Do flashlights have shelf lives?

[Fireclaw18]

I always spray the contacts of maglites with deoxit gold when I first buy them, otherwise they stop working after about a month. ...

I second the use of Deoxit Gold. Great stuff!

 

[aginthelaw]

All my lumintop tools with electronic switches went bad on me. Lumintop sent replacement batteries but they still didn't work. They were sitting about 6 months or so, but they were turned on with batteries in it once or twice a month to recharge the capacitors

 

[lightfooted]

I would wonder if those lights weren't bad to begin with when you bought them brand new. Sure they may have worked initially but perhaps there was an issue with them back then. While I'm not a huge collector, all of my lights work. Some of them have basically been sitting on the shelf for over a year so I know it isn't quite as long as your experience but while the electrolytic paste, cylindrical style of capacitors are known for issues at times...I've never heard of solid state ones having similar problems.

I would think if you were to open them up you might find an actual corrosion issue or something like that. Maybe something that was part of the manufacturing process caused it.

 

[WalkIntoTheLight]

I'm surprised the OP is having such bad luck from lights just 5-7 years old. I still use some of my lights that old (Zebralights) almost every day, and they still work fine. Maybe the OP's lights are just bad quality, and it's not time that killed them.

All electronics do have a "shelf life", but if stored reasonably that should be decades, not just years. Rubber parts may get brittle with time, and connections may wear with age. But 5-7 years just isn't long enough for time to kill solid state devices. A bit of cleaning and lubricating should bring just about any old light back to new.

P.S. It might just be the OP's maglites. I've never had good luck with that brand. It's just poor quality. Great lights for horror movies: bad beams, dim, and always the risk of them flickering or going out.

 

[Frijid]

Not to be " that guy" that gets a thread shut down, but a maglite failing in a short time doesn't surprise me. I used to be a huge mag fanboy, but now I'm done with them. Over the past few years, I've not had one last longer than 6 months. And that includes 2 that didn't work right off the shelf and a ml300l that didn't last through the first set of batteries. An xl50 that didn't make it 2 months and a silver mini mag pro that lasted about 3 months and doesn't work at all now.

Now, my old xenon and incandescent D mags that are both over 7 years old that I recently retrofitted a (supposedly german made) led drop in still work perfect. New maglites? I have no clue what happened to their quality.

 

[chillinn]

I've never had good luck with that brand. It's just poor quality. Great lights for horror movies: bad beams, dim, and always the risk of them flickering or going out.

A bit harsh; there are worse lights. I'd say they are exactly or somewhere between slightly better and considerably better than the quality of competitors at MagLite's price point, esp. plastic incan hosts.

And they are the right price to experiment with mods, and price is a relief and platform is worthy for the more expensive mods. A lot of custom MagLites do impress.

 

[Frijid]

I've never once complained about anything else about maglite. I'm not a guy that needs 20,000 lumens in a light. The 600 lumen ml300l i thought was great. The 200 lumens in an xl50 is great. The output of the mini mags are good. I have no problems with them how they come, my complaint is that they just don't last. And im easy on equipment, I've never had a case on any of my cellphones, and I've never had a cracked scteen, and that stands true with my current phone despite having it for 2 years.

 

[bykfixer]

I have somewhere between 75 and 100 Maglites from the 1980's to the 2019 upgrades and aside from an occasional oxidation issue or something I caused like murdering an LED with way too much voltage I have had zero issues with them aside from a few battery leaks.

Having somewhere between 500 to 600 flashlights total going from 1915 to 2020 I've found that most are pretty reliable as long as leaks or oxidation caused failure. Now the vast majority are mechanical in nature instead of electronic, which I tend to avoid because of potential non servicable parts failure.

I carry a flashlight from 1972 with me at work at night.

 

[Frijid]

If its oxidation that kills maglites, then its not a good testament to their longevity. I carry two lights on my person at all times. I was given a streamlight protac 2AAA from a friend who's an engineer/matainence at a hospital. He bought it new and carried it everyday for about a year at work until he upgraded to a rechargeable light. I then started carrying it along side my "trials" with maglites. It survived 2 xl50's and a maglite pro. Whatever the maglites were exposed to, it was exposed to as well. It's still kicking, they're in a landfill somewhere. I've done absolutely nothing to it, other than change batteries.

Price comparison? It cost 7 dollars more than the mini mag pro, but the xl50 actually costs more than it, by about 5 dollars.


In a perfect world, I loved the xl50 and everything about it. Even over the protac 2AAA.

 

[mountaindewer]

I appreciate everyone's comments so far. It made me aware that hoarding lights in the future may not be good. So from now on I'll buy fresh and use fresh so to speak.

