ANSI lumens

so does anyone think manufactures are tweaking their lights to appear to have awesome ansi ratings,but when you look at runtime/lumens charts it appears that these huge numbers soon drop off in like 5 minutes after turn on,almost as in to get good ansi ratings with high values for sales purposes?
then they drop off to like 60-70% of that 5 minutes measured values.
does anybody else notice this and think ansi ratings are being used less than honestly to fool a unwitting customer who forks out big dollars,and thinks the performance advertised is what they will be getting say even 20 minutes into turning the light on?
if so maybe ansi lumen ratings should be measured at 30 minutes after turn on,or be measured from turn on to the time the battery depleats then be converted into a average figure.
am i on to something here or not?
look at the quark 123x2 X on lightreviews.com and check out the runtime chart,and tell me what you think is going on...

I know the Fenix TK70 does this, to an extent. I've seen that a few people were fooled into thinking that when they state that the TK70 does 1 hour and 50 minutes on Turbo, they thought it would do that time period at full 2200 lumens.
In fact, it drops to high after about an hour, then to medium, finally dropping to <10% original output after 1 hour, 50 minutes.
So it technically meets the ANSI/NEMA FL1 spec, but many consumers are still disappointed when they discover that they don't really get what they thought they were going to, in terms of long runtimes @2200 lumens.
None of that info about dropping modes etc is stated on the marketing material, just the Turbo = 1hr, 50 mins part.

I think maybe the percentage of dimming allowed should be much lower. The claimed level of output should be maintained within, say, 90% of the original figure taken 30 seconds after switching on.
And repeat this for each "mode" or level selectable, if there are multiple modes.

good points!

samgab said:

I think maybe the percentage of dimming allowed should be much lower. The claimed level of output should be maintained within, say, 90% of the original figure taken 30 seconds after switching on.
And repeat this for each "mode" or level selectable, if there are multiple modes.

Click to expand...

While the FL1 Standard is a big step forward, no standard is free of issues. Runtime is the biggest limitation, but the solution is simple: runtime graphs. I think Streamlight may the only one that puts one on the packaging and online (info sheet PDF).

Even though the lower output may seem deceptive, there is actually good reason for it. Majority of continuous flashlight use is within 15 minutes, so for many, this is already not applicable. For extended use, runtime would be preferred over output in most situations and this is why many lights automatically step down to a lower output level after 5-15 minutes of continuous operation.

Of course, if you need more light, you can always power cycle the light to reset the timer, but chances are that most people wouldn't even notice a reduction to 75% or even 50% because perception of brightness is non-linear.