Torch Buying Guide & FAQ - 2021
Now that we have got through the train wreck that 2020 turned out to be o_O, it's time to update the torch guide!
Maybe you can buy yourself some new Torches, a bit of retail therapy
Looks like exploring is off the menu for a while yet now, but hopefully you will be prepared once it's back on again!
Torch Basics & Jargon
-------------------------------------------------------- Batteries --------------------------------------------------------
AA / AAA
The most widely available type of battery, can be bought almost anywhere. They are limited compared to modern lithium batteries as they don't have anywhere close to the the power density. Great choice for a backup torch. Zinc batteries are rubbish and Alkaline are just average. Rechargeable Ni-MH are the best type to use nowadays. Eneloop are probably the best brand of rechargeable AAA/AA. LADDA batteries sold in Ikea are basically repackaged Eneloops and are a bargain. Other than that check out Amazon Basic NI-MH batteries as they are good value too.
18650 Lithium
The 18650s has been a round for a few years now and its starting to be used everywhere for everything. It's a bit bigger than an AA battery (18mm x 65mm - Hence the name) and is very energy dense. A single 18650 holds the same amount of power as 5 x AA batteries. They are rechargeable, run at 3.7v and can be bought from around £4 - £10 each. Pretty much all decent torches now run off these (or a similar Lithium sized battery).
As a general buying guide its worth knowing that the capacity of a 18650 battery is around 2000mAh - 3500mAh. If you see any for sale that are higher (Some can claim over 9000mAh) then please avoid them! Fake 18650's can be dangerous and are known to explode or catch fire. Try a trusted Vape shop for reliable source for good ones.
They come as 'Protected' or 'Non-Protected'. A protected battery has a little cap on the end that cuts the battery if too much power is drawn, protecting it from overheating. This can be useful but means you can't use these on very high drain torches as it will cut out when you turn the torch too high.
The solution is a Non-Protected battery that you can draw as much power from as it can provide, but be aware that if you draw more power than the battery can safely provide it will overheat and could catch fire. It's very rare, but just good to be aware of.
It's good practice to keep these type of batteries in a proper protective cases to stop shorting. Watch out for nicks and tears in the protective wrap, they can be re-wrapped to make them safe again. This applies for all types of lithium batteries, not just 18650s.
Good 18650s:
26650, 20700 & 21700 Lithium
These are similar to 18650s, except for the fact they are larger. The numbers indicate the dimensions in millimetres (e.g 26mm x 65mm).
Torches that use these sizes are less common, but still about. They offer slightly higher capacity to a 18650. so you will see greater runtimes or high outputs. All of the safety advice is the same as the 18650's, buy from a trusted supplier and don't mistreat them.
14500 Lithium - A Lithium 3.7v version of an AA battery. Some torches give you an option to use a 14500 or an AA battery for flexibility. Again these aren't too common, but good to know they exist.
-------------------------------------------------- Beam type / Optics --------------------------------------------------
Optics/Lenses explained
The optics of the torch will define the characteristics of the beam. Different types of optics favour different situations and uses.
Floody
As the name suggests, a floody beam lights up a wide area and generally doesn't throw light a long distance. This is especially useful for exploring inside of buildings as the beam will light up the entire room instead of a single very bright point on the wall. TIR or Honeycomb optics as seen on the Armytek Wizard give a very wide floody beam. This is a very good type of optic to have on a headtorch for close up work and for seeing where you are going.
Thrower/Throwy
A long throwing beam with a tight hotspot will throw light a long distance. Great for lighting down to the end of long tunnels but not especially useful for general exploring. I find for light painting throwy torches don't work especially well as you end up with a very intense hotspot that leaves streaky light if you are not careful.
Zoomable/Zoomie
As seen in the much loved Led Lenser P7.2 or the P7R, the zoomable beam allows you to adjust the beam from a wide flood to a single zoomed in long throwing beam. Wonderful on paper but has a few shortfalls. Zoomie optics can be inefficient and lose light that it cuts off on the edges. It means your 400 Lumen LED might end up being 200 or 300 when it comes out the front of the torch. They can also be a source of water ingress as it's hard to waterproof a moving head that pulls a vacuum as you move it in and out. What they are great for is light painting, allowing you to paint light in nice and wide for close ups and zoom right in for long corridor or tunnel shots without overexposing other parts of the photo.
