Is right now the best time ever to get into buying/collecting LED flashlights? PWM?

I didnt buy my 1st higher quality LED light til 13 months ago. That was a good time to start buying or collecting LED lights because of the improvements in technology and the number of brands out there, etc. But I think now would be an even better time to start.

If I would've started buying LED lights 3-5-7 years ago, I'd probably be disappointed right now with the lights I owned. They might have nice external design, and they might be tough and all, but they would be somewhere between marginally obsolete to supremely obsolete from a technology standpoint. There are probably a few exceptions, but for the most part I think that would be true.

When I look at the lights I've bought in the past year, I can say for sure that they wont be supremely obsolete and/or lacking in serious power/brightness in 3-5-7 years. I am sure they will make the LED's more efficient and come out with at least 1-3 new LED's in that time, but the ones I own now will still be very bright by any reasonable standard. I cant say that for most lights made 5 years ago. Also, there is a limit to how bright an EDC sized light can get while still able to dissipate the heat so it doesnt overheat and damage the circuitry, and I think with many lights, that limit has pretty much been reached already. That wasnt the case 3-5-7 years ago, and there was still much room for increased brightness and power in most EDC sized lights and larger.

Obviously if you ask this same question in 5 years, that will be an even better time to start buying LED lights, but I just dont think that there will be as big a difference between today's lights and future lights in 5 years, compared to the difference between lights made 5 years ago and lights made now. What do you think, is this the best time ever for beginning an LED light collection vs past years? The only way I think that future lights can improve in brightness as much as they have in recent years, is if they design a new LED that has dramatically reduced heat production.

Also, whats the problem with PWM? Do you really notice it and is it really annoying or problematic?:shrug:

What I learned over the years with the lights I have bought is that the run times are severely lacking compared to modern lights.
The older lights might have put out 60 lumens 6 years ago, which is okay for a pocket light, but they only did it for like 20-30 minutes at most(on one CR123), and that was considered good run time at that output level back then. Many lights only did that with 30 lumens output. In fact when I first came here, 30 lumens was a pretty bright LED light!

So, while some people still might be happy with a 60 lumen light, they are getting a heck of a lot more run time at that 60 lumens, and also able to get a whole lot more max output if they want it too.

I expect that efficiency will continue to be a big player as we move forward, and we'll see more run time with these lights of similar brightness output as we have now.

PWM has its place. If it is fast enough, you won't see it.
The advantage is that it doesn't shift tint as the brightness levels change, like it does with current-controlled lights. Sometimes you hear about these bright current controlled lights going "green" at lower output levels, as the current to the LED gets decreased for the low brightness levels.
You won't get that with PWM. And as long as the PWM is fast enough(over 1khz is normally considered plenty fast enough), you can retain your nice tint at the lower output levels when you select them.
There are good points and bad points to just about any option.

I bought an LD20 2+ years ago... still my favorite light.

I keep looking for an upgrade, and there are minor things that are better here and there, but nothing worth dropping a chunk of change over.

My advice is, don't look at lumens, find a light that you really like, then as long as it has multiple levels, and a max you can live with, buy it.
...but your first focus should be on size, batteries, that kind of stuff.
...and if it's throwy, you can make your own diffuser, and have the best of both worlds.

LOL

Every generation gets the impression that the present is the state of the art, or doesn't...or, becomes paralyzed by the thought of something coming out that might be better.

What is the best time to buy ANY electronic device?

Rules of thumb for computers, like every three years there will be something twice as fast for half the cost...etc, go for other industries as well.

So you either live in darkness because you're afraid you might buy a light that will be replaced one day by a brighter one...or you live in the light, and periodically choose to live in MORE light as it becomes worthwhile to upgrade.


I read about a meeting in congress in the 1800's, when a senator recommended that we discontinue money for scientific research, as surely everything that could possibly be invented must be invented by NOW.





