once a year I email my favorite flashlight manufacturer to ask if they’ve finally made a flashlight that just turns on and off when you push the button, and every year they’re like, “no, but thanks so much for your feedback!”
be honest, have any of you ever used the flashing feature on your flashlight? did it actually come in handy? handy enough that I have to scroll past it every single time I want to turn my flashlight on or off
It is basically I/O limitations, and the majority of lights in this area likely have an origin in cycling lights as far as the silicon is concerned. I think that is the original high profit niche that drove a custom asic for the application of a PWM LED controller with integrated charging. Pretty much all other lights are built to a price. The chip likely has additional functionality but the actual designs are all built to a bare minimum price (or max profit margin). From this perspective, you’ll see a lot of the feature set differently. On a bike, one button is convenient as well. They usually fash too bright because of the default clock speed of the chip and a design that does not deviate from the chip’s example implementation.
They put them in all the flashlights because of a combination of minimum features required and cost savings.
To keep heat at a minimum and improve power usage, LEDs benefit from being run by a driver circuit.
If you’re going to use a driver circuit you might as well allow for dimming if you’re going to allow for dimming you need to have timed button presses.
There’s only a couple of companies out there that make the circuitry that does the LED driver / lithium ion charging, so everybody just uses the same chipset.
If you want to flashlight that just turns on and off and doesn’t have a lot of features try to find one that doesn’t have lithium ion batteries. If you don’t need the lithium ion charger they’re more likely not to use one of them more extensive chipsets.
I picked up some stranded skaters in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night because they flashed SOS with their headlights after I drove past them. They had been there for like 8 hours. I’m sure they would’ve rather had a flashlight to do the work for them.
But I agree that there should be another UI for getting to the emergency flashing. Like hold for 5 seconds or something unlikely to be used during normal operation.
I have a flashlight that has multiple flashy settings, but they are disabled after like 5 or 10 seconds of idle power on time. So the first click turns it on, and if you wait a while, the next click turns it off.
Couldn’t find one of the two bottles of doe piss and doe estrus piss I bought today. Went to my grandfather’s car to look for it and sure as shit he hands me a flashlight with one button that turned it on and off as well as having a rotating head that was kind of threaded so as you turn it, it will move closer and further from then bulb making the light adjustable the same way a garden hose nozzle that only rotates works. All the way out = wide flood light style beam. All the way in and it produces a bright pin point wide beam of light. It looked brand new too. If I remember I’ll ask him tomorrow what brand it is.
Sounds like you’re describing a maglite
Maglites are perfectly fine flashlights for most people, maybe a little heavy but sometimes that’s kind of the point (a lot of cops and security guards and such took to carrying them when their agencies started prohibiting nightsticks and batons, especially the bigger 4 or 6 cell models) for a long time they were basically the default flashlight, you had maglites, you had the big spotlight looking things that took a 6v battery, you had cheap plastic flashlights, and you had various small penlights and such (which were often mini maglites) and that was like 90% of what you’d ever encounter.
There’s a good chance if you go rooting around in your dad or grandfather’s car trunk, garage, basement, workshop, toolbox, etc. you’ll find a maglite or 3 kicking around somewhere. I know I keep one in my car for emergencies and I’ll probably inherit a half dozen more from my parents someday.
They still make them, pretty sure they switched over to LEDs (one of their selling points used to be they had a spare bulb stored in the tail cap) and I’m sure they’re still perfectly reliable and rugged, you can probably still find them at most of the places you’d think to go buy a flashlight, and a standard 2 D cell maglite still costs in the neighborhood of $20-$30.
But there are a bunch of flashlight nerds out there these days, who want really specific form factors, battery types, features, led color temperatures, etc. and they’d probably pooh-pooh the humble maglite.
I get it to an extent, I have flashlights I like better, but I’m not about to nerd out about them, and if you someone sent me out with instructions to buy them a flashlight with no other requirements listed, I’d probably buy a maglite and feel pretty confident that it’s going to be an acceptable flashlight.
I have two D cell maglites, I give them to the kids when they need a flashlight so they dont start a fire with my light, or lose an expensive one.