A balance beam pattern
There is no such things as a perfect beam pattern, but rather one that works for your needs. Zoomable torches can sort of offer a bit of both, but it's not perfect as sometimes you want both flood and throw.
A good quality fixed beam torch can offer both of these. Medium throw and a good bit of light spill is ideal for most uses.
-------------------------------------------------- UI - User Interface --------------------------------------------------
User Interface then and now
Back in the day a torch was simply on or off, there was no 'User Interface' as to speak of. Now torches come with PCB controlled drivers they can have quite a wide range of modes and settings that mean that User interfaces is a factor worth knowing when buying a torch. Most torches have just one button, so getting a good UI with lots of mode that's also easy to use is not easy, however they have got very good in the past few years.
Basic UI
Your cheapy £10 torch might come with a basic 5 mode UI which you cycle through by half pressing the button, Low > Medium > High > Strobe > SOS.
Strobe and a SOS mode are almost entirely useless I've found. These type of modes are quite basic but they work well enough.
Complex and intuitive UI
Modern mid-range to high end torches have some brilliant and clever UI's now that make it easy to flick from very low to High without having to cycle through every single brightness mode in sequence. This is really the key to good UI, the ability to access the mode you want quickly and easily.
One of the best I've used is one called Anduril which is used on an increasingly large array of 'enthusiast' grade torches such as the Emisar range. It has a 'Ramping' feature that allows you to hold the button down and the brightness will gradually increase/decrease smoothly until you let go of the button when you find the output you want to stop at. It means it essentially has an infinitely variable output so you will always find the perfect brightness setting for whatever situation you may find yourself in. It's very nifty! There are of course plenty other types, the Armytek UI is very good too.
Moonlight modes
One especially useful modes is a good 'Moonlight mode'. This simply means a very low mode that's about 1 Lumen or less. This is especially useful when on particularly sneaky explores where you really don't want to attract too much attention but still need to use a torch to get around. There are still many torches where the lowest mode is still around 40 lumens (*cough* Led Lenser *cough*), which is very bright when its near pitch black and you are trying to avoid secca.
It's also useful to be able to go straight to Moonlight mode from off, rather than having to go past High mode to get to it.
------------------------------ LED Tint and C.R.I (Quality of the light produced) ------------------------------
Quality of the light
Not all LEDs are created equally and the Quality of the light produced can vary greatly.
Ideally you want light that:
Tint
Tint is a measure of the Kelvin Temperature of the light, or simply put, whether its Warm orange, pure white or a cool blue.
A normal range you might expect to see from a torch LED is 2700K - 6500K.
You can see on this colour scale what each of the Kelvin ratings look like.
4000K and lower is considers Warm and is my personal preference. It's just nicer to the eye and colours seem to 'pop' more.
5000K is a pure or neutral white. This is a nice all rounder.
6000K upwards is a cool white/blueish. This is generally seen on cheaper torches and is generally less desirable. I find this washes out colours more and things look more flat.
C.R.I - Colour Rendition Index
This describes how full the spectrum of the light is, the higher the spectrum the more colours will look accurate and correct. Notice how things look clearer when out in natural sunlight? This is because the sun produces a full spectrum of the visible light wavelengths.
LED torches do not produce a full spectrum of light, this means that certain colours won't show up as well as others. Normally Red is is the colour tends to drop off and will stand out less than the other colours. This is why some cheaper torches tend to wash everything out in a blueish haze, because the red and orange wavelengths aren't as bright as the blues or greens.
This is where the CRI Index comes in. CRI is a measure of how accurate the colour produced by a light and scores it.
The CRI range is a number value from 0 > 100.
LEDs now come in 'High CRI' varieties that produce much high quality light.
--------------------------------------- Specs (Lumens, Candela & Throw) ---------------------------------------
Lumens
This is a measure of the amount of light that comes out the front of the torch. How these lumens are spread out or focused is entirely down to the optics. Whether is spread out wide in a soft floody beam or focused into a very tight and bright long throwing beam.
