>>2704416>Been looking for a while now, what does /out/ think of ultrabrights?I find them retarded.
When do you need a flashlight? At night if you are at camp or want to set up camp, when hiking at night or when going fishing at night. For each of these activities you want to see a little in front of yourself, but not far. Being able to see the other side of the valley you are walking in has zero practical application. Meanwhile, it being so bright has downsides:
- much lower battery life
- alerts every person and animal in a multiple Kilometer radius to your presence
- fucks up the natural night vision of every person with you, because you just blasted their retinas to ashes and made their pupils shrink to the size of an atom
The brightest setting on a flashlight doesn't matter, I never use it anyways. Meanwhile I will probably use the lowest setting 95% of the time. In fact most flashlights don't go low enough imo.
Stuff I like/look for:
- Good housing (lightweight and durable, can be metal or plastic)
- splash proof
- replaceable battery or so cheap you don't mind rebuying the whole thing eventually
- good battery life
- rechargeable
- red mode
- (optional but not needed): both a diffused and focus mode
I actively despise hiking with people who get out their retinas blaster 9000, blast the entire forest with their military searchlight only to run out of battery within an hour and then be surprised when no one can see anything anymore because they ruined their night vision.
The only places where a strong light are acceptable is if you are fast, like nighttime mountain biking, but then you should have a floodlight on your bike and a focus light on your helmet anyways instead of a camping headlamp.
