neither are useless, neither perfect.

if you want a "perfect beam" free of rings, VERY HIGH light output (can be annoying for close up work), quality finish and a small packages, surefire is the deal. It does eat expensive batteries, lots of them! The bulb assembely are expensive, so is the light it self.

Maglite's uses commen batteries, but really don't give much light for it's size, has a ugly beam (although focus-able), very bad discharge curve (they only seem to give good output with fresh batteries and quickly become much dimmer for a long long time...)

both company's has many (cheaper) competition, that makes light which are very similiar.