Marketing Hype

I keep seeing postings asking about choosing one light over another, based partially at least on lumen output "specifications". I've pointed out a number of times that these "specifications" are often simply dreamed up in a marketing department to be whatever number might help to sell a light, and with no basis at all on fact or measurement. A lot of other "specifications" are sometimes just as imaginative.

To their credit, quite a few of the more reputable brands are giving very realistic output and run time numbers. But here's an example of how a consumer-oriented flashlight's specifications are completely false.

The flashlight is a TechLite Lumen Master, purchased in a package of 2 at Costco. Among the claims on the package are:

-- Electronic Optimizer - Maintains constant lumen output for life of batteries.
-- 160 lumens
-- 4h (runtime)

So let's see how it did, using the provided Duracell alkaline cells. The following graph shows the approximate lumen output as a function of time (red trace). The lumen value was approximated using a Quickbeam type light box, calibrated using bare LEDs. A plot of a Fenix E20, specified by Fenix as having 109 lumen output, is shown for comparison. The measured value of 100 lumens shows that the approximation is reasonably good.

As you can see from the red graph, the output is nowhere near 160 lumens, and the light went completely dark in just half its claimed time of 4 hours, and it reached 50% intensity in just 22 minutes. The "constant lumen output" is a bad joke.

A Fenix E20, which actually does have a light output of about 109 lumens and a constant output, is shown for comparison, mainly to demonstrate that the measurement system is working like it should. (Run time can't be directly compared, since the E20 uses two AA cells vs 3-AAA for the TechLite.) And although the TechLite package makes no mention of using NiMH cells, you can see from the green plot that they produce better regulation and greater total light output than alkalines.



c_c

Yes, it happens all the time.

here is another example.

This product was first stated at a more realistic output.

After a few tweaks, the "new, improved version" is claimed to produce an output which is not really possible.

The newly claimed output seems to be deliberately positioned so that it appears to be a more plausible alternative to what would probably be considered to be its main rival in output. (if not class)

That's so bad it's a consumer deception issue. Nice work.

Another good example are the runtimes on the LedLenser website . 120h runtime at 200 lumen with 4x AAA, yeah right . This is one reason why I would never buy a LL.

rayman

What's also bad is that the marketing beam shots are over-exposed to show the lights giving out blazing beams brighter than the sun. That's false advertising to me. :thumbsdow Don't they know consumers can tell once they have the light in their hands and gets reeeeally disappointed? There goes another brand into the not-to-be-trusted list.

rayman said:

Another good example are the runtimes on the LedLenser website . 120h runtime at 200 lumen with 4x AAA, yeah right . This is one reason why I would never buy a LL.

rayman

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And LL/Coast fans wonder why the lights get so much grief on this site.

Very interesting testing. I had thought about buying the cheap led lights at Sams club, but I bet its the same type of thing. I will stick to my quality lights.

Thank you c_c.

For some unknown reason there was a flood of threads hyping these lights a couple of weeks ago. No surprise though that they are as bad as they are. It's nice to see the truth coming out.

Caveat emptor! So what else is new?

Wow, I knew a lot of them had to be advertising bull, but this is ridiculous... I'll stick with the good stuff, thanks for the heads up

Indeed. Output is meaningless altogether. We're only interested if the lights accomplish a certain series of tasks and to what extent they do this.
It's called usability through performance metrics.

Umm . . . any chance of a translation ?

Zeruel said:

What's also bad is that the marketing beam shots are over-exposed to show the lights giving out blazing beams brighter than the sun. That's false advertising to me. :thumbsdow Don't they know consumers can tell once they have the light in their hands and gets reeeeally disappointed? There goes another brand into the not-to-be-trusted list.

Click to expand...

I've noticed ALOT of them do this. In fact I've yet to get a flashlight that threw a spot like the one on the manufacturers website, but I've also never let myself expect a light to look exactly like the website, I rely solely on CPF beamshots. lovecpf

Moonshadow said:

Umm . . . any chance of a translation ?

Click to expand...

My take on the phrase " usability through performance metrics" is that it means, if it does the job you want, it's good for you. Like if you want a light to read with at night, without waking your spouse, you wouldn't use a catapult.

A different analogy might be if you want to take a calf with the scours to the vet, and you had a choice of a Mercedes S class car, or a ford pickup, you'd choose the vehicle with the most "usability through performance metrics" to do the job.

Informed consumers are the bane of marketing hype. Where flashlights are concerned, CPF is the home of the informed consumer. Thanks to your test, we all just became a little more informed.

I wouldn't hold my breath though waiting for the villagers to grab their pitchforks and axe handles and march down to the local Costco. Like it or not, when an average consumer is asked, "Hey, what's a good flashlight?", a large percentage are still going to point to the ubiquitous 2D M@g incan as the industry standard. So even if when we put all the phony hype aside, because the bar for 'what is decent performance from a flashlight' has been set so low by M@g, an uneducated user will take this Costco product and soon be bragging to his friends about how this little light is brighter than his 2D M@g even after it's been on for an hour, and it uses only 3 little, dirt cheap AAA cells instead of expensive Ds, and it's so much smaller, and it's bulb will never burn out. In short, he'll be thrilled with the performance of this little piece of crap.

It's all rather silly, it's all just "advertising" and it's all over the place, has been for a long time.

Every product I've ever seen advertised has some sort of marketing exaggeration singing its praises. I ask myself why should a torch be any different and wonder why it would surprise anyone that I don't rush to grab my "torch" and pitchfork over that when I'm not inspired to do such a thing over any other product advertiser's bluster.

As for lumen counts, what buyer can count em anyway? The torch either lights up the target subject or it doesn't and I've never known how many lumens that takes, I've just got to suck it and see so it doesn't really matter to me what number's written on the box.

You should send your testing report to Costco! And while you are at it, go return those pieces of junk since Costco has such a great return policy. |

Bring your graph with you and spend extra time explaining all of this to the person behind the desk just for fun!

Archaeologists are going to make some stunning revelations one day.

"They had 1xAA LED's capable of 250 lumens and 16340's storing 1100mAh in 2010 !"

rayman said:

Another good example are the runtimes on the LedLenser website . 120h runtime at 200 lumen with 4x AAA, yeah right . This is one reason why I would never buy a LL.

rayman

Click to expand...

+1. When I first decided to buy a torch for running, it was obvious from the specs that LED Lenser easily outperformed all other makes. Fortunately I found online reviews that showed the claims to be little more than lies.

LeifUK said:

+1. When I first decided to buy a torch for running, it was obvious from the specs that LED Lenser easily outperformed all other makes. Fortunately I found online reviews that showed the claims to be little more than lies.

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If you try to buy decent Led-lights from here, say from outdoor activity stores or so, they propably have LL´s. Second option is somekind of cheap & bad...

When I got my first LL (single 14500), I was surprised how powerful a led light can be! Not anymore when my friends some cheap DX-light outrunned it in about everything...
LL was about 70$, everyone knows what DX-lights cost.
People actually re-sale DX-lights in net for about 2x to 3x price in here... + shipping

Its all about marketing.
I really was thinking back then as an ignorant that Lensers are "the thing" in Led lights.

As I have been reading a while this forum, I kinda... changed my mind... :thumbsup: