It's nice to have both a light with super throw when needed, and a light that is pure flood for reading and other close up work like the zebralight, but for me an absolutely GREAT compromise for EDC is a just slightly floody light like the little
L0D-Q4, which has a moderately floody hotspot that will cover an area of about 1 foot at 3 or 4 feet. Folks that have bought this light just flat out LOVE it (even those that didn't think they would like the red color).
I find that the L0D's hotspot is wide enough to spread out to cover a very useful area even fairly close up, but still incredibly bright (on high that hotspot is brighter than a 100W droplight held at the same distance).
You can hold this little light only 2 feet from a paperback book and the hotspot will perfectly illuminate a full page with bright uniform light.
It's a five mode light, but the first two modes are a nice bright medium mode with more than 2 hours runtime, and a long runtime low with several hours runtime.
The zebra light is PURE flood and has multiple levels just like the original poster requested, but remember the tradeoff between a more floody beam and brightness and throw. Also the zebralight sacrifices a little on output to get a 2 hour plus runtime (even the Q5 version only puts out 66 Lumens).
Now, although it's true that 66 lumens in a standard flashlight looks pretty bright, I find that the zebralight's 66 lumens with 120 degree flood starts to thin out pretty fast.
The zebralight is more than bright enough for close up work like reading a map, and in a pinch it can also handle something like walking a path at night (if you only care about where you are putting your feet and aren't interested in looking farther down the trail). Close up it's nice and floody and bright, but don't expect to see a 'wall of light' which will light up a whole room, because more than a few feet out things get dim fairly quickly.
Remember the inverse square law, which means that things that are twice as far away only get 1/4th the light per unit area. It also means that a floody beam that is 10 times as wide will only give 1/100th the lux per square unit at any given distance.
So even though the zebra light is well made, and does what it is advertised to do, some folks are disappointed because what they really want is a light that is just as bright as their favorite flashlight's hot spot, but with a beam wide enough to create a full 'wall of light'. This of course is impossible. Given the total lumens available, you either can have a tight bright hotspot, or a larger but MUCH dimmer floody beam, you can't get both a bright beam AND a wide beam at the same time.
Anyone considering the zebralight should definitely get the Q5 version. It's only a few dollars more, and with the floody beam you need all the brightness you can get.
Another option is to simply add a diffuser to a standard LED light.
I have a Maglight 2AA with a teralux dropin that I have modded by replacing the stock lens with a diffuser lens made out of a circle of plastic from the bottom of one of those half height clear CD/DVD cases. The cases I am talking about are those half-thickness slim line CD/DVD jewel cases that come in sets with various colors. All of the cases have a nice textured bottom which is absolutely PERFECT as a diffuser, and one of the colors is perfectly water clear acrylic that is absolutely wonderful for smoothing out the beam to a perfect flood, without cutting down the level too much.
You can even switch between pure flood and throw because Maglights have an accessory kit available that has various colored lenses that you can drop into a hexagonal shaped no-roll head boot which installs on the lights bezel. Originally I use the diffuser disk I had made from the CD/DVD jewel case with this boot so I could remove it when I wanted more throw, but the floody beam is just SOOOO nice that I finally decided to install it permanently in place of the mini maglight's original plastic lens.
This plastic diffuser modded maglight gives a pretty floody beam without completely killing the lights throw. The mini-maglight with the diffuser lens mod is not quite as floody as the zebralight, but is brighter at a given distance as a result, and it's not only very very nice for close up tasks like reading, but will also light up things fairly well on the other side of the room.
So there are lots of options depending on how 'floody' you want vs. how bright and how much throw you need, but regardless of how you decide to go, I strongly recommend that you consider the L0D-Q4, which has absolutly jaw dropping performance in an incredibly tiny package.
