What will be the led flashlight trend? Brighter? Smaller?More mutifuctional?

First, I confess that I don't have rich experiences with the flashlight field though, when I browseing the Surefire models on their website, I came up a question that, why Surefire do not develop high lumens led flashlights like others?

What's your opinion about the future trend? What kind of flashlights will eventually meet the most customers' need?

Q -What will be the led flashlight trend? Brighter? Smaller?More mutifuctional? A- Yes, and better tint.

Longer run times.

xenotorch said:

why Surefire do not develop high lumens led flashlights like others?

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Surefire rates their lights tougher than most any maker out there so while their numbers appear low, they can hold their own against any light made. They also realize that high lumens is not the only measure of a quality light. Durability, reliability, and optics are also very important to Surefire.

I'm still waiting for a flashlight with integrated heatpipes and active cooling

It has to happen sooner or later!

The trend will be : Better lights!

Have a look on other technology, it always evolves in all directions, some focus on power, some on runtime, some on beauty, same for flashlights. There are so many manufacturers and new ones are still coming, so that each company which will be among the winners has to take a certain position and develop their lights according to that.

Surefire goes straight the quality way. They take profit from being an "old" company that has the knowledge and the built quality. They underate Lumens and develop their lights for a certain application, not to brag hundreds of useless Lumens everywhere. They test everything out thoroughly before they bring it on the market, you know what you buy.

I agree with Henk Lu.

Lumens sell to flashaholics (including myself). Price sells to the public-at-large. Quality sells to the people who REALLY need a flashlight.

The winner in the longrun will be . . . . . . . . . quality.

Joe

Henk_Lu said:

The trend will be : Better lights!

Have a look on other technology, it always evolves in all directions, some focus on power, some on runtime, some on beauty, same for flashlights. There are so many manufacturers and new ones are still coming, so that each company which will be among the winners has to take a certain position and develop their lights according to that.

Surefire goes straight the quality way. They take profit from being an "old" company that has the knowledge and the built quality. They underate Lumens and develop their lights for a certain application, not to brag hundreds of useless Lumens everywhere. They test everything out thoroughly before they bring it on the market, you know what you buy.

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this pretty much sums up my thoughts as well.

Definitely, brighter is better... we will see more lumens from more manufacturers. That much is certain.

The ceiling however is LED performance (efficiency, surface brightness, Lumen output). The battery and manufacturing technology exists beyond the capabilities of what the LEDs are capable of delivering.

The LED flashlight trend will follow the general LED trend. Brighter more efficient LEDs, lower power requirements, cooler running LEDs, longer runtimes. I'm guessing probably not a whole lot new in terms of features or construction quality.

I think you answered the question already. At least I hope this is true for those makers to which we pay attention. Bring on the tiny multimode pocket rockets.

Geoff

well they get more expensive every year that is for sure...

I want to see more plastic higher output multimode LED lights. With the more and more efficient emitters it should be easier to have a cree XP-etc LED in a propoly whoseewatzit light with 5 levels and a disco blink with free included mirror ball

I would think all of the above... you didn't mention tint, runtime, or Quality!
We mostly look for the wow factor at first, but lately, I've been considering the last three items first!

Flying Turtle said:

Bring on the tiny multimode pocket rockets.

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As long as they are infinitely variable. As lights get both smaller and brighter, this is going to become more important. If the light tops out at 130 lumens, it's ok to only have 3 set modes, but as the maximum brightness goes up, the mode progression starts to get silly. You end up with modes like 3 / 50 / 380 lumens, with the last level both killing the battery in 20 minutes and overheating the light. At some point in the future, when the latest Cree XP-whatever puts out 3000 lumens on max, 3 modes just isn't going to cut it for anything other than dedicated SAR lights (which will probably be single-mode anyway).

Yes, yes yes to all of the above but the thing I'd really like to see is a return to smaller diameter heads. While I understand the physics and reasons for the current batch of ~50mm heads I find them a PIA to cart about in the real world.
I'm sure someone could put together a high output emitter with optics(either conventional or "trios" or TIR) and give us a head diameter that does not extend much past the body. Something like the old Inova T4's or 5's dimensions would be most attractive.
I've got an old T5 and have been going to have a crack at this but haven't had the time.
4 Sevens...are you reading this? If you are I'd also like a pocket clip.

1 what said:

Yes, yes yes to all of the above but the thing I'd really like to see is a return to smaller diameter heads.

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+1

My dream "medium size" / "large EDC" light:

• Jet III Pro ST size and shape (big enough for an 18650, moderately beefy)
• high-CRI SST-50 with a driver capable of supplying 0 to ~3A
• automatic thermal protection, preferably a smooth power reduction rather than straight cutoff
• a nice smooth, fat hotspot (reflector or optics, I don't care, as long as it fits in the head)
• an interface that doesn't suck (infinitely variable and/or large "pool" of preset levels that I can choose from when necessary--at least one of which should be "highest brightness that doesn't cause the thermal protection to kick in")

You'll note that my "dream" workhorse light would use a rather bright emitter, but underdrive it fairly significantly. It would also use a head that isn't nearly large enough to "optimize" the beam. However, I don't really care, because the "max brightness" is so bright that it's not worth chasing if I can sacrifice some brightness to get some neat features and/or real-world usability. Hmmm...I think I just described Surefire's engineering goals. :thinking:

So, while the lumen race is important, the real good that comes out of it, IMHO, is that manufacturers will get to a point that brightness is high enough to no longer be a real selling point, and they'll start adding better and better UI and/or features to compete.

If history is a guide, multi level lights with longer runtimes will be the trend. Hopefully high CRI and quality manufacturing as well.

Just my two cents, but I think longer runtimes equally with higher output will be the trend. More than three modes is mostly useless, however the programmable UI like the Quarks is just about perfect.

Eventually people are going to say, "I don't really want 2,000 lumens in a AA light for 20 minutes, I'll settle for 800 for three hours, 400 for 12 hours with 3 lumens for six months."

- CRI -

More user-defined control (user interface).

If you want Low-Medium-High, you can program it as such.

If you want High-Medium-Low, or Medium-Low-High, it is (again), your choice.


If you HATE S-O-S mode, you can leave it out.

Ditto for Strobe mode.


Something along the lines of the LiteFlux models, but with a connection
to yer' PC, so programming choices are MUCH easier, and straight-forward.


This would FINALLY put to rest the (very heated) discussions about "which UI is Best"