Why the dislike for Maglites?

Hello, I was just browsing the forums, and noticed that a lot of people talk about "m@glites" almost as if they consider them to be in the same class as $1 wal-mart lights.
I may be wrong, but it seems very prevalent to me.
I was just wondering what the reason for this is, not trying to make an argument for them or anything.
Why?

Cheers

-SARLights

I too am curious about this. What exactly does M@glite stand for? I thought maybe some odd copyright thing or people being cute.


From a CPF point of view, maglites are kind of the standard. They are well built and have lots of aluminum, but their emitters are pretty weak, even the LED versions. So they make fairly large heavy and poor flashlights to a trained CPFer.

Still, many people here love to modify Maglites and Ive personally seen many very well done mods and its hard to beat a maglite for getting a solid host for cheap.

I think almost every CPF member over the age of 18 has at least one maglite somewhere. They are venerable lights but outdated, dinosaurs of the flashlight world. But because of their age, there are lots of modifications available, and the design is iconic, so people still get them.

Heck, I bought a AAA and AA minimag pack a few weeks ago just to stick in some LED upgrades I found online.

I'm not aware of any general dislike of Mags in here. Stock Mags are fairly weak compared to other products out there if you are looking at pure lumens, but they are very popular (tons of mods available). I interpret the spelling as similar to people calling McDonalds 'Mickey D's'.

I stick up for maglites all the time- in the C and D versions, they are excellent self defense items that also emit a certain amount of light. But seriously folks, try the veal.

But seriously-seriously, when stuck on a dark road with dubious people slowing down to take a look, give me a maglite to hold. And if large batteries happen to be what you can get, what else are you going to use?

I believe the brand was started by a Mr Maglica.........hence the name of the lite.

Some would say that maglite has sort of dropped the ball in terms of staying current with all the new advancements we have been seeing in the last few years.
They were certainly the benchmark back in the day (IMO).
Regardless, they make sweet hosts.

joe1512 said:

I too am curious about this. What exactly does M@glite stand for? I thought maybe some odd copyright thing or people being cute.

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I'm not sure about CPF as a whole, but I always understood M@glite to mean a Maglite which had been modded/changed in some way. After it's been modded, it's not really a "Maglite" per say, hence the name change.

At least, I used to call my Maglite 2D a..well.. Maglite, until I modded it, and now it's a M@g09 (Maglite 2D body w/ FM CL-1909 bulb for 2000 lumens)

Don't know about the rest, though.

Some of the newer LED based Mags have decent throw, runtime and utility. I love 3D Mags as the basic base for most of my mods. They just fit my hand well and are not too heavy to carry on a 5 mile walk. I even have a 6D Mag or two. Why do you ask? So when the SHTF and the flesh eating zombies walk the earth and in your darkest moments you will see your uncle Fulgeo cresting the horizon as the light throwing pipe swinging CPFer I am!:thumbsup:

I am planning on acquiring a 3D Maglite to use as a host for some future LED projects. Is it better it get an incandescent or a LED light.

Sounds reasonable to me.
Never really thought about it before.
You learn something new everyday
Thanks.

hoongern said:

I'm not sure about CPF as a whole, but I always understood M@glite to mean a Maglite which had been modded/changed in some way. After it's been modded, it's not really a "Maglite" per say, hence the name change.

At least, I used to call my Maglite 2D a..well.. Maglite, until I modded it, and now it's a M@g09 (Maglite 2D body w/ FM CL-1909 bulb for 2000 lumens)

Don't know about the rest, though.

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M@glite does indeed make a well machined product for a fair price. Their product development may be slow, but for the larger high-volume companies this is a common complaint.

People here are resentful of M@glite because they were overly-aggressive in suing other companies, many of which are now out of business. The companies were trying to innovate and break into the flashlight market and Mag tries to kill them by litigating. I believe that the spelling of M@glite was a sarcastic way of keeping it less visible on the web to their legal dept.

Their advertised output was a sham because, more than any other brand, their incandescent filaments performed notoriously poorly once the average cell voltage dipped below, say, 1.4V.

dougw said:

I am planning on acquiring a 3D Maglite to use as a host for some future LED projects. Is it better it get an incandescent or a LED light.

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Hey Dougw! Your question has the potential to start a big argument since alot of CPFers have major opinions on the subject on which is better. Dig thru a few threads and you will see what I mean. It usually starts a flame war. That being said why not build 2 X 3D Mag mods and decide for yourself? Each design has advantages and disadvantages. A good place to start would be to build a SSC P7 mod and a WA1185 mod. Use your google-fu!

Happy mods!

~

I guess .... simply cause we've moved past em .... to better things .

Mag lights are the 80's & 90's Tech.

We are now in the 21st century of lights !

Why use a C or D cell as long and as fat as your forearm ........

when you can now use one with the same brightness and reach .... that fits in your pocket ?


~

LED_Thrift said:

I believe that the spelling of M@glite was a sarcastic way of keeping it less visible on the web to their legal dept.

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That's an interesting reason. So far we have two reasons why people do that. Any others? :laughing:

I've read here on these forums somewhere that the use of M@gLite instead of MagLite is so that Google searches don't turn up a billion results pointing back to CPF.

I'm one of those folks who love to buy MagLites to use as hosts. Even the LED ones are nothing more than hosts to me.

dougw said:

I am planning on acquiring a 3D Maglite to use as a host for some future LED projects. Is it better it get an incandescent or a LED light.

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The only real advantage of the Rebel 3D MagLED over the 3D MagLite is that you get the deeper reflector. This should result in a few more Lux directed down range than the older reflector. The non-Rebel MagLED and incandescent MagLites have a shallower reflector. You can install a Rebel MagLED reflector in one of these lights but the reflector will hit the end of the body of the light when you screw the head all the way down because they cut the threads on the body tube shorter on the Rebel MagLEDs. The Rebel MagLEDs can take both long and short reflectors. The Rebel MagLEDs are slightly longer overall than the older MagLEDs and regular MagLites to compensate for the longer reflector.

A lot of people lost respect for Maglite when they sued the original Arc Flashlight into oblivion.

Some people called their mods M@gs, M&gs etc to make it easier to find them here using a search.

I understand that it's a difference between the opinion of stock Maglites (who are out of date by a large margin) and Maglite as a modding host.
I have many Maglites (just see my collection linked in the signature), and the only one I use in stock condition is MagCharger. The MiniMaglites are the only flashlights in my collection who I have just for collecting purpose. Soon I am waiting for a coming NEOFAB 1000+ lumens dropin to 5 or 6D...

Regards, Patric

Mags rock! I don't care what anyone says about the size, company ethics or what else. If it weren't for Maglite, there would be a few thousand less flashaholics in the world (and that's bad).

Stock mags are a poor example of a flashlight though. As a host for modding, they are second to none as you can choose any battery format and any drop-in modification you can dream of. You can't get 1000+ lumens out of a P60 size drop-in with any kind of useful runtime.

Here is a very good reason to own a mag. And things are only going to get brighter and better as time goes on. One thing that won't change in the world is people who want to mod their mags.