Torches have naturally got brighter and brighter as technology has improved. Where 200 lumens may have seemed bright 10 years ago, it is seen as underpowered nowadays with the 1000 lumens torches being the norm now. However don't get too suckered into the Lumen race as you won't find much use for anything past 2000 lumens for general exploring. Also for just walking around somewhere dark or underground you only really need 150-400lumens to see well enough. You will find that despite the fact that your torch might be good for say 2000lumens, 80% of the time you use it on a medium mode.
I've got a few 5000+ Lumen lights which are brilliant, but only useful in certain situations. They generate a lot of heat very quickly, munch through batteries and will very quickly draw attention to yourself if you are exploring somewhere a that's a bit bait. That said if you are underground and you want want a portable handheld sun to light up large open area, then they are brilliant.
Be aware of companies that claim silly lumen numbers. A single 18650 torch with a claimed 900,000 Lumens output (as can be found on Ebay) is certainly not even a fraction of that.
Candela (cd)
This is more specific measure of the intensity of the beam at 1m away. A torch with a high Candela rating will be one that's very throwy and has a very tight and bright hotspot. This means that all the light is focused into a very small but bright area. A soft floody light of the same lumen output will have a much lower Candela measure as the light is being spread out over a larger area so the intensity at a single point is lower. You may find this is specification that's less used by torch manufacturers, but it's useful to know what it means.
Throw & the standards (ANSI/NEMA FL-1)
Sometimes on the spec of a torch you might see '200m ANSI throw' or something similar. ANSI FL1 is a standard that is used to test the distance of how far a torch can light up. It's done using a calculation based on the Lumen & Candela figures. Some of the larger torches are pushing the 2000m boundaries.
------------------------------------------------- LED Emitters -------------------------------------------------
'Emitters' are the actual LED's that produce the light. New ones come out often and It's good to know what's good and what's outdated.
This is an LED Emitter mounted onto a MCPCB. A MCPCB is just a bit of copper with Positive and Negative connections to solder onto. They come in all different sizes and can have multiple LED's on one board.
If you want to change the LED on your torch you can often just buy a new LED already attached to the MCPCB (in the correct size) and just solder the two power cables onto the connections.
Good LED's
Bad and outdated LED's
Now that we have got through the train wreck that 2020 turned out to be o_O, it's time to update the torch guide!
Maybe you can buy yourself some new Torches, a bit of retail therapy
Looks like exploring is off the menu for a while yet now, but hopefully you will be prepared once it's back on again!
Torch Basics & Jargon
-------------------------------------------------------- Batteries --------------------------------------------------------
AA / AAA
The most widely available type of battery, can be bought almost anywhere. They are limited compared to modern lithium batteries as they don't have anywhere close to the the power density. Great choice for a backup torch. Zinc batteries are rubbish and Alkaline are just average. Rechargeable Ni-MH are the best type to use nowadays. Eneloop are probably the best brand of rechargeable AAA/AA. LADDA batteries sold in Ikea are basically repackaged Eneloops and are a bargain. Other than that check out Amazon Basic NI-MH batteries as they are good value too.
18650 Lithium
The 18650s has been a round for a few years now and its starting to be used everywhere for everything. It's a bit bigger than an AA battery (18mm x 65mm - Hence the name) and is very energy dense. A single 18650 holds the same amount of power as 5 x AA batteries. They are rechargeable, run at 3.7v and can be bought from around £4 - £10 each. Pretty much all decent torches now run off these (or a similar Lithium sized battery).
As a general buying guide its worth knowing that the capacity of a 18650 battery is around 2000mAh - 3500mAh. If you see any for sale that are higher (Some can claim over 9000mAh) then please avoid them! Fake 18650's can be dangerous and are known to explode or catch fire. Try a trusted Vape shop for reliable source for good ones.
They come as 'Protected' or 'Non-Protected'. A protected battery has a little cap on the end that cuts the battery if too much power is drawn, protecting it from overheating. This can be useful but means you can't use these on very high drain torches as it will cut out when you turn the torch too high.
