.

I have owned my share of Surefire lights and I have recently used the word ridiculous when referring to some of the new Surefire lights, but I was referring to the price rather than the light output. The Beast sells for a cool $4000.00 which puts it out of reach of most common folk. Other light manufacturers have appeared to bridge the gap like Fenix mentioned above. You can own a light with a higher output than the Beast, 2200 lumens, in the form of the Fenix TK70 for about $200.00 sans batteries. Good solid build and reliable. Maybe not Surefire quality, but for the price difference, I have not heard anyone complain.

When you said $4,000, did you mean to leave off a zero?! That's just Surefire making something just because they can. I'm sure a few people at Surefire laugh at any sucker who buys that.

You can proclaim "build quality" only up to a certain price. At some point you have to question how efficient a company is at making something. At $4,000, that thing had better come with a diamond worth $3,600 or something like that. Otherwise, I don't respect Surefire's ability to design and build within a budget.

Nope, no extra zeros. Four freakin' grand for a flashlight. If you look real hard, you can find one for around $3,300.00. Surefire used to be my favorite flashlight company. Great customer service, quality product. Then they engaged in an aggressive campaign to weed out any dealer that sold their product below MSRP and fell hugely behind in keeping up with LED technology. I reluctantly began looking elsewhere and found manufacturers like Fenix and Four7s which gave me the product I was looking for at a reasonable price. I suppose Surefire is doing ok with its military contracts. Maybe they will someday refocus on the civilian market.

I have always felt surefire is overpriced and lacking in real reason for such. Fenix and Four7's creates spectacular products for fantastic prices and four7's stays amazingly up to date with LED and flashlight technology.

I realize SureFire has their detractors, but my E1B Backup is the best light I've ever used or even seen. It was a bit steep at $139 but the vendor (Battery Junction) included 24 extra batteries. Even though the price has now risen to $160 I'd probably have to buy another one if I ever lost mine. It's among the most bomb-proof and well designed products of any kind that I've ever used.

To take this thread in an almost completely different direction than the Surefire Beast...

I stumbled across this light in my local grocery store (Acme):
Eveready LED Economy 1D Size Flashlight with Battery (2 Pack)
http://www.amazon.com/Eveready-Econo.../dp/B004PZPB2I

The price for the 2-pack was $5.98. They had singles for about $3.50. They're a very thin, cheaply made plastic body for the light that looks like your typical 2D incandescent cheapo flashlight. Interestingly (to me), they run on 1D cell - they have a freakishly long spring in them, and I don't think you could force two D cells into it unless you cut the spring shorter. Also, the positive terminal of the D cell is covered by a sticker that says "remove before using" - so it won't accidentally go on. They have a medium/weak beam, with a fairly tiny hotspot and thin spill. The output reminds me of the MJLED PR2 LED bulbs, although perhaps a bit narrower beam. This could probably be greatly improved by any of the various cheap methods for increasing the spread of the beam by "frosting" the lens - PDA screen protector or other stuff.

They won't win any kind of beauty contest or "top flashlight" contest, but what I think makes these lights a real winner is as an emergency light for those who couldn't care less about flashlights, or as a super cheap loaner light...It claims a 40-hour battery life. Running on a single D-cell battery, you don't have to worry about having a pair of batteries. You could loan these out to the unprepared with no real concerns about if it's ever returned to you - you could supply them with extra batteries at half the rate you'd need to do for an incandescent 2xD-cell flashlight, and if you really needed to, you could use a D-sized battery spacer for a AA rechargeable like an Eneloop. Really versatile and practical.

Cheers

Dave

Wow, someone actually made a cheap 1D flashlight! It's quite common to end up with an oddball single D cell since many gadgets take 3D cells, so I have long wished I could get a cheap 1D flashlight.

I have no illusions about a 1D light being a barn burner. In fact, due to the higher internal resistance, a 1D light probably doesn't give you as much runtime as you'd expect compared to a similarly bright 1AA light unless the amperage draw is very low. I suspect that this light doesn't draw much power, so it should last a good long time and really take advantage of the higher capacity of that big D cell.

I imagine that this might be a good replacement for a candle in a power outage, to provide a low level of ambient light to a room or hallway, without the risks of having an open flame around.

Actually, I do not believe it would perform too well in that role. Focused (rather than lantern-type) reflector and not enough lumens to do a decent ceiling bounce. If you want a real surprise for that function, check out the Pac-Lite. Small, no refector, easy to obtain 9 volt batteries, silly long battery life, and sits upright without tipping over. I distributed these throughout the house during the last outage and they did a great job.

It's not clear from the photo if it uses a reflector. A low powered LED light like this typically use a cheap optic molded into the clear lens. If the focused beam is too weak and doesn't have enough spill light for decent ambient lighting (and remember, I'm comparing this to the light output from a candle, not a lantern), then there's a decent chance that the lens can be unscrewed and the bare LED exposed for more omnidirectional lighting. More harsh on the eyes, though.

I'm a fan of Pak-Lites but they don't let me use up those odd-man-out single D cells I often find myself left with. But to use up those 9V cells that we pull from the smoke detector when they start chirping? Now you're talking.