 18650 light, I probably won't use the ROP as often.
Incans will likely remain my go-to option for throw for quite a while, both as they're inherently more concentrated than LEDs of similar output, and becuase runtime is almost never important for throw, where I only need bursts of as much light as I can get for a few seconds at a time.
To be honest though, the main reason for the tide turning away from incans for me has to be an incident where a guest nearly started a fire by inadvertently setting my ROP Bezel down on a table, still on. Had that been my 64623 I wouldn't have been as lucky. That's one problem of having flashlights that can start fires, most people won't treat them with the same respect they would say a lighter or other explicit fire-starter. Even though now I'm starting to install thermal circuit breakers in my incans, I still worry that some of my incans which are capable of starting campfires might also inadverntently start
other fires.
