The Night Hike
When my wife was diagnosed with cancer, my parents dropped their entire lives and moved in with us. Eventually, they sold their house and moved to Massachusetts. It was as kind and as selfless an act as one could ask for, but my parents are amazing people and so it is just one of many selfless acts they have done to help make me the person I am. I hope I can do the same for my boys in their lives. This selfless act has had ripples throughout the family. One of the better ripples is the fact that they now live very close. This has allowed us to have much more contact with them and that includes a wonderful Friday tradition.
Pizza Time happens every Friday. We all show up at my parent’s house and my Dad makes three or four delicious pizzas and breadsticks. My Dad and I have a beer, my boys eat like the pizza fiends they are, and then, after scarfing down food, we go on a night hike. Their house is surrounded by a massive forest laced with trails. You could walk for miles and never come out. We have had ten of these night hikes and each time I have supplied the illumination. There are a six of us with a range of ages and familiarity with gear. The hikes last about an hour to an hour and half and they only start once it is completely dark. We have hiked in shorts, jeans, and last night, in snow pants. In addition to be a tradition everyone loves, it has been a wonderful way to get tons of information about flashlights really quickly. Here is some of that information.
Brightness Doesn’t Matter
When it is completely dark, any light helps. I have carried the Reylight Mini Pineapple quite a few times, including a time when it was our only light, and its “meager” 250 lumens was plenty. It is absolutely a blast to smash a button and illuminate the entire forest, but it is not strictly necessary. Your eyes adapt to the light quickly and so if you have anything over 5 or 10 lumens you can navigate the woods pretty easily. Last night was a gleaming full moon and so we were able, when we got out night vision, to navigate with NO flashlights. That is proof you don’t need a kilolumen.
“Self-Charging” Batteries Stink
The RRT-01 v2 is an amazing light with the best UI on the planet. But, it comes with a RCR123a with a built-in charger port. It stinks. It never lasts more than 30 minutes on high. When I drop in a primary, it can go the whole hike. This makes me rethink these “self-charging” batteries. Convenience-wise they are top notch, but there is a trade off. That space for the charger port eats up space for energy storage and the result is a battery that lasts 1/3 less than it should.
Andruil Sucks
You know I hate it. But giving a light to a non-flashoholic with Andruil is just stupid. That means that these lights are pretty much useless in an emergency, as only we can use them (and even we would get lost in the conceptual maze that is the UI sometimes). And no, its not easy to put the light into Muggle mode in the middle of the woods in the pitch dark. So if you like carrying a light that has Andruil, great, but its a toy not a torch, since only you can use it.
UIs Matter
The flip side of the fact that Andruil Sucks is the fact that good UIs, like the rotaries on the HDS and the JetBeam RRT-01, stand out that much more. My wife insists on the RRT-01 and the fact that it also works as an enthusiast light makes me love this light even more, especially when I use a conventional battery in it and its runtimes are greater than the time needed to get a pizza delivered.
Hi CRI Doesn’t Matter That Much
When it was warm and we were ID’ing salamander my boys found, Hi CRI was great. Now that it is cold and they have entered their annual slumber, the color rendering of a light isn’t that important. In fact, my wife continues to say “I don’t like these yellow lights.” When I tell her they match the sun’s output, she shrugs and tells me they look weird.
Fake Lumens
I have a bunch of lights that hit over 1,000 lumens. But because of how ANSI defines a high, none of them are functionally all that bright. After 90 seconds all of the lights drop down to around 300-500 lumens. And because lumens are perceived logarithmically, the difference between 300 and 500 lumens is basically nothing. This means that in terms of “useful output” most of the time we are talking about lights that are all the same level brightness. My HDS Rotary, which hits 325 lumens, is as bright, in a real world sense, as my Noctigon KR4. Only the BOSS 35’s real world lumens are substantially higher than the 300-500 lumen range and that is because I turned off every safety. When the safeties are on, it too, lives in the 300-500 lumen range.
Stand outs
Based on about 12 hikes, here are some standout torches with explanations as to why:
TIE: HDS Rotary and BOSS 35: The Rotary’s combination of durability, usability, and rock solid performance is hard to beat. The Night Hikes have only reinforced what I know to be true—this is one of the best lights ever made and even with a “low” 325 lumen high, it is, as explained above, insubstantially dimmer than the multi-kilolumen photon cannons in my collection. The BOSS35 is good but for different reasons. It is more “techy” and requires some knowledge of torches, but it is only light that can be forced to hold a kilolumen output for a useful amount of time. I do not recommend this, but in the two hikes where I reprogrammed it, it was quite amazing.
Prometheus Delta: This light is a good combination of the features I like in the Rotary (rock solid performance, built like a brick) and the features I like in the BOSS (the ability to put out a lot of light for more than 90 seconds). Its not quite as simple as the HDS nor as bright as the BOSS but its a good compromise. This is the light I use on the hikes, in part because I couldn’t bear it if someone dropped it and it got lost or damaged. It is so pretty.
RRT-01: Its not as bulletproof as the top three, but its UI is amazing. Junk the self charging battery though, that thing sucks. For regular EDC use, it is fine, but if you have any extended work that needs to be done in the dark, the stock battery is a liability.
FourSevens QK 16L Mk. III: If a clicky is your thing, this is an amazing light with an uncommon, but great battery. I would love to see more 16650 batteries. The tail standing delrin insert is brilliant. If you want a PURE pocket torch, this is a bit big, but its basically a brighter and slightly longer working Mini Turbo Mk. III, which is another great light for a night hike.
Lumintop Micro GT: Narsil is related to Andruil, but I have found it a bit more useful. As a result, the Micro GT has outpaced all of my Andruil torches. The laser beam output is truly enjoyable to play with, illuminating owls, treetops, and down creek mysteries with equal aplomb.
One last take away: Jason Hui is at the top of his game in the flashlight world. No one is close.
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