Because it’s cheap for them to jam functionality into the circuitry and more expensive to actually add physical buttons. They want to advertise lots of features but deliver them in the cheapest way possible.
If you’ve ever tried to read something off a label in the dark and outshined what you were looking at because the light was too bright, you know why.
Same with bike lights, no I don’t want 16 different strobes, it’s not a vibrator.
Thinking about it, vibrators should have a on/off button too.
My wife’s favourite has a button that scrolls through the various modes, but when you hold it for a couple of seconds turns it off. Shit’s a game changer. Even starts back up on the last used setting.
the vibrator? what brand
Pretty sure it’s this one. Enjoy!
My bike lights aren’t bad.
Hold to turn on (to the last mode used), hold to turn off, push to switch between three modes: High, Low, and Flashing.
I know the feeling. Most of those features are only useful in low probability events.
If you’re looking for simple flashlights, Maglight has always made decent flashlights, though I’ve been buying Ryobi flashlights for the last 15 years as they are relatively affordable and I’ve already a bunch of their 18v batteries. Not sure how weather proof they are but I’ve never had an issue with the “new” (I think it’s a 10 year old design) led flashlights.
After writing this, I thought I could use another flashlight, but seems that Ryobi has discontinued the P705 and seems to have replaced it with the PCL660 which has a different form factor.
So i carry a sure fire. They don’t. The one I carry takes a rechargeable 18650, and has 2 settings “intellibeam” that adjusts brightness based on near-and-far and intensity, and full-on-burn-your-eyes-out.
They have other lower cost models. Alternatively , if you’re not looking for something that’s incredibly bright, stream light offers a very inexpensive penlight that’s pretty handy. (Only complaint with that is they take AAAA’s)
I’ve generally steered away from them because of price, but I do have their Maximus headlamp. I don’t remember spending almost $500 on it at the time, but it was pretty steep especially for not having a removable battery
Yes, they’re expensive.
But also extremely reliable, I’ve had ever had one go bad on me.
But, again, if it’s out of your budget, streamlight offers less expensive options (though they’re the ones that started the feature-craze with stinger strobe.)
(Keep in mind, if you’re using the strobe as intended…it’s either going to piss people off or cause an epileptic seizure. So those “features” are basically useless.)
Buy one that’s made for fire fighters. They must be compliant to norms and from what I see all of them are super easy to handle. On off with a physical button.
Oh man This post just awoke a REAL old memory for me. Growing up my dad had these two old beat up flashlights. I looked them up and found this https://www.etsy.com/listing/1027765511/eveready-no1359-safety-flashlight.
I always thought they had a cool design.
The mighty Kingdom of Anduril takes grievance against this sentiment.
i like him better when he was still Narsil.
Just wait till your flashlight needs to connect to wifi via an app that you download and log in via Facebook or Google and only works if gps is enabled and it also has to have access to your contacts and it gets your first born child.
Watch this short video on your phone so that you can turn on the flashlight
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Maglite, the last one I bought has twist on and off. No flashing or buttons.
oh man, they’re still offering incandescent models alongside their LEDs. none of them are really inspiring hope though, even the smaller LED lights seem to have pretty pitiful lumen output compared to what I’m seeing out there
Pick a battle. You requested no extra buttons or flashing or modes and now it’s not bright enough?
It works for me. Has light and no extra flashing modes. Hasn’t really failed me either. I drop shit, a lot.
I haven’t looked into maglite since proper LEDs priced them out of the market. I’ll take another look
https://maglite.com/collections/mid-size/products/ml25lt-2c-led-flashlight
This one is similar. 2 c cell batteries and no buttons.
I do appreciate you taking the time to look though.
that’s what I was looking at. c-cell is kind of annoying, it’s the only one that I don’t have rechargeables laying around for, 18650 would be more convenient. but, mainly, the lumen output looks awfully low for a flashlight that size
I have two Fenix lights that both have 2 buttons, one on/off and a second mode selector.
The LD12 is perfect as a daily although the side/mode button is kinda awkward to use, the main button is perfect though.
My PD35R is a bigger one that’s really bright, but also too big for normal carry, so I only use it for work when it’s too dusty to see. It has 2 buttons on the back, one small one for mode selection and a nice big one to turn it on/off.