Technology marches on. So, sure, sometimes something becomes a bottleneck...say, how hard it is to squeeze electrons through a copper wire...but then we invent quantum mechanics, and after enough time passes, we have quantum computers unfettered by the need to wait freekin forever for an electron to scoot somewhere....and then the next bottleneck is how to best program the quantum computers to best take advantage of the instantaneous calculation power, etc.


The same with LED lights, etc. Someone somewhere figures out how to do something seemingly unrelated, but it allows someone ELSE to then get past THEIR bottleneck, and the next thing you know...your light is twice as bright and half the cost...or the same brightness but with twice the run time...or everything is the same, but its half the cost, and so forth. You don't know now what the break thoughs will be..but, they do seem to keep occurring.

You know, when purchasing the lights you like, its like buying your share in history. Since these lights constantly evolve and change, its nice to have something that was a part of something in the past. You'd have more appreciation on how things have evolved since then. 60-lumen EDC's were okay back then, now you'll see 400+ 600+ even up to 900+ lumen EDC's being sold.

Same with computer monitors, before it was all green / amber or white displays, then came the 4-color monitors, then 16-colors, then 256-colors, now its in the millions of colors and are either LCD/LED based.

Teej: You are comparing apples to oranges, as I never said that technology has reached its all time limit, in fact in the OP I said it will continue to increase, but not as fast as before, and I gave logical, practical reasons why. The point is that there will be improvements, as I stated in the OP, but they wont be as huge over the next 5-7 years as they were in the past 5-7 years. 1. How can they get 2000L from an 18650 sized light without any heat issues? . 2. Power cant just continue to quadruple every 5-7 years! If you really think those 2 things are possible then please explain how.

HighlanderNorth said:

... 1. How can they get 2000L from an 18650 sized light without any heat issues? ...

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Well this one area that I think has a lot of room for improvement. All that heat is just wasted energy. There will be technology that will turn that wasted heat into more lumens, or less milliamps of battery usage. Just look how CFLs (compact fluorescent lamps) are replacing incandescent bulbs in ever home only recently - same lumens, less power consumption and runs cooler.

Its impossible to predict how fast and to what scale leds will continue to improve.

All I know is that even if there were no improvements, the present day emitters (XPGs, XP-G2s, XM-Ls) have already reached a very respectable and very impressive level of efficiency compared to other lighting forms that have had a much longer time to evolve such as incandescent and fluorescent lighting.

As a collector, the prospect of another significant leap in efficiency evokes mixed feelings in me.
On the one hand I think to myself, "Oh no, yet again I will have to try to upgrade many of my lights to keep up"
On the other hand, I'm genuinely excited at the prospect of the new emitters trumping what I already consider to be very impressive ones.

The best time to buy a flashlight is before you need it. The best time to start collecting them is when you see one that you want.

low PWM can cause headaches and trigger migraines... i'd rather have a light that will change colors a bit rather than something that will give me a headache!

fortunately there's happy compromise: some lights with high frequency PWM solves all the dizziness and changing tint issues. win/win!

AnAppleSnail said:

The best time to buy a flashlight is before you need it. The best time to start collecting them is when you see one that you want.

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Precisely what I was thinking!

roadkill1109 said:

low PWM can cause headaches and trigger migraines... i'd rather have a light that will change colors a bit rather than something that will give me a headache!

fortunately there's happy compromise: some lights with high frequency PWM solves all the dizziness and changing tint issues. win/win!

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What about runtimes? current controlled usually beats pwm. And i can hear most pwm lights. So it's more like win-win-fail-fail
(i dislike pwm) Even the 2Khz quarks is easy to spot. I might like it if i find a quiet 5-10Khz one, but high Hz pwm usually means less runtimes. Our colourvision dont work that well under dim light, so i dont mind a little tint shift in the ultra lo settings.

Is right now the best time ever to get into buying/collecting LED flashlights?

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Sorry. . You missed the "best time ever" by a day and a half. .

But seriously, I agree with twl.

