raggie33
*the raggedier*
- Joined
- Aug 11, 2003
- Messages
- 13,494
they just seem to be more honest lately
Raggie, you are one busy guy with your new threads recently. Not complaining.
Bill
I think the ANSI should have required a graph like Streamlight's as part of the FL1 standard.
I don't think there are flashlight police.
A lot of bang-zoom high lumen rated flashlights only perform at the top end for a few seconds then quickly fall to a significantly lower output. For example, I have a Surefire P3X rated at 1,000 lumens for 2.25 hours. Prior to purchase I found runtime graphs which showed the P3X initial output fell to about 70% after a minute or two, then operated in regulation at 50% for about an hour and forty-five minutes before dropping out of regulation. So for practical purposes, ya get a blast of illumination for a bit, then ya got maybe a 500 lumen flashlight for near 2 hours. This helped me to better understand the flashlight I was considering for purchase rather than ANSI rated runtime claims which really doesn't tell ya anything but initial output and total runtime to 10%.
Runtime graphs printed on Streamlight packaging are helpful. The runtime graph for my Streamlight HPL seems about right. Not scientific, but I've had it out for almost an hour and detected no noticeable drop in illumination.