Valpo Hawkeye
Flashlight Enthusiast
As the title suggests, is an electronic switch (HDS, Zebralight, etc.) more or less reliable than a clicky (foursevens, e-series, etc.)?
As the title suggests, is an electronic switch (HDS, Zebralight, etc.) more or less reliable than a clicky (foursevens, e-series, etc.)?
My clickies on my laptop still work after checking my Ctrl and + buttons....................so i could zoom screen and read your reply reppans
I would also go with electronic,in fact i have not had 1 go yet,had a few clickies fail over the years though.
Hmm, as an interesting observation from the computer world, any enthusiastic gamer will tell you about the number of advantages of a mechanical keyboard. While I'm not citing this, difficult on a phone you know, the life rating for a mechanical keyboard is 15+ million actions per key. A high end membrane keyboard is rated at 2 to 5 million. A standard membrane keyboard is rated even lower.
Now, I'm not sure how well that applies to the electronic switches used in lights, but I felt it relevant to our computer references.
As a side note, I have an old computer mouse from the 90's kicking around some where. Still works perfect. So does my Maglite from around the same time
This they do. One either accept this or locks out the cell whenever the light is stored in order to eliminate it. Idle currents can be surprisingly low for many designs - on the order of microamps or less.A flashlight with an electronic on/off switch could draw a small current from the battery even when the light is off.
well today's "mechanical" keyboards are premium products for a niche market so it's expected that they use very high quality switches. but i could remember quite a few "clicky" keyboards going bad on me during the PC XT / 286 era. this was before membrane keyboards became de facto. but i think it's safe to say that membrane keyboards last longer than a low-quality clickies...
An electronic switch just needs to make a momentary contact carrying a minuscule amount of current, as such it could be a membrane switch rated for a few thousand cycles, a better membrane switch or low-end snap-action switch rated for a million cycles, or a higher-end snap-action switch good for 10 million+ cycles. I would likely never see more than tens of thousands of actuations from a switch of any flavor, so the operating lifespan isn't a concern for me so much as other factors such as how well it's implemented to handle whatever stresses it experiences in use ... popped solder joints, cracked PCB's, or switch housings that fail under the stress of normal use
haha.. That's what I get for typing offline and cutting and pasting here ven .
I'm kinda surprised at you favoring electronic - your most recommended (well in the small EDC category) seem to be mechanical and the most disparaging remarks I think I've read from you where with regard to an a CPF-favorite electronic clicky light - you know that most of the QC issues with that light are the due to the e-clicky.... right?
I'm pretty sure electronic switches are rated for a few hundred thousand cycles, if not a few million.In theory, if you stay within the power rating of a clicky, don't bash it, and don't get it wet, it'll last a few thousand cycles. The same is true, though, of electronic switches.
It doesn't apply at all. "Mechanical" computer keyboards still use electronic switches. They just use a more robust mechanism for pressing that switch than membrane or rubber dome keyboards. This is in no way analogous to mechanical versus electronic switches in flashlights.Hmm, as an interesting observation from the computer world, any enthusiastic gamer will tell you about the number of advantages of a mechanical keyboard. While I'm not citing this, difficult on a phone you know, the life rating for a mechanical keyboard is 15+ million actions per key. A high end membrane keyboard is rated at 2 to 5 million. A standard membrane keyboard is rated even lower.
Now, I'm not sure how well that applies to the electronic switches used in lights, but I felt it relevant to our computer references.
In the case of HDS flashlights, the parasitic load is actually lower than the battery's natural discharge rate, meaning that there is effectively zero parasitic drain.A flashlight with an electronic on/off switch could draw a small current from the battery even when the light is off.