In my experience, including equipping Boy Scouts, cheap flashlights may not even get you through one campout. You don't have to spend hundreds, but a good flashlight paid for once is much better than a dozen cheap ones that fail when you need them. It just seems that cheaper flashlights are prone to rapid failure. I have never had a failure yet in a Surefire or a Fenix. Some catastrophic breakage in very extreme circumstances has occurred.