narrowed it down to 3, what do you think?

Hey guys, newbie here. I have been doing way too much research on LED stuff to be healthy, but heck, its fun to get aquainted with these gizmos.
I am a mechanic, and my flashlights dont hold up well over a long period. LED's to the rescue. Here are my choices, pros and cons. Maybe someone can shed some light on my picks?
LW3000- good burn time, cheap batteries, only 3 year warranty, and LED's seem exposed from barrel, Possibly shattering if dropped
TurtlelightII- same advantage as above, but is it really that srong of a beam thats useful?
InovaX5- this baby looks fantastic! But iam a bit concerned about battery price in the long run.
-- I realize the pros and cons of LED, but my main point is getting something with a lifetime warranty, and one that will hang in there in the long haul. Maybe battery prices shouldnt be a concern if i spent more than that on so called "tough flashlights" when in reality, they really werent.
Thanks for all your help.

If you can stand the tariff: A Surefire with a KL1 has your lifetime warranty.

I have a HUGE pile of led flashlights on my computer desk. You know how my pile got that large. Nobody helped me choose. I went to the ledmuseum website and just went by Craig's reviews. While his reviews are great, they weren't quite enough to make a perfect decision from the huge selection available. So, I learned the hard way. Each time I bought a flashlight I found something better. But now in retrospect since I have bought nearly everything, I can look back on all the different flashlights and tell you which ones are the best. That way you won't have any buyer remorse, hopefully. The only thing that will be better than these flashlights is the new 5 watt luxeon star based flashlights. Some are available right now but be aware that lumileds is having problems with these 5 watt bulbs burning out; they are only guarranteed for 1000 hours which is substantially below the 100,000 hours guarrantee for the nichia leds. However, when they work out the bugs from these 5watt bulbs and when they give them a much longer life guarrantee, then these 5 watt flashlights will be the new thing to get. Until then the following flashlights you should get first:

Lambda illuminator nice because assembled or lambda pill for minimag which is brighter but needs some assembly. I don't have either but I wish I did:

http://home.mchsi.com/~lambda/lambda3.htm

Elektrolumen's triple star or quad star luxeon star flashlights, just make sure you email him for a special order the flashlight with resistors so it can be run with nimh rechargeable batteries.
I don't have one either but wish I did.
http://www.elektrolumens.com/4_SALE/For_Sale.html

Get an inretech trilight or helios flashlight. Get the trilight in white. Get the helios in cyan. The trilight is the long life 1watt luxeon bulb. The helios is the new 5watt luxeon. The helios is out of stock of the white bulbs so if you don't want to wait the next best color is cyan. I just orderred the trilight, but it hasn't arrived yet. The guy from inretech said on this forum that it comes resistorred for rechargeables.
Stay away from their 2AA flashlight; it's dark and you can do better. Get a lambda pill if you want a 2aa luxeon star minimag or brinkman. The lambda pill has a dcdc circuit board in it that makes the flashlight VERY BRIGHT. The 2aa inretech is dim being directly driven by the underpowerred 2aa. They claim its great for survival because of its long runtime. If that's what you want do yourself a favor and get the trilight like I did. It to has a long runtime, but a long BRIGHT runtime. Look under battery life on their website. THe manufacturers and others give so many conflicting stories, but trust me for I already bought all these flashlights because of these peoples' conflicting stories. If you want dim long runtime and you don't want to get what I have already recommended, then do yourself a favor and back off of the inretech 2aa or any other luxeon star dim 2aa with no booster dcdc and get a nichia based flashlight. I'd say infinity ultra or lightwave 3000 or 4000. But to have fun get the trilight. TO have the best get the helios.

http://www.inretech.com/adapters.htm

It is interesting to look at ebay. I'd say to stay with a reputable source if shopping on ebay. That means to stay with darkgear or elektrolumens or lambda or inretech etc.. Go with others at your own risk.

http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?GetResult&SortProperty=MetaHighestPriceSort&query=led&from=R5&ht=1&category3=16037&combine=y&st=2

I would suggest looking at the Streamlight 3C instead of the lightwave 3000.

