Now that you can EDC a LEP torch the question is should you? After a few weeks with the County Comm Mini Cosmos I think the answer is no. If you have a security or rescue job then the answer is different. For most folks LEPs don’t really work. Here is why.

For most people a light as an EDC makes sense because it is both easy to carry and provides a broad swath of high quality light. Given a choice between throw and flood most people doing most tasks would opt for a floody light. Because even the floodiest reflector still has a hotspot you get SOME throw too. Very few illumination tasks require spotting objects more than an acre away. Given that range, only a few truly squashed optics don’t work at all. So for most tasks, something like the 47 Mini Turbo is ideal—a hotspot that can go far but a broad spill that covers a stand of trees or the side of a building with reasonable illumination.

Given this scenario the ultra tight, ultra bright LEP beam is almost a liability. Its so bright that closer than a 100 feet it is likely to blind you more than show you what you are looking for. At greater distances its not blinding, but the beam is so narrow that unless the object is quite small, you won’t be able to see all of it at once. At 500 feet the Mini Cosmos is struggling to illuminate the entire side of a car. That’s a REALLY tight beam. Given that most of the time you want to just see what’s going on, as opposed to spotlighting one thing small, the LEP doesn’t make sense as a general use light.

If you are thinking of using as a spotlight—hitting the entryway of a building from 1000 feet away or shining it at one specific place to let critters of all sorts know you are there, the LEP is amazing. For those reasons, I think there is a use case for a LEP EDC, but very few people have such a use case. Now, if you are on a volunteer community support service or a fire department, the LEP is great. Searching things out from far away is truly easy now, assuming you have some idea where to look. If you are also trying to signal someone, even if they are out of illumination range, the beam itself can be seen for miles, even on the smallest light like the Mini Cosmos. The specs say that this light is visible from 25 miles away. That seems remarkable, but not impossible given how bright it is and how tight the beam is.

For me the real application for an ultra compact LEP would be as a secondary emitter. We have seen emitter arrays before and a ring of small LEDs with a LEP in the middle would make for an awesome and truly one-size-fits-all torch. I am thinking of something like the McGizmo Lunasol or the Surefire Aviator but with the center emitter a LEP instead. That light can’t be all that far in the offing and then I think we’d be at something of a new plateau torch-wise. With a good battery and USB-C charging, a light like that might be virtually unbeatable in terms of utility. If the LEDs could get down to 1 lumen and hit 1000 on high, they could do all of the up close work and the LEP could then hit clouds in the sky. Add a selector ring UI and the light would be damn near unconquerable.

LEPs are awesome fun, but as a serious general use light they are too much for most folks. The application that excites me the most is in an array light with multiple emitters working together to do everything you would need in the dark. LEPs are real game changers. Look for the review of the Mini Cosmos soon.