I broke down and went through every light I had put up. Zebralight, fenix, lumintop, olight, nitecore, niteize, ultratac, xenos, pelican and sog. All worked perfect with no problems. I let each one run on its highest mode for about 5 minutes so needless to say I was very busy. However I discovered that one xl200 would only work if the button was held in. I did look at the broken xl50, and man does the tips on battery holder scratch the metal ring around the contact point on the inside of the light. The tips on the tailcap even scratched the metal contact points on the battery holder. It looks like someone took an ice pick and gouged it deep while rotating.

 

[Kestrel]

I appreciate everyone's comments so far. It made me aware that hoarding lights in the future may not be good. [...]

All of my ~10 yr SureFire L-series lights (a half-dozen or so, plus a U2 of that era) are still functional, while my oldest Malkoff dropins are of that age as well.
I would have no reservation about the extended long-term viability of any of those. The common thread there is that those products are US-mfg.

 

[WalkIntoTheLight]

All of my ~10 yr SureFire L-series lights (a half-dozen or so, plus a U2 of that era) are still functional, while my oldest Malkoff dropins are of that age as well.
I would have no reservation about the extended long-term viability of any of those. The common thread there is that those products are US-mfg.

I don't think it has anything to do with where they are manufactured. Mags are made in US, AFAIK, and their quality is suspect. It has everything to do with how much care and quality the manufacturer spends on design and production. You can get great lights from Chinese manufacturers, and you can get real crap. Same as anywhere else in the world. I don't think it really has a lot to do with how much you pay, either. Low-priced stuff is usually junk, but high-priced stuff may not mean it has good quality or good value. It might just mean it's from a low-volume business, or designer stuff.

 

[chillinn]

Few rules are absolute, but in general, you get what you pay for, except for outlying examples of great deals and overpriced crapola. With MagLite, I think few are expecting more than they are worth.

 

[XeRay]

Other than alkaline batteries, I think caps are probably the most common component to go bad over time.

Poor solder too, I guess.

Yes absolutely right regarding capacitors.

 

[XeRay]

Few rules are absolute, but in general, you get what you pay for, except for outlying examples of great deals and overpriced crapola. With MagLite, I think few are expecting more than they are worth.

Absolutely right there.

[h=1]"It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When
you pay too much, you lose a little money - that's all. When you pay
too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you
bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The
common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a
lot - it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well
to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will
have enough to pay for something better."[/h]John Ruskin 1819-1900

 

[fireonhigh]

from my experience china made lights last 2weeks ,to 3months!! im not kidding!!! never again...go american made,its$ but buy once cry once..

 

[WalkIntoTheLight]

from my experience china made lights last 2weeks ,to 3months!! im not kidding!!! never again...go american made,its$ but buy once cry once..

Sure, if they're dollar lights, they won't last long. But I have plenty of Chinese lights, and all the mid-priced lights work fine. At least, no worse than US made stuff. There's plenty of reasons to buy local, but expecting better quality for the same price isn't one of them.

 

[fireonhigh]

Sure, if they're dollar lights, they won't last long. But I have plenty of Chinese lights, and all the mid-priced lights work fine. At least, no worse than US made stuff. There's plenty of reasons to buy local, but expecting better quality for the same price isn't one of them.

i have 1 fenix and 3 nitecore ,all died in 6months,i now have 2malkoffs and beat the poop out of them,never fail, getting a new modlite next week!

 

[WalkIntoTheLight]

i have 1 fenix and 3 nitecore ,all died in 6months,i now have 2malkoffs and beat the poop out of them,never fail, getting a new modlite next week!

Sure, but they're double or triple the price, and simpler design, so I'd expect them to be tough.

 

[xxo]

I have about 20 Mags that I use regularly, all but 2 are LEDs, most of the LEDs are 5-10 years old and my incan 4D Mag is 35 years old. And I have owned many more Mags over the years. The only real failure, not caused by leaking batteries, I had was a XL50 that had a switch that got stuck in the ON mode and wouldn't turn off. Sometimes Mini Mags can get a little sluggish over time, but blowing them out with compressed air and cleaning the tail cap contacts has always fixed that for me. The only maintenance normally needed is keeping the threads/O rings properly lubed and not storing alkalines in them, or better yet, not using alkalines at all.

I am not much of a fan of the XL series Maglites – I don't like lights that use 3 AAA's/battery carriers. I had a XL100 for a while that worked fine but I could see the battery carrier wearing out over time with heavy daily use. I think the Mag Tac is a better option than the XL's.

If something does fail, at least Maglite has a lifetime warranty - you don't have to make a video of it not working and you don't have to send it to China to get fixed.

I have a Streamlight made in USA TL2 LED that must be pushing 20 years old with a luxeon I LED that still works fine, though I don't think that it has too much in the way of electronics beyond the LED.