Acrylic lens or reflector - which is better?

In my flashlight collection, some LED flashlights use an acrylic lens to focus the light, while others use a reflector. Does anyone have thoughts on which is more efficient at transmitting and focusing light?

The acylic lens tends to transmit the light in a very narrow but throwy beam. Whereas the reflector tends to give you a mix of spot and flood. Depending on the configuration, the reflector could also give you a huge flood of light. There are lots of possibilities with reflectors.

almost equal.

the reflector (a good one!) looses some :thinking: 10% of light + the front glass loss (another 5-10%),
any media transition looses about 3-10 % (depending on material) and an optic has 2 of them + the internal reflection loss

at least, since switching to good reflectors its my impression that optics are way worse. Even if they are not, its inside the head. Seeing all that area around the emitter being lit with an optic but dark with a reflector, is my reason to use the way cheaper optics in less important lights only, f.e. town bike tri-Cree:



this one gets smoked by my single Cree with McR-XR 19 mm reflector, but the dynamo only gives some 500-550 mAh to the triple, while the modded light pushes some 900 mA to the single cree.

Oh, i thought when he said acrylic lens, he means the TIR lense like on the inova lights. I didn't know he meant the optics.

also possible, I was wrong and You were right with the lens
are there this much lights actually using lenses?

optical lenses seem to loose more light than reflectors...because with lenses not all the light gets put out from just the front and some of it is lost from the sides whereas with reflectors the light either hits the reflector and bounces out or just shines straight out which is what makes up most of the spill...thats probly a reason why inova has chged from optics to reflectors to gain more output and spill...