Surefire Outdoorsman mini review.

tknife

tknife

Joined
Mar 18, 1999
Messages
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I have owned a couple of Surefires in the past that I had traded for or bought used. This is the first one I bought new, and was very leary of shelling out over $100 for a flashlight. Well I received it, and am more than happy with my purchase. http://www.newgraham.com/detail.aspx?ID=4548

The thing that strikes me first is how bright and tight the beam is. This LED is brighter than many regular bulbs. It's also supposed to last about 6 hours per set of batteries which is much better than the Surfires I had with regular bulbs. I usually carry two flashlights on backpacking or camping trips, one LED for around camp and one with a xenon bulb for a brighter longer beam. This is a great happy medium and should be a great all around light.

I also go on a lot of evening hikes that sometimes go dark fast on me, so I'll get to really test this out a little better this week.
 
I bought a E2E and upgraded it with the KL1 LED head. Its an awesome light! I put mine through the washing machine and it still works. Six hours of runtime is a long time. I EDC mine and only have to change the batteries about once a year.
 
Some of those flashlight desriptions are confusing .My Pelican LED is confusing ,the website says 40 hours !! This with two 123CR batteries. The instructions however say 4 hours full brightness then slowly decreasing for a total of 40. I like that better than my G2 light which has one hour then it's dead! Either way carry extra batteries .
 
The Surefire LED outdoorsman has 3 hours battery life at peak brightness(30 lumen's). Than 3 hours of useful light. Meaning after 3 hours at 30 lumen's the brightness starts to fade until it is no longer bright enough to be of use at 6 hours.

I have never let mine get that low. I change the batteries when I notice that the light is no longer as bright as it was when I put the batteries in. I still only have to change the batteries about once a year.
 
tknife,

I owned one of those for a while but traded it away because the beam had a distinct, and to me, annoying rectangular artifact in the middle of the beam. Does yours do that?

If you're using it outdoors, I'm sure it wouldn't be much of an issue, but mine was primarily used indoors.

It was a solidly built light, though, and my first 'serious' CR123 LED light.
 
MG_Saldivar said:
tknife,

I owned one of those for a while but traded it away because the beam had a distinct, and to me, annoying rectangular artifact in the middle of the beam. Does yours do that?

If you're using it outdoors, I'm sure it wouldn't be much of an issue, but mine was primarily used indoors.

It was a solidly built light, though, and my first 'serious' CR123 LED light.
Click to expand...

Yes I was shining it around on the walls and noticed the center beam was definitely more squareish than round. It's not always noticeble though, and it will be used outside.

I am also interested to see how the battery fade works. I'll definitely bring extra batteries when I head out for more than a day.
 
I love surefires and own several, including a kl1 led conversion head. Honestly I like the Inovas better for led lights, they are cheaper and I have never seen anything that will compete with an Inova T2 for brightness and run time.
 
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