Why are twisties better then clickies? Seriously.

Can someone please explain to me why some people like twisties? Honestly, I don't understand the advantages at all. It seems like clickies are easier / faster to operate, and can be used one-handedly (is that a word?) better then a twisty.

The only resonable arguments for a twisty I can gather just from reading around here is that they take up a bit less space and they tend to hold up a bit better over the years (mechanically).

But with lifetime warranties on a lot of the high quality lights, if a clicky goes bad, you can get it replaced for free. So the 2nd point is kinda moot (a little bit). And if you want it smaller, just go to a CR2 or a RCR2 battery to compensate for the slightly longer clicky... so the first point is kinda moot too.

Somebody out there please show me the light (pun intended) and twist (pun intended) my views to the "twisty" side of thinking, or else I'm affraid my opinions have "clicked" (pun intended) into place for the clicky camp.

i think you have a good grasp of the tradeoffs involved and it all really boils down to issues of need and personal preference.

for example, the clicky is much easier in terms of use and operation, especially one-handed, but the twistie is ultimate simplicity and reliability. there are also issues of how robust and/or waterproof your light needs to be, and in these cases, one may be preferred over the other, and in some cases neither =)

in terms of battery size, there is also the tradeoff of runtime/brightness/size. you can only choose two.

so as with everything, you choose what works best for you according to your own needs. i have both but honestly in my casual use, i don't care if my clicky breaks down on me while i'm walking through a dark hallway to my office gym. a LEO or a diver or caver who depends on their light might think differently about their light when their lives could depend on it when the SHTF. accidentally click on your light and let the enemy know where you are? oops... there may be no second chance! needs and desires and wants. it's all a big tradeoff =)

One word: reliability

if a clicky goes bad, you can get it replaced for free. So the 2nd point is kinda moot (a little bit).

Click to expand...

Law enforcement and military people don't have that luxury when they are in combat or in a tactical situation. Neither do campers, climbers and backpackers far from the urban environment. Therefore, they better have a damn reliable flashlight, and that's where the twist-action comes into play.

Clickies tend to turn on when the light is in my pocket. I had problems keeping batteries alive in my Arc LSH. Then I swapped out the clicky for a twisty, and my problems went away.

Every flashlight that has ever failed me has been a clicky (just a few but still). Like the others said, ultimate reliability can mean the difference between life and death sometimes, and especially for law enforcement and military people. I would rather trust my life to a twisty than a clicky.

If push buttons are not reliable enough for law enforcement, then why do almost all "tactical" style lights (like SureFire) have buttons for activation on them? And why does the SWAT teams use hand-grip activated buttons on thier long firearms?

Wouldn't you need the quickness of a button if you were using it tactically? (as evidenced by the almost universal adoption of buttons on "tactical" style lights?)

Are clickies REALLY that unreliable? Do they break like every 1,000 presses or something? I'm not being crass, I'm a newbie to all this just trying to make sense of it all. I mean what's the chances of a clicky going bad exactly in the life or death moment of a LEO encounter? If it's "life-or-death", shouldn't the officer have drawn his firearm?

Anyway... just my thoughts on you guys comments so far... and so far, I'm still not convinced. Maybe I just need a clicky to go bad on me to covert me over. How unreliable could they be? They good ones (i.e. Surefire quality) are made out of high-grade metal with heavy duty construction. I just don't see how they could be SOOOOO unreliable.

Outdoors Fanatic said:

One word: reliability



Law enforcement and military people don't have that luxury when they are in combat or in a tactical situation. Neither do campers, climbers and backpackers far from the urban environment. Therefore, they better have a damn reliable flashlight, and that's where the twist-action comes into play.

Click to expand...

Ehhh I disagree. Redundancy, and safety out weigh reliability. One, a twisty in a tactical situation, or even regular patrol is far from practical. A button is far more useful for quick reaction times. Two, by carrying two (or in my case three) lights I never have to worry about a light going down and me being stuck in a bad situation. If you practice redundancy for tactical/patrol operations you are already ahead of the game.

Not to say that a twisty isn't more reliable...in the right situations...but for LE it just isn't.

yalskey said:

If push buttons are not reliable enough for law enforcement, then why do almost all "tactical" style lights (like SureFire) have buttons for activation on them? And why does the SWAT teams use hand-grip activated buttons on thier long firearms?

Wouldn't you need the quickness of a button if you were using it tactically? (as evidenced by the almost universal adoption of buttons on "tactical" style lights?)