The solution is a Non-Protected battery that you can draw as much power from as it can provide, but be aware that if you draw more power than the battery can safely provide it will overheat and could catch fire. It's very rare, but just good to be aware of.
It's good practice to keep these type of batteries in a proper protective cases to stop shorting. Watch out for nicks and tears in the protective wrap, they can be re-wrapped to make them safe again. This applies for all types of lithium batteries, not just 18650s.
Good 18650s:
- Samsung 30Q
- LG HG2
- Sony VCT6
- Sony VCT5a
- Panasonic NCR18650B
26650, 20700 & 21700 Lithium
These are similar to 18650s, except for the fact they are larger. The numbers indicate the dimensions in millimetres (e.g 26mm x 65mm).
Torches that use these sizes are less common, but still about. They offer slightly higher capacity to a 18650. so you will see greater runtimes or high outputs. All of the safety advice is the same as the 18650's, buy from a trusted supplier and don't mistreat them.
14500 Lithium - A Lithium 3.7v version of an AA battery. Some torches give you an option to use a 14500 or an AA battery for flexibility. Again these aren't too common, but good to know they exist.
-------------------------------------------------- Beam type / Optics --------------------------------------------------
Optics/Lenses explained
The optics of the torch will define the characteristics of the beam. Different types of optics favour different situations and uses.
Floody
As the name suggests, a floody beam lights up a wide area and generally doesn't throw light a long distance. This is especially useful for exploring inside of buildings as the beam will light up the entire room instead of a single very bright point on the wall. TIR or Honeycomb optics as seen on the Armytek Wizard give a very wide floody beam. This is a very good type of optic to have on a headtorch for close up work and for seeing where you are going.
Thrower/Throwy
A long throwing beam with a tight hotspot will throw light a long distance. Great for lighting down to the end of long tunnels but not especially useful for general exploring. I find for light painting throwy torches don't work especially well as you end up with a very intense hotspot that leaves streaky light if you are not careful.
Zoomable/Zoomie
As seen in the much loved Led Lenser P7.2 or the P7R, the zoomable beam allows you to adjust the beam from a wide flood to a single zoomed in long throwing beam. Wonderful on paper but has a few shortfalls. Zoomie optics can be inefficient and lose light that it cuts off on the edges. It means your 400 Lumen LED might end up being 200 or 300 when it comes out the front of the torch. They can also be a source of water ingress as it's hard to waterproof a moving head that pulls a vacuum as you move it in and out. What they are great for is light painting, allowing you to paint light in nice and wide for close ups and zoom right in for long corridor or tunnel shots without overexposing other parts of the photo.
A balance beam pattern
There is no such things as a perfect beam pattern, but rather one that works for your needs. Zoomable torches can sort of offer a bit of both, but it's not perfect as sometimes you want both flood and throw.
A good quality fixed beam torch can offer both of these. Medium throw and a good bit of light spill is ideal for most uses.
-------------------------------------------------- UI - User Interface --------------------------------------------------
User Interface then and now
Back in the day a torch was simply on or off, there was no 'User Interface' as to speak of. Now torches come with PCB controlled drivers they can have quite a wide range of modes and settings that mean that User interfaces is a factor worth knowing when buying a torch. Most torches have just one button, so getting a good UI with lots of mode that's also easy to use is not easy, however they have got very good in the past few years.
Basic UI
Your cheapy £10 torch might come with a basic 5 mode UI which you cycle through by half pressing the button, Low > Medium > High > Strobe > SOS.
Strobe and a SOS mode are almost entirely useless I've found. These type of modes are quite basic but they work well enough.
Complex and intuitive UI
Modern mid-range to high end torches have some brilliant and clever UI's now that make it easy to flick from very low to High without having to cycle through every single brightness mode in sequence. This is really the key to good UI, the ability to access the mode you want quickly and easily.
One of the best I've used is one called Anduril which is used on an increasingly large array of 'enthusiast' grade torches such as the Emisar range. It has a 'Ramping' feature that allows you to hold the button down and the brightness will gradually increase/decrease smoothly until you let go of the button when you find the output you want to stop at. It means it essentially has an infinitely variable output so you will always find the perfect brightness setting for whatever situation you may find yourself in. It's very nifty! There are of course plenty other types, the Armytek UI is very good too.
