alibaba
Enlightened
Not really, in fact I love my torches to the extent that my GF ACTUALLY gets annoyed sometimes. I am, however, as a newb becoming annoyed myself quite often as I read through the available threads on CPF's. I think that many members here need regular reality checks. I see in almost every thread I read comments about horrible beams and how this light sucks because it "only" has 120 lumens and all I can say is SNAP OUT OF IT! I understand the quest for the perfect torch but either it doesn't exist or you already have it and are too busy finding faults with it to realize how good it is.
A little history: My first good light (not counting mags) was a SF 6P well over a decade ago. My first LED light was an original yellow Photon with the snap-apart case. The SF was, obviously, a religious experience. Between the output, the beam quality and the size I was truly in awe. Keep in mind, now, that mags were the best torch I'd seen until then. After owning it for awhile I realized that I hardly used it! It was not only ridiculously expensive (at the time) to operate with it's 1 hour runtime but it was way too bright for most of my uses. Then I heard about these LED thingies that were supposed to be really efficient! I went through the old-school progression from single 5mm led's to multi-5mm clusters and was always left wanting more. They had great battery life and a nice floody beam but WHERE WAS THE THROW!? The first high-power LED torch I saw was the custom Lambda Illuminator that squeezed a Luxeon Star w/optic emitter into a Brinkmann 2-AA torch. I borrowed one and was FLOORED! Here was an LED that nearly competed with my SF in brightness (not really but it was the brightest LED I'd ever seen) and beat it in runtime using AA batteries. Since then I'v owned many LED torches with my latest being the SF E1B and NC D10. I've read many posts on both of these lights and many of these were quite negative. I'll be the first to admit that every so often one of us gets a dud but the posts I've been seeing are apparently about normal specimens. I've read several about the "low" output of both of these and especially about the horrible "Cree ring circus" beams. Maybe I have really good specimens of both lighs but I think that the truth is some of us are getting spoiled (us older folks) and some of us were spoiled from the beginning because you don't know/haven't experienced LED torch history. I mean, my new D10 is competitive in both output and runtime with my original 6P and yet is flexible enough to squeeze several days runtime out of a single AA battery. Either way, most modern good quality LED torches will impress the hell out of anyone who still uses a mag and they will be especially stunned by the huge output and really smooth beams. I get the impression that many of the folks on these forums don't actually use the vast majority of their lights and instead play with them. When you stop doing that and use them to light up things that you need to see you'll realize just how good we have it and how extraordinary the modern LED torch really is!
A little history: My first good light (not counting mags) was a SF 6P well over a decade ago. My first LED light was an original yellow Photon with the snap-apart case. The SF was, obviously, a religious experience. Between the output, the beam quality and the size I was truly in awe. Keep in mind, now, that mags were the best torch I'd seen until then. After owning it for awhile I realized that I hardly used it! It was not only ridiculously expensive (at the time) to operate with it's 1 hour runtime but it was way too bright for most of my uses. Then I heard about these LED thingies that were supposed to be really efficient! I went through the old-school progression from single 5mm led's to multi-5mm clusters and was always left wanting more. They had great battery life and a nice floody beam but WHERE WAS THE THROW!? The first high-power LED torch I saw was the custom Lambda Illuminator that squeezed a Luxeon Star w/optic emitter into a Brinkmann 2-AA torch. I borrowed one and was FLOORED! Here was an LED that nearly competed with my SF in brightness (not really but it was the brightest LED I'd ever seen) and beat it in runtime using AA batteries. Since then I'v owned many LED torches with my latest being the SF E1B and NC D10. I've read many posts on both of these lights and many of these were quite negative. I'll be the first to admit that every so often one of us gets a dud but the posts I've been seeing are apparently about normal specimens. I've read several about the "low" output of both of these and especially about the horrible "Cree ring circus" beams. Maybe I have really good specimens of both lighs but I think that the truth is some of us are getting spoiled (us older folks) and some of us were spoiled from the beginning because you don't know/haven't experienced LED torch history. I mean, my new D10 is competitive in both output and runtime with my original 6P and yet is flexible enough to squeeze several days runtime out of a single AA battery. Either way, most modern good quality LED torches will impress the hell out of anyone who still uses a mag and they will be especially stunned by the huge output and really smooth beams. I get the impression that many of the folks on these forums don't actually use the vast majority of their lights and instead play with them. When you stop doing that and use them to light up things that you need to see you'll realize just how good we have it and how extraordinary the modern LED torch really is!
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