Ankerson wrote: ↑Thu Dec 26, 2019 5:00 pm
Vivi wrote: ↑Thu Dec 26, 2019 4:48 pm
Surefire Sidekick should be here this weekend. Curious to see how it stacks up against my Fenix PD25.
Comparing a 300 Lumen light (Surefire) to a 550 Lumen light(PD25)?
I can tell you how that is going to go.
The Surefire EDCL1-T would have been a closer comparison, at 500 to 550 lumens.
Lumens are total light output, and they only tell half the story. We need to know what the candela (cd), or intensity, of each light is. The Wowtac A1 that I linked above has a turbo mode of 550 lumens output, and 10520 cd. My Olight M2R's turbo mode is rated at 1500 lumens and 10,880 cd. The Wowtac A1 has less than half the output, but the same intensity for all practical purposes. In real worled use, the A1 matches the M2R in throw (illumination at distance), but the A1 has a much narrower beam. My Nitecore EC4GT goes even further with a turbo mode rated at 1,000 lumens and 56,500 cd. The EC4GT is a great thrower. The M2R has enough throw for most uses, and illuminates a rather wide area.
Unfortunately, Surefire doesn't publish their intensity data. Nor does Surefire publish how long their lights sustain full output before stepping down. A light only has to sustain a given output level for 30 seconds to be able to say that's what the output is, per the ANSI NEMA FL-1 standard. Olight puts right on the box that the M2R sustains the 1500 lumen turbo mode for 3 minutes, then drops to the 700 lumen high mode. The Wowtac A1 doesn't appear to have any thermal protection and step-down, because its manual simply warns against running in turbo for more than 10 minutes at a time, to protect the LED and circuits.