Tail cap clicky switch failure rate

The main idea being polled is the brand with which you've experienced the highest rate of switch failures over all other brands you've owned.

Polls only support up to a maximum of 10 entries, so this is going to leave off quite a few, unfortunately (bunched under "other"). I chose brands that to me appear to have a strong CPF presence. Not everybody is going to agree... but this is just an informal poll to get a "sense" on click switch reliability. As Mike pointed out, it would be much more accurate to have failures as a percentage of volume purchased.

There are a lot of Chinese brands on DX/KD... I wish I could have broken out Romisen, Ultrafire, and MTE, but again--not enough space. So they're all lumped under "Chinese brands".


Btw, please keep in mind that this isn't about brand bashing. Switch failure should not be indicative of overall brand quality. Please do not post negative comments. Thanks...

It was from Morrisons, a Minimag copy with a rear-mount clickie. It sticks from time to time, but a short, sharp slap against the desk sorts it.

The switch in my Fenix L1T V2.0 is slightly 'noisy'. If you hold it at a particular point, you can make it flicker. It's a minor irritation at the worst, but Fenix have withdrawn it to make imporvements. Look out for the T V3.0 soon.

I am giving a general warning at this early stage that this thread will NOT be permitted to deteriorate into 'Brand Warfare'.

I've got two magchargers with dead clickies...
Don't know how it happened; I barely ever used them. They simply don't work anymore. I click them on, off, it sounds and feels smooth but it just doesn't work. Banging the switch turns it on for a second so I know it's not the battery or bulb.

Never had one fail so can't say. Last switch I had fail was owing to a 10 foot drop with batteries in a plastic 2D. Well, the switch may just have worked but given that it was scattered in pieces I'd no ambition to find out.

DM51 said:

I am giving a general warning at this early stage that this thread will NOT be permitted to deteriorate into 'Brand Warfare'.

Click to expand...

Definitely not the intent and I hope I've made it plain that this is just to get a reliability reading on the tail cap switch only, and not to bash any brands. I also discourage anyone from making negative comments, but certainly if there have been good customer service experiences feel free to post (the absence of such postings for a brand can simply mean no one bothering to report any experiences good or bad).

DM51 said:

I am giving a general warning at this early stage that this thread will NOT be permitted to deteriorate into 'Brand Warfare'.

Click to expand...

Circle the wagons!

Now I am going to be one of those people who nitpick other people polls. This won't be a representative sample because if all you have is, say, 25 "GoodLume" lights and one failed, the only failure you will report is one of a Goodlume. Someone else may have had 75 Gigafyres, with not a failure in the lot, thus nothing will be reported. Meanwhile hie neightbor, who had bad luck on his Gigagyre, will report a failure which counts for exactly as many negatives as the the guy with 75 had positives - one, if you see what I mean.

For this to be meaningful you have to get the total number of each light out there and find it's failure rate in percent, not in numbers. And chances are mostly people with an axe to grind will respond. I will read a poll like this for entertainment, but otherwise ignore the results.

MikeLip said:

For this to be meaningful you have to get the total number of each light out there and find it's failure rate in percent, not in numbers. And chances are mostly people with an axe to grind will respond. I will read a poll like this for entertainment, but otherwise ignore the results.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I see what you mean. You're right--it would be more useful to have an indication of issues weighted on percentage of volume. It's hard to poll for something like that, so this is why I've tagged it as just "getting a sense" in people's experiences with switch issues. The general assumption is that the average CPF person has bought at least a handful of different brands over the years...

Surefire 6PD DOA out of the package.:mecry: Called surefire and they said they'd send a new tailcap. Called back 2 weeks later, tailcap is on backorder..hmm:thinking: perhaps there's a problem here. I'm supposed to get a new tailcap this week.