Run time will probably be the biggest continued improvement. While high lumens are important to many here, most people looking for a flashlight don't need 800+ lumens. A quality 200 lumen (or less) will serve 99% of the population quite well. Most people I know look at my Fenix PD22 on a mid (46L setting) and remark "Dang that's bright!".

When I got my iTP C8 I was very impressed with the 6 lumens for 70 or so hours on 2 AA cells capability. . . Now just a year or so later my PD22 claims 8 lumens for 97 hours on 1 CR123.

Who know what we will be looking at 5 years from now. A solid 10 lumens for 100+ hours on 1 AA?

HighlanderNorth said:

Teej: You are comparing apples to oranges, as I never said that technology has reached its all time limit, in fact in the OP I said it will continue to increase, but not as fast as before, and I gave logical, practical reasons why. The point is that there will be improvements, as I stated in the OP, but they wont be as huge over the next 5-7 years as they were in the past 5-7 years. 1. How can they get 2000L from an 18650 sized light without any heat issues? . 2. Power cant just continue to quadruple every 5-7 years! If you really think those 2 things are possible then please explain how.

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Nope, I included your sentiments as well.



If I KNEW how they'd do it, I'd be playing the stock market on a lap top while fishing instead work working for a living.

All I know is that technology marches on, and that someone makes a break through in some obscure circuit or whatever, and the next thong you know, someone else says, HEY I can use that!...and then THEY make a better widget, which is then recognized as a way to make the mousetrap better.



Not knowing how they came up with the same question a decade or so ago, when 60 lumens out of an LED was supped to the max...and flashaholic-asouruses said "HOW will they EVER get more lumens out of an LED, the designs are MAXED OUT!?!?!"

And, they did anyway, over and over again.



It might be in fits and starts...and take a while to add up to anything extraordinary...but, it does seem to keep happening.

easilyled said:

Its impossible to predict how fast and to what scale leds will continue to improve.

All I know is that even if there were no improvements, the present day emitters (XPGs, XP-G2s, XM-Ls) have already reached a very respectable and very impressive level of efficiency compared to other lighting forms that have had a much longer time to evolve such as incandescent and fluorescent lighting.

As a collector, the prospect of another significant leap in efficiency evokes mixed feelings in me.
On the one hand I think to myself, "Oh no, yet again I will have to try to upgrade many of my lights to keep up"
On the other hand, I'm genuinely excited at the prospect of the new emitters trumping what I already consider to be very impressive ones.

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^I agree with that 100%

On one hand I hope my lights arent extremely outdated in 5-7-10 years, because then I'd be too tempted to go and drop even more money on more lights(that I dont really need) because I'd be sooo impressed with the technology. But on the other hand I'd love to see LED technology advance to the point to where power keeps quadrupling every 4-5 years, while efficiency improves significantly, and just as important, they find a better way to produce that light without all the heat that goes along with it. I think thats probably the area where the most significant gains could be got! If they could just convert all that darn heat energy into light energy, then imagine how much brighter and more efficient they would be!

But realistically, even if lights did become dramatically more powerful in the coming years, and if a single CR123 EDC light could output 1000+ lumens without overheating, it would be extremely impressive and I WOULD buy them, but the lights I own now are already as bright as I really need.....

Thats kinda the whole idea of this thread......That the lights that have come out in the past year or so are so good that we really dont need much more, so even if they do get better, today's lights are still awesome, and they are still extremely useful, so that they wont ever be so obsolete that people wont be able to say that they arent bright enough for most tasks.

HighlanderNorth;4044378[... said:

Thats kinda the whole idea of this thread......That the lights that have come out in the past year or so are so good that we really dont need much more, so even if they do get better, today's lights are still awesome, and they are still extremely useful, so that they wont ever be so obsolete that people wont be able to say that they arent bright enough for most tasks.

