Maybe I will go down to the local Lowes and check out the Surefires. ( NOT going to Buy Both, though it is too close to the holidays for that.) is anyone else out there waiting impatiently for their LODQ4? Thanks for letting me get that off my chest, not many flashoholics in my circle of friends/ family/ co-workers.
For the best 'out of box experience' have some Energizer L92 Lithium E2's on hand (or at least some freshly charged NiMH batteries). The L0D-Q4 is ok on plain old Alkalines but it was designed to really shine on NiMH or L92 Lithium cells. (some of course like the insanely bright 10440 cells but that puts a lot of stress on the light so I don't recommend them)
I would definitely hold off on the Surefires till you get your L0D-Q4, so you can check out your Fenix performance before investing in another Surefire.
Personally, after my experience with Surefire and having seen how my Jetbeam and Fenix lights perform, I plan on holding off on Surefire forever.
Sad to say, the only light that has ever let me down in a critical situation was a Surefire.
That's really funny, because I just went to their web site and Surefire has a big snazzy banner ad with a caver lighting up a big underground cavern with a what I'm sure we are supposed to think is a Surefire flashlight (That's magically putting out more Lumens than an HID car headlight), with the text -
"If a work of art 100 Million years in the making takes your breath away, you should see what happens when you light quits."
Well they got at least one thing right, my Surefire light didn't 'quit',
it just wouldn't turn on in the first place, when I desperately needed it to (due to one of Surefire's patented tailcap issues). Oh, and I wasn't in a cave, just on a very dark lonely stretch of road, on a very cold drizzly night, trying to get a damn blown-out tire changed. It was an old incan Surefire, that I got used, but it was immaculate when I got it and worked fine until I left it in the car for a few months. When I got home I found that the batteries were fine, and after much fiddling the light started working but I never trusted it again and gave it away to a friend in law enforcement with the advise that he should make Surefire replace the switch. Fortunately, on the night of my Surefire disaster, I remembered an old Dorcy light that I had stuffed under the seat when the Surefire took it's place of honor in my glove compartment. That twenty dollar Dorcy light from Target was scratched, dirty, and the batteries were 3 years old, but it worked perfectly and put out enough light that the several cars that came screaming around the turn were able to see me in time and swing wide enough to miss me on the narrow shoulder. If I had had to try to do the job in the dark, there is not a doubt in my mind I would probably be as dead now as my Surefire light was that night.
The Surefire G2L doesn't look too bad if you don't mind paying 65 bucks for a mostly plastic flashlight, but even if Surefire has cleaned up their act on the tail switch issues, this light uses a pair of CR123 batteries. I have personally seen CR123 cells vent in one of my lights (and NO I wasn't using cheapy batteries or mixing cells or any of the eighteen other silly rationalizations that CR123 groupies use to excuse totally unacceptable safety issues).
So between my past experience with Surefire, and the safety issues with CR123 cells, I will NOT be buying any Surefire lights in the near future.
Duracell plays the same B.S. game as Surefire with their ads, showing Firefighters and others with the tag line "If you life depends on your battery". Yeah, right, that's another laugh! I remember one time that I was just about to get in the car and take a brand new 2AAA River-Rock flashlight back to Target, when I decided (just for the hell of it) to check the brand new Duracell batteries that came with it first. It worked for about 20 minutes, suddenly quit and got a little warm. Well, surprise, surprise, of the two Duracell's that came with the light, one was ZERO volts (it had, after only a few minutes use, shorted out internally and self discharge). Brand new battery, zero volts! I guess it's a good thing no ones life depended on
that Duracell. When I replaced the bad Duracell battery, the little light worked fine (and has worked perfectly every day since, and runs a good six hours or more even on cheap AAA cells).
It would appear that the days of quality American products are gone. The good conservative 'family values' CE0's of American companies like to demonstrate their patriotism by shipping millions of American jobs overseas, and shipping in the cheapest possible low quality products, so the quality of 'American' brands like Duracell no longer seems to stand for much of anything.
Sorry for the rant.