I bought five of these for general around the house lights, replacing all of the general 2D and other incandescent flashlights I had. I also bought three of the 4AAs which are smaller.

www.streamlight.com
www.brightguy.com (where I bought them)

I also have a Lambda Illuminator and an Ill Pill in a minimag.

The Streamlight 3C and 4AA both offer a lifetime guarantee (if I recall correctly--please check it) work on alkalines and at least my 4AA maintained low but reasonable light output for 4.5 hours.

These are floodlights (the Lambdas and all Luxeon units) have tighter beams.

I also have a Streamlight Septor headlamp which is very useful for working hands free. 7 LEDs. Less light, small batteries (less run time) than the handhelds.

I also have the even smaller Princeton Tek Aurora headlamp but it flickers enough to be annoying when reading.

Cheers,

Richard

I was just looking at my arc AAA le beam on my ceiling and I have to mention that my infinity ultra feels a little better in my hand because of its size AA. The arc is a little small for my hand. But the arc is better made. Its beam is nice and centerred. My infinity ultra while very nice is kinda slopped together. Its beam is way off to one side. Someone stuck the led in diagonally; I have 8 and all but 2 were slopped together with diagonal beams. My arc AAA le is nice and centerred. So you may want to go with this instead.

If you go with the streamlight keep in mind that they self destruct when run on fresh out of the charger rechargeables. you can do a search for this on this forum. I'm not sure about the lightwave. It also overdrives its leds but it has a resistor. I'm not sure if it'll blow. But it has been confirmed that the streamlight does.

Get the best. Avoid buyer remorse. Trilight, Helios, quad star on ebay special orderred with resistors you gotta email elektrolumens, lambda.

I really like my arc ls hybrid, but it has a lot of bugs. I don't mind fixing it myself with epoxy and conductive epoxy etc. But if you want a working flashlight that needs no user fixes I can't recommend it until it proves itself in actual use in time. I can and do however heartilly endorse the arc aaa le or the arc aaa in cyan. I like the white arc aaa le better. I have both. I know cyan is supposed to be brighter and all but I like the hotspot of the white better. The cyan led disperses to quickly having a wider angled hotspot unlike the focussed white led. something like 20 deg versus 40

The White TriLight is in Stock at InReTECH.com and is a very nice flashlight adapter, it must be - all my friends/relatives keep borrowing my demo units !

Welcome to CPF, woppini!

I see you are looking for reasonably bright, decently long runtime, and tough. Factor in your job (grease involved), and you can rule out the Lightwave series of lights. The lightwaves are tougher than they look.

The X5 gets around 20-25 hours on a pair of 123s, so that is not as expensive as it appears. Still, there are better places than Radio Shack to get Lithiums! The cheapest I have seen 123s is at http://www.cheapbatteries.com/ and I know someone will say 'buy 223s and split them'.

Just as good with batteries (lithium AA), is the Inretech 2AA white. Much brighter, as it uses a Luxeon Star LED. Don't bother to feed it alkalines as it will be very dim, and I won't even talk about its color on alkalines (CMG Reactor is same on alkalines).

Thanks for all your help on this one.. I decided to stick with the inova. But all the other suggestions i looked into too. This thing just looks way too cool. Thanks for the welcome, I am sure I will be here often

You might also want to consider the Streamlight 4AA LED. Used it continuously for about 3 hours last weekend on an automotive task. AA are very inexpensive and the 7 leds provide a desirable broad light pattern.

you've got the inova, and that is a good choice, but the arc aaa would also be a great idea, because of it's size, something that small would be of much better use to a mecnanic in some places than a inova. i would have also suggested an arc ls.

ledfanfromjuno:

I just wanted to mention that I bought an Infinity Ultra last week and can find no signs of any sloppy construction or diagonal LED.

In fact, the beam is nicely centered and I'm very impressed with the high quality machining and construction. Maybe CMG has improved their quality control now.

My X5 would get around 10 hours and at the end of the the 10 hours my Arc is brighter, I would give it a 5-6 hour bright run time. It drops really fast.