Worse flashlight feature by far

3_gun

Enlightened
Joined
Jun 27, 2021
Messages
645
Magnitic tailcap is the greatest thing since sliced bread! Proprietary/non replaceable batteries are far far far worse. Will not own or buy one if there is ANYTHING close to what I need with a replaceable battery
 

Hooked on Fenix

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Dec 13, 2007
Messages
3,158
Worst flashlight feature ever was the shake light type flashlight. Sounded great. Free power to charge the light just by shaking it a bit. Unfortunately, the capacitor didn't hold a charge long and wouldn't charge at all after any length of time in storage. It was use it or lose it. The strong magnets also made it so you had to keep the light away from all your other electronics. Couldn't carry it next to your wallet with all those magnetic strip cards and couldn't carry it in a backpack with a laptop, digital camera, or any other expensive electronics. Couldn't have it near your phone either. The worst part was how bad it made you look in public trying to charge the light. Mad TV did a comedy sketch about it about 15 years ago (you can find it on YouTube if you look up Mad TV- Flashlights). I'm not going to post that video here but you can look it up if you want.
 

slumber

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Sep 22, 2011
Messages
1,798
Location
The Alamo
That sketch from Mad TV is great!

I own one light that's got both horrible features mentioned above...magnetic charging tail cap and proprietary battery. It's Olight H2R and I hate it. Turbo doesn't work most of the time. Either the battery can't sustain it or the tail cap has too much resistance. Sometimes if I loosen and tighten the cap a few times hard, it will start working. It's a house beater now.
I also have the original Warrior X, which luckily works with regular 18650's. The stock battery started self discharging a few months after buying the light. I keep an unprotected button top Samsung 30Q in it now.
 

Lynx_Arc

Flashaholic
Joined
Oct 1, 2004
Messages
11,212
Location
Tulsa,OK
Even worse than proprietary batteries (though only by a slim margin) is next-mode memory, and by association, ON-time memory. Ho-lee jeebus do I hate that.
I have several cheap light that have NMM, and I found a post that told me how to fix it with a #2 pencil.
 

defloyd77

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
May 10, 2007
Messages
2,670
Location
Wisconsin
I own one light that's got both horrible features mentioned above...magnetic charging tail cap and proprietary battery. It's Olight H2R and I hate it. Turbo doesn't work most of the time.

To top that, The M2R Pro had a proprietary battery and magnetic charging on it's switch, which was also used for a magnetic remote switch. That lead to paperclips activating turbo mode unintentionally.
 

Monocrom

Flashaholic
Joined
Aug 27, 2006
Messages
20,305
Location
NYC
#3 ~ Magnetic tailcaps.
(Don't wear a mechanical wrist-watch if your EDC light has this feature.)

#2 ~ Proprietary batteries.
(Even worse, the ones you can't get at, at all to replace with the same battery from the same company; even if you wanted to!)

#1 ~ Smart flashlights.
(The kind that shut off completely when the light, not YOU, decides it should shut off. And, the batteries still have plenty of juice inside the lights. I've had a couple of these lights over the years. Placed them where they belong.... in the trash!!! Seriously, who was the moronic excuse for an engineer who thought that would be a great idea for a flashlight?)
 

knucklegary

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Feb 11, 2017
Messages
4,223
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NorCal, Central Coast
Available at Harbor Freight
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