New LED Maglite no longer have spare bulbs, that include the C and D lights.

LED's for all practical purposes are pretty close to being physically indestructible. The smaller 5mm ones are a diode encased in a solid chunk of plastic, nothing short of a hammer blow directly on it can break it. The higher power ones are designed a bit differently, but as long a they're contained within a flashlight head I can't see how one could be destroyed under normal use. They are relatively impervious to shock and vibration, the main causes of failures for incandescents.

However, while the LED is physically durable, they're more sensitive to other forms of failure such as thermal or current overload. This is why you might see some LED failures on the cheaper multi-led flashlights, because the LED's are not being powered equally. Also, the electronics needed to drive the them may not be as reliable as the LED's themselves, so that's another consideration

I personally wouldn't bother stocking spare bulbs for and LED flashlight, there really isn't a need. The technology advances so quickly that by the time you need it (if ever) it'll probably be obsolete. I'd carry a complete flashlight as a spare instead, because if your flashlight does fail, chances are it's probably something other than the LED. That's the thing about failure modes, it will always find the weakest link. With the invention of the LED's, the bulb is no longer the weakest link, it's probably the batteries themselves. Back when LED's first started becoming mainstream, people were subjecting them to ridiculous torture testing like throwing them off buildings. The LED's didn't fail, but the batteries would be dented so badly that they wouldn't make the connection inside the flashlight anymore

Your Mag-Lite is better than any of mine! Both of my Surefires smoke all my Mags. My 3 D-cell mag isn't even close to as bright as my E1B even with new batteries, and the spot is total crap. Definitely not worth the size and weight. All of my Mag-lites are essentially doorstops or paperweights now. The only one I have much use for is the mini-mag, and I don't use it much since I got some little Chinese 1-AAA led lights from DealExtreme.

Which Surefire models are you using? I've never actually seen a Fenix in person so I don't know how they are.

I love my upgraded 4D Mag-Lite, it outperforms everything I ever had or tried: http://forums.equipped.org/ubbthreads.ph...true#Post208231

Regarding the LED spare - I doubt it's necessary. I have dozens of different LED lights, about 11 years - the oldest one, and all of them are functional still.

Not really a fair comparison, that's like saying a 18 wheeler can haul more stuff and drive longer between refueling than a sport car. Sure it's true, but which would you rather drive to work?

The Maglite 4D is a very useful flashlight when retrofitted with an LED such as the TLE-6EX MiniStar5 (140+ Lumen)

http://www.thetorchsite.co.uk/TerraLUX_TLE-6EX.html

or the TTS-1WP LED (100 Lumen)

http://www.thetorchsite.co.uk/TTS_1_watt_Philips_LED_Upgrade.html

because of the capacity of the newly available LSD NiMH D cells, which are now available @ around 8-10,000 mAhrs. Alkaline D cells are also available at reasonable cost such as the Duracell Procell multi packs.



This charger setup can be powered from a 12V solar PV source such as a 20+ Watt Panel (the input is rated at 1Amp @ 12V) and will charge the 4 8500 mAhr cells in around 5-6 hrs. (this is equivalent to charging 16 AA Eneloops in one go).

The Maglite 4D with the 1W 100 Lumen TTS-1WP LED will give a burn time of around 35+ hours.

Maglite D and C models do still represent good value for money for there intended use. i.e. for home and vehicle use.

I see lots of answers but I'll chip in. Compared to a typical incandescent bulb (including Xeon, Halogen etc.) a LED is essentially indestructible (note that is a comparison, not an absolute). Typical bulbs have very thin glass shells around them and contain a thin wire/filament that gets heated to produce the light. This construction is pretty fragile, at least compared to the rest of the flashlight and has a relatively short service life.

LEDs are basically a fancy transistor and essentially solid all the way through. For a typical LED "bulb" there may also be some additional solid state circuitry for regulating the voltage and current supplied to the LED. For a well made LED the life expectancy is measured in years (say 50,000 hrs) even with bumps and impacts. A well made flash light bulb has a life expectancy of around 5,000 hrs, assuming no rough handling.

In a nutshell anything that physically damages the LED will probably damage the rest of the light to the point that a replacement bulb won't help.

- Eric

Thanks gang!

Eric, I'm going to steal your last paragraph to answer my Scouts question:

>In a nutshell anything that physically damages the LED will probably damage the rest of the light to the point that a replacement bulb won't help.>

LEDs are pretty much immune to impact and vibration, incandescent lamps aren't all that tender either as the majority fail directly after a new set of batteries is installed. LEDs seem to fail either due to poor quality, not burning in the LEDs before using them, or failure to limit current. Most often a little of both.

The good news is that most every LED array keeps individual LEDs in parallel so if one goes the remainder still work. The other good news of LEDs is that if the output and numbers of LEDs is kept low batteries will work so long that spare batteries can be made unnecessary if reasonable precautions are taken. Many flashlight manufacturers have avoided this benefit by increasing light output so you get more light than is needed for less time than is desirable.

+1. That just about covers it. All my lights are LED now. I've bumped my LED lights around without incident too many times to count. Each bump would have killed standard incandescent bulbs.

I have only had one LED light develop problems after a 4' fall. It was a cheapie from Costco. The actual LED is okay, but the voltage-boosting "puck" is now intermittent. It's probably a damaged wire or a bad solder joint. Not worth fixing, but I'll remove the LED for use in a desk lamp or something.