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And I agree with that 97%. LED R&D might slow down but runtimes and interfaces will keep improving. Wouldn't you say that a light that is identical to the one you carry everyday, but with a runtime of 5-10 hours more on max makes yours obsolete? I certainly wouldn't mind a light I only need to recharge once a month even with intensive use. Of course, to get there we'll very likely need better batteries, but my point is that there are other things in a flashlight that can be made better and render our current EDC's obsolete. That just depends on what are the selling points for each of us.

That's true that LED lights are beginning to reach a ceiling in development, so too of the internal combustion engine, the lithium powered electric car, and space travel, but you never know what massive breakthrough can come next.
There may be a massive advance in electric car battery breakthrough?
There may be space travel a warp speeds?
It is reaching a ceiling in development and improvements are slowing down, but you never know what breakthroughs can come next. Transport by plasma particles?

peterharvey73 said:

That's true that LED lights are beginning to reach a ceiling in development, so too of the internal combustion engine, the lithium powered electric car, and space travel, but you never know what massive breakthrough can come next.

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Space travel has hardly been started yet, but I agree it would take some unforeseen advances to go much further with the other three.
Personally I'm simply hoping for less heat and longer runtimes in regards to further LED development - in other words, better efficiency.

Interesting question.

I think part of the appeal of LED lights right now is that probably only within the last 3-4 years have we been able to buy a truly affordable LED flashlight that betters the output of an equivalently-priced incandescent whilst offering much greater runtime and vastly reduced physical dimensions. Ten years ago a genuinely useful torch running on a single AA battery was a pipedream, perhaps with the exception of some very expensive and specialist products. Definitely an important milestone in my view.

Growing up through the 1980s and 1990s, my recollections of flashlights are that most of them were great big bulky things. They had to be big to accommodate a reasonably powerful bulb and sufficient battery capacity to power it. 2xD-cell lights were popular, being the only ones that offered enough output to be truly useful outdoors whilst maintaining a tolerable runtime. I remember pestering my mum in the supermarket at some point in the mid-1990s to buy me a Duracell 2xAA rubber-bodied torch because it had a xenon bulb and claimed to be so many % brighterthan a normal bulb. And later, a CatEye halogen bike light came along offering even more power.

My first keychain light was a little square plastic box, bought probably somewhere around 1991/1992 (I'd have been 8 or 9) that took a single AA battery and produced such a tiny amount of light that in about 1997, when I bought a Maglite Solitaire, it seemed astonishingly potent for its size.

Now, in 2012, I own a light smaller than the Solitaire which runs from a single AAA and produces probably more light than all my childhood flashlights and bike lights combined. And this light - an iTP A3 EOS, Q5 version - is considered old technology! For maybe £2 or £3, I can buy a single-AA or 3xAAA LED light from a high street shop that will run for hours, outshine all of those old incans, and never ever need a new bulb.

To me, and probably to most on here who've grown up with the bulky and inefficient portable lighting technology of the latter 20th century, the modern LED flashlight is nothing short of miraculous. It's cheap, truly pocket sized, bright, economical with batteries and is unlikely to fail unless abused.

(My 6-month-old daughter, on the other hand, will grow up in a world where 200 to 300 reliable lumens from a pocket-sized light is the norm. By the time she's in her 20s, we could be discussing - via the iWindows v23.0 devices implanted into our brains - pocket lights that outshine a WWII searchlight...)

jk037 said:

Interesting question.

I think part of the appeal of LED lights right now is that probably only within the last 3-4 years have we been able to buy a truly affordable LED flashlight that betters the output of an equivalently-priced incandescent whilst offering much greater runtime and vastly reduced physical dimensions. Ten years ago a genuinely useful torch running on a single AA battery was a pipedream, perhaps with the exception of some very expensive and specialist products. Definitely an important milestone in my view.

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Case in point.

Closer to 20 years ago



Best I can tell it is a whopping 3-6 lumen with a throw of a couple feet (5-6)

My memory is that I paid $40+ for it. . Or maybe even $60 or $70