Is Surefire joining the lumen race?

lightfooted · May 21, 2019

Recently I noticed that Surefire has some new lights on their page, only just a week or so ago did then "new" flags come off of the lights that were added to the list. They seem to have two new Fury models, both Dual fuel types: One being a base model Fury and the other being the "IntelliBeam" version.

What I found interesting was the rated output of 1500 lumens when powered by an 18650. I saw that and it nearly floored me. Has Surefire finally decided to compete in the Lumens Race/War??? No where do they state which LED is being used of course, but we all know that it is likely to be either the XHP35 or XHP50. While it's nice to see them finally using the latest emitters, I do wonder how long it will last.

So what do you all think, will this be a new trend or will this simply be the "used in everything LED" for the next 10 years? I'd love to buy one but $220 is a bit hard for me to justify when I don't really need another flashlight.

Another interesting thing I noticed while there was that they also seem to be selling their own branded version of an 18650 cell with a built in USB charging port.

Lou Minescence · May 21, 2019

I'm in before the lock !

I noticed those things too. I noticed the battery was made in - - - - -. I had to laugh. The battery caught my interest. Name brand usb rechargeable for $20 was a good deal I thought.

lightfooted · May 21, 2019

Ha! I know right? Surefire branded anything for only $16 USD...I may have to buy one just for the collectibility ;P

parametrek · May 21, 2019

Surefire has had that microusb 18650 battery out for a while but I am still in a state of disbelief over it. For the past 20 years the mantra was "never use protected 18650 in a weapon light" because either the PCB will break from recoil shocks or the protection will cut off a nearly dead battery (instead of gradually fading) and leave you in the dark during an active situation. Seeing Surefire sell a protected 18650 is just too weird.

Random Dan · May 21, 2019

1500 lumens might have put them in the lumens race a few years ago, but not anymore. Unless you're talking keychain lights.

lightfooted · May 21, 2019

Random Dan said:
1500 lumens might have put them in the lumens race a few years ago, but not anymore. Unless you're talking keychain lights.

Gahh, you're right of course...I sometimes forget that we have had lights at this level for a little while now. But I think this is still a record for them as far as how quickly they adopted it.

vadimax · May 21, 2019

To understand if that is a lumen race you need to answer a question: does this new Fury overheat?

Qship1996 · May 22, 2019

The Fury DFT is newer, not new. Has been available for close to a year now and the usb battery,at least 6 months.Both have been flawless in my ownership experience and currently available at street pricing as low as $150 for the pair.

CREEXHP70LED · May 22, 2019

Qship1996 said:
The Fury DFT is newer, not new. Has been available for close to a year now and the usb battery,at least 6 months.Both have been flawless in my ownership experience and currently available at street pricing as low as $150 for the pair.

How is the tint on the new Fury? My P2X is a little green and my P3X is a little blue.

bykfixer · May 22, 2019

vadimax said:
To understand if that is a lumen race you need to answer a question: does this new Fury overheat?

Or does it run a stated output for 22 seconds then run at 40% after that from a proprietary battery...way less on typical batteries?

The lumens race had begun to look like Reagan's arms race....
Lots of propaganda design to scare the competition into spending lots of R&D trying to keep up.

SCEMan · May 22, 2019

bykfixer said:
The lumens race had begun to look like Reagan's arms race....
Lots of propaganda design to scare the competition into spending lots of R&D trying to keep up.

Let's hope it's just as successful :thumbsup:

Qship1996 · May 22, 2019

CREEXHP70LED said:
How is the tint on the new Fury? My P2X is a little green and my P3X is a little blue.

Never even recognized the tint as it so bright, I have only used in outdoors and never against a white wall.

CREEXHP70LED · May 22, 2019

Qship1996 said:
Never even recognized the tint as it so bright, I have only used in outdoors and never against a white wall.

That is good to know, I notice the blue in my P3X the most when it is used outside more than inside against a wall.

coffeeandlifting · May 25, 2019

Unfortunately, they seem to be dabbling in the lumens race.

I say "unfortunately" because the lumens race is a race for novelty and not necessarily real-life functionality. There are two very different groups of users in the market. One group needs illumination tools for serious or professional use, often in life threatening environments. The other group mainly wants toys to show off to their office buddies. Only one group is susceptible to marketing surrounding peak lumens even when peak lumens is at the expense of more important things like regulated runtime, simple UI, beam quality, reliability, etc.

I think the older surefire LED lights that had conservative outputs and exceptional regulation schemes are some of the most desirable lights on the market. I'm not super stoked about the newest stuff.

lightfooted · May 25, 2019

coffeeandlifting said:
Unfortunately, they seem to be dabbling in the lumens race.

I say "unfortunately" because the lumens race is a race for novelty and not necessarily real-life functionality. There are two very different groups of users in the market. One group needs illumination tools for serious or professional use, often in life threatening environments. The other group mainly wants toys to show off to their office buddies. Only one group is susceptible to marketing surrounding peak lumens even when peak lumens is at the expense of more important things like regulated runtime, simple UI, beam quality, reliability, etc.