Are clickies REALLY that unreliable? .

Click to expand...

I have never had a clickie go bad on me...and if you are aware of what condition your lights are in on a regular basis you have already planned ahead for that....see my above comments as well.

yalskey said:

If push buttons are not reliable enough for law enforcement, then why do almost all "tactical" style lights (like SureFire) have buttons for activation on them?

Click to expand...

Yes, but that's not a clicky. Example, on most of the Surefire lights the button is more like a 'push' momentary twisty. It's still a twisty to turn on properly.

If you don't think reliability is an issue then search for the words Switch, Broken and Help in this forum.

I don't think it's a big issue myself but if you are out in the woods and the switch breaks, a warranty is no good till the morning at the earliest. What you going to do till then ??

For me, I just don't want it to turn on in my pocket.

perhaps - "momentary" is being confused with "clicky"?

my "tactical" lights are twisty with push button momentry switches - ie they switch off when I take pressure off the switch (there is no mechanical clicky on/off?)
:shrug:

yalskey said:

If push buttons are not reliable enough for law enforcement, then why do almost all "tactical" style lights (like SureFire) have buttons for activation on them? And why does the SWAT teams use hand-grip activated buttons on thier long firearms?

Click to expand...

My new E2E clickie broke the second day with only 20 minutes of run time. Surefire replace it quikly.

I haven't been around this that long but I have both from Surefire including one clickie that broke after about a week and a few of the twities which seem to be made a lot better.

I dont think that one is better than the other, just that they both have there own uses.

I would personally have to agree that a clickie switch is much more comfortable to use and much quicker to use in most situations.

However, I would also have to note that a twisty is much more reliable than a clickie in that there is almost no chance of failure since all you are doing when turning it on is moving a piece of metal further down a thread towards the negative terminal of the battery to the body of the flashlight and completing the circuit.

With a clickie, there are many, many more components, with springs, plastic retainers and clips. Just the added complexity of the switch means there is a greater chance of failure. You can hardly anticipate the breaking of any one of these components unless you put your switch through an x-ray on regular intervals.

You can also have intuitive 2 stage switches with twisties. A2, L2 etc.

One point that noone has mentioned so far-- Many of the clickies can be made to operate like a twisty. Click the switch on, then unscrew the head or endcap and you have a quasi-twistie.

I have more clickies than twisties and I forget to use this feature sometime. I wear my clickies on my belt and I have turned the light on accidently a few times, as I am sure everyone has. I have not been in a life-threatening situation, nor do I plan to be, as I am a civilian.

I tend to carry a pocket light in my right front pocket. With a twistie, it is easy to pull it out and turn it on one-handed (assuming a smooth twistie) in an underhand fashion, close to the ground. With a tailcap clickie, I normally have to pull it up overhead and turn it on with my thumb, "hammer style". The twistie move is easier and faster.

If you want a light in the smallest size possible.... the switch mechanism adds extra length to a light. For a keychain light unless you want to use watch batteries a twisty may be the same size as a button cell switch light.

Protaeus said:

...a twisty is much more reliable than a clickie...

Click to expand...

Here's what I don't understand about the reliability argument:

It's overall flashlight reliability that counts, not just switch reliability. If military/LEO users can't accept the tiny chance a switch could fail, how can they accept the much greater chance an incandescent bulb could fail? By that reasoning every military/LEO user should only use twist-switch LED lights, never incandescent.

There's also operational reliability from operational simplicity. A clickie or tactical momentary pusbutton is much simpler to operate. A certain % of time (esp under stress) people turn a twisty the wrong way. It requires though about what hand is holding it, which way to turn, etc.

For these reasons a pure twisty seems suboptimal in certain combat or LEO environments. It requires more time and thought to operate, sometimes two hands. In that scenario, the issue is not twisty vs clicky, but tactical momentary pushbutton vs clicky.

Is a tactical momentary really more reliable than a clicky? My E1e and U2 have clickies with initial momentary on. How likely is the momentary on feature of those switches to fail vs the momentary pushbutton of a G2? If you argue that upon failure of the tactical momentary switch, you'd just fall back to the twist switch, during that time you could just as easily pull out a backup light.

My L4 has seen tons of on duty and off duty use with absolutely no switch failures. My SL Ultra Stinger has had the switch "stick" a couple of times, but no failures. Wish I could justify a twist for work, but it just won't cut it.

Has anyone mentioned the fact that a clickie costs roughly three times that of a twisty tailcap?