Originally Posted By: capitolThe flashlight hobby guys go by lux and lumens and not opinion. They measure all sorts of outputs of different flash lights.
Check out candle power forums.
http://www.predatormastersforums.com/for...258#Post3056258
I did this post a few years ago, at that time the XLR250 was a under powered over priced light. But it was the first light out there. It was easy to find superior lights at cheap prices if you knew how they performed and what to look for.
The new zoom lights quickly became the rage, and now multi colored, intensity controlled lights now flood the market enticing guys with bells and whistles who have no idea what they are buying but it sounds good.
Fretting over which light is the brightest is an exercise in futility. For the most part all of these lights will illuminate a target farther than most can shoot effectively at night.
You can only drive an LED so hard and it will only produce so much light. The bigger the lens the smaller it will focus the light squeezing more lumens into a smaller area creating a higher lux or candela reading.
I find looking a a 6 foot square of light in a 20 foot FOV in my scope annoying. I backed of my red LED and now my IR to fill the FOV, so running the light at it's brightest setting helps me in no way.
Other than the Coyote Light all these lights are built in China, several by the same manufacturer. All are very similar in performance when comparing apples to apples, but when rated by opinion vs fact and false claims by so called "Pro-Staffers" it's easy to be duped.
Light is also not a linear progression. Each time you double the output you only get a 30% increase in performance. This link gives a pretty good summary on light measurements and how they relate to each other.
http://flashlightwiki.com/Light_Output_Measurements
I'm trying to get my hands on a few of these newer lights to compare maybe some day it will happen.