I think the older surefire LED lights that had conservative outputs and exceptional regulation schemes are some of the most desirable lights on the market. I'm not super stoked about the newest stuff.

While I do agree that having a 4k lumen pocket scorcher isn't really needed for most things I can see times when having blinding intensity from a good distance is useful, especially for LEOs/military but my take on it is more the sign that they are keeping up with the technology. Instead of languishing on 3-5 year old LEDs and drivers which work fine, sure...but when compared to another manufacturer who can give you similar brightness and beam for 2-3 times the runtime or more, only the durability of the light really makes it different.

Personally I'd love to see a light with an output around 800-1000 lumens that can do it for as long as there is power in the battery.

GoVegan · May 25, 2019

Surefire has been blindly competing in the lumen race for at least the last 5 years. You can see this by the way they overdrive their batteries at higher than manufacturer listed safety specs (Fury P3X, see Elzetta's videos), also their stupidly short runtimes that if you look seem to be getting shorter and shorter with each new model.

An example of this would be the old E1B at 80 and 110 lumens, looking at the charts here on CPF everyone reported great regulated flat runtime for over 1.5 hours, total 2 hours, then they went down hill with the EB1 at 200 lumens, this continued and finally we have the E1B MV at 400 lumens with all reports show it as non-regulated and even starts flickering after 27 mins (although specs list 1.25 hours).

They say that they design the world's finest illumination tools for cops and the military, but many cops don't get issued CR123s and have to pay out of their own pockets, hence why most are using rechargeable Streamlights.

Although the above doesn't necessarily apply to their newer 18560 lights, I hope they snap out of the crazy "allthelumens" hashtag and start to design their lights with battery safety specs and more runtime in mind. Until then I'm sticking with HDS and Streamlight lights for my needs.

CREEXHP70LED · May 26, 2019

coffeeandlifting said:
Unfortunately, they seem to be dabbling in the lumens race.

I say "unfortunately" because the lumens race is a race for novelty and not necessarily real-life functionality. There are two very different groups of users in the market. One group needs illumination tools for serious or professional use, often in life threatening environments. The other group mainly wants toys to show off to their office buddies. Only one group is susceptible to marketing surrounding peak lumens even when peak lumens is at the expense of more important things like regulated runtime, simple UI, beam quality, reliability, etc.

I think the older surefire LED lights that had conservative outputs and exceptional regulation schemes are some of the most desirable lights on the market. I'm not super stoked about the newest stuff.

Exactly my thoughts and very true.

lightfooted said:
While I do agree that having a 4k lumen pocket scorcher isn't really needed for most things I can see times when having blinding intensity from a good distance is useful, especially for LEOs/military but my take on it is more the sign that they are keeping up with the technology. Instead of languishing on 3-5 year old LEDs and drivers which work fine, sure...but when compared to another manufacturer who can give you similar brightness and beam for 2-3 times the runtime or more, only the durability of the light really makes it different.

Personally I'd love to see a light with an output around 800-1000 lumens that can do it for as long as there is power in the battery.

I bought the Elzetta Charlie for this reason. 930-900 lumens for 1 hour vs the Surefire P3X that steps down from over 1200 lumens to 650 lumens after about 5 minutes. Elzetta has the graph.

GoVegan said:
Surefire has been blindly competing in the lumen race for at least the last 5 years. You can see this by the way they overdrive their batteries at higher than manufacturer listed safety specs (Fury P3X, see Elzetta's videos), also their stupidly short runtimes that if you look seem to be getting shorter and shorter with each new model.

An example of this would be the old E1B at 80 and 110 lumens, looking at the charts here on CPF everyone reported great regulated flat runtime for over 1.5 hours, total 2 hours, then they went down hill with the EB1 at 200 lumens, this continued and finally we have the E1B MV at 400 lumens with all reports show it as non-regulated and even starts flickering after 27 mins (although specs list 1.25 hours).

They say that they design the world's finest illumination tools for cops and the military, but many cops don't get issued CR123s and have to pay out of their own pockets, hence why most are using rechargeable Streamlights.

Although the above doesn't necessarily apply to their newer 18560 lights, I hope they snap out of the crazy "allthelumens" hashtag and start to design their lights with battery safety specs and more runtime in mind. Until then I'm sticking with HDS and Streamlight lights for my needs.

In a similar boat here. I wont be selling my Surefire's I have, but I will be buying Malkoff and Elzetta for the most part.

RichardWad · May 26, 2019

No, they are not.

Sent from my LG-H932 using Tapatalk

CarpentryHero · May 27, 2019

Competing no, staying relevant and making solid lights yes.
Though I miss the LEGO from years ago, I do appreciate some of the newer offerings

CREEXHP70LED · May 28, 2019

CarpentryHero said:
Competing no, staying relevant and making solid lights yes.
Though I miss the LEGO from years ago, I do appreciate some of the newer offerings

They are not as solid when I had my Incan M3 and M6 models back 17 years ago. Now they are more consumer grade lights, not professional grade tools in my opinion.

Is Surefire joining the lumen race?

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