Runtime estimates, which manufacturers are honest, which ones lie?

MacTech

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one common thread i've been seeing is that many of the major manufacturers are.....less than honest.... when it comes to rating the runtime and usable light of their flashlights, it seems the biggest offenders seem to be Mag Instrument and to a lesser extent, Streamlight, apparently Inova inflates their Lumens ratings....

it seems that there are few "honest" flashlight companies out there, they're all using their merchandizing/advertising departments to obfuscate the actual performance numbers of their products

i know we can check the flashlight reviews sites for the *real* data on runtime/brightness, but it also makes me think....

what are the *honest* companies, companies that give us true and accurate performance numbers on their products, there have to be some out there, surely the advertising drones haven't corrupted *all* the flashlight makers, what companies give honest, accurate performance numbers?
 

Kiessling

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Honest IMHO:
- Arc
- Eternalight
- Peak
- Lupine
- HDS

Inflated:
- LedLenser (ridiculous!)
- Fenix
- Microfire (lumen rating of Warrior)
- and unfortunately very many of all the others, too

Problematic:
- SureFire ... as they de-flate their lumen ratings .. call it super-honest ... but it makes comparisons difficult

I have certainly forgotten some and don't know for sure about others, and all this is IMHO ... have to be careful on what to say about such a topic.

bernhard
 

Roy

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The runtime that is advertised for the Heliotec appears to be honest. They claim 6-8 hours and I measered 7+ hours!
 
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offroadcmpr

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Petzl, black diamond, and sometimes princeton tec inflate their ratings on at least their headlamps
 

Sub_Umbra

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I've always thought it's interesting that some companies will take great pains to create a high quality light and then obfuscate the runtime. I know that non-flashaholics are probably not familiar with the "50% brightness" standard that we use to express runtimes but I have often wondered why some manufacturers of really nice lights often seem to opt to not bring their customer base along and give them figures that they may actually use to help them choose the right light for the right task.

LSI was a good example. Their little 2Xcr123 Nightcutter Sport had a great feature set, QC, price and had nothing to hide. But LSI's runtime numbers for all of their lights were meaningless. Unfortunate.

I can see why someone who made really crappy lights might do it but I'm puzzled by the rest.
 

Rebus

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Manufacturers test runtime the way most people will use
their flashlights. 5 to 30 mins. on at a time with long periods of
rest inbetween. They do not test for continuous runtime.
We all Know this, but we continue to only talk about continuous
runtime? It is time consuming for us to test this way, so we
seldom do I guess.

I'm not saying that this kind of testing would always give
the runtimes stated, but it would be much longer than a
continuous test. As much as twice as long in a moderate
drain situation.

-Rebus
 
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PeLu

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offroadcmpr said:
Petzl, .. inflate their ratings
Petzl gives quite a good definition about how they rate the runtime. You might agree with them or not if it makes sense, but the data given is realistic.

And BTW, HDS data used to be much too conservative. The ActionLight one always gave at least 30% more runtime, sometimes twice as much as given.
 

Kiessling

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Rebus said:
I'm not saying that this kind of testing would always give
the runtimes stated, but it would be much longer than a
continuous test. As much as twice as long in a moderate
drain situation.
-Rebus

Quite the opposite. Continious runtimes are considerably longer than intermittent ones, at least in high drain devices which all our lights are.

Click here !

bernie
 

Navck

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"500 hours battery life!"
Testing method:We took our light, and turned it on every 25 seconds, left it on for 15, and then waited another 25, this is to simutlate the rarity of our consumer actually turning the light on.

Heh.
 

Rebus

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Kiessling said:
Quite the opposite. Continious runtimes are considerably longer than intermittent ones, at least in high drain devices which all our lights are.

Click here !

bernie


Test that I have performed were on a Mad Max that was turned down somewhat, a 5 led 5mm light with 2 AA cells and on various direct
drive lights. All test used alkaline batteries. I got from 70 to 100%
more runtime. I did my test while I watched TV, 30 min on-30 min off, if
they lasted more than one day I let them rest overnight and continued
the next day.

-Rebus
 

Kiessling

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Need to clarify: IIRC the "continious longer than intermittent" is true for Lithium chemistries in higher drain devices. Maybe your light won't fit that category. Then again ... I am just replicating the astonishing finds of that thread I linked ... and have no technical clue myself :green:
bernie
 

offroadcmpr

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PeLu said:
Petzl gives quite a good definition about how they rate the runtime. You might agree with them or not if it makes sense, but the data given is realistic.


After a little more research regarding Petzl I do have hand it to them by being more honest. look here for their definitions of how they do their runtime and such. They basically say that they define light as until it reaches .25 lux at 2m, or 1 lux at 1 meter. In my opinion this is very dim, for comparison, the non-ultra infinity scored 5 lux, while the ultra scored 25. I've heard some people say that the non-ultra has the dimmist usuable amount of light they have. Remember that to the eye, 5 lux compared to 1 lux will not apear 5 times brighter, I am not sure for the reasons, but thats the way it is.

Black diamond on the other hand says that their usable light is defined as
*Usable Light: Black Diamond defines Usable Light to mean you can: look inside your pack and find an item at
the bottom; see your feet when you are climbing at night; see well enough to tie a knot and set up a rappel.
I don't quite get their reasoning, it takes more light to walk on the ground than it does to look inside of a backpack that is 3 feet closer to your head than your feet. They do not say if the persons eyes have adjusted to the night. For instance, how often have we turned on a light in the middle of the night, only to cringe because of the brightness, even though it is just a 5mm LED with dying batteries. It makes a big difference on how adjusted to the dark you are.


moral of the story, don't believe everything you see. While petzl does give you the procedure they use, I doubt that the average person would know what a lux is, or what to compare it to and so forth.
enough ranting, happy holidays.
 

Anders

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I emailed one of the sellers of Led-Lenser here in sweden and told them that Led-lenser lights doesn't run on NiMh cells. The answer from them was that the buyers of Led-Lenser wasn't interested of running their lights with NiMh cells cause the running-time is 300-400 hours with Led-Lenser lights.:)

We where talking about V2TL ( Luxeon 3 with 3 C-cell )
 
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