Moonlight modes
One especially useful modes is a good 'Moonlight mode'. This simply means a very low mode that's about 1 Lumen or less. This is especially useful when on particularly sneaky explores where you really don't want to attract too much attention but still need to use a torch to get around. There are still many torches where the lowest mode is still around 40 lumens (*cough* Led Lenser *cough*), which is very bright when its near pitch black and you are trying to avoid secca.
It's also useful to be able to go straight to Moonlight mode from off, rather than having to go past High mode to get to it.
------------------------------ LED Tint and C.R.I (Quality of the light produced) ------------------------------
Quality of the light
Not all LEDs are created equally and the Quality of the light produced can vary greatly.
Ideally you want light that:
- Provides a full colour spectrum and allows you to see everything clearly without washing out colours.
- Has a neutral white or slightly warm colour tint that is pleasing to the eye and doesn't cause eye strain.
Tint
Tint is a measure of the Kelvin Temperature of the light, or simply put, whether its Warm orange, pure white or a cool blue.
A normal range you might expect to see from a torch LED is 2700K - 6500K.
You can see on this colour scale what each of the Kelvin ratings look like.
4000K and lower is considers Warm and is my personal preference. It's just nicer to the eye and colours seem to 'pop' more.
5000K is a pure or neutral white. This is a nice all rounder.
6000K upwards is a cool white/blueish. This is generally seen on cheaper torches and is generally less desirable. I find this washes out colours more and things look more flat.
C.R.I - Colour Rendition Index
This describes how full the spectrum of the light is, the higher the spectrum the more colours will look accurate and correct. Notice how things look clearer when out in natural sunlight? This is because the sun produces a full spectrum of the visible light wavelengths.
LED torches do not produce a full spectrum of light, this means that certain colours won't show up as well as others. Normally Red is is the colour tends to drop off and will stand out less than the other colours. This is why some cheaper torches tend to wash everything out in a blueish haze, because the red and orange wavelengths aren't as bright as the blues or greens.
This is where the CRI Index comes in. CRI is a measure of how accurate the colour produced by a light and scores it.
The CRI range is a number value from 0 > 100.
LEDs now come in 'High CRI' varieties that produce much high quality light.
- CRI 70 is about average, and anything much lower than that is worth avoiding.
- CRI 80 is decent, colours will start to look a little more natural.
- CRI 90+ is very good.
- CRI 99 is the ceiling of the current LED technology.
- CRI 100 is the highest you can get and is the rating of old Incandescent lights or natural sunlight.
--------------------------------------- Specs (Lumens, Candela & Throw) ---------------------------------------
Lumens
This is a measure of the amount of light that comes out the front of the torch. How these lumens are spread out or focused is entirely down to the optics. Whether is spread out wide in a soft floody beam or focused into a very tight and bright long throwing beam.
Torches have naturally got brighter and brighter as technology has improved. Where 200 lumens may have seemed bright 10 years ago, it is seen as underpowered nowadays with the 1000 lumens torches being the norm now. However don't get too suckered into the Lumen race as you won't find much use for anything past 2000 lumens for general exploring. Also for just walking around somewhere dark or underground you only really need 150-400lumens to see well enough. You will find that despite the fact that your torch might be good for say 2000lumens, 80% of the time you use it on a medium mode.
I've got a few 5000+ Lumen lights which are brilliant, but only useful in certain situations. They generate a lot of heat very quickly, munch through batteries and will very quickly draw attention to yourself if you are exploring somewhere a that's a bit bait. That said if you are underground and you want want a portable handheld sun to light up large open area, then they are brilliant.
Be aware of companies that claim silly lumen numbers. A single 18650 torch with a claimed 900,000 Lumens output (as can be found on Ebay) is certainly not even a fraction of that.
Candela (cd)
This is more specific measure of the intensity of the beam at 1m away. A torch with a high Candela rating will be one that's very throwy and has a very tight and bright hotspot. This means that all the light is focused into a very small but bright area. A soft floody light of the same lumen output will have a much lower Candela measure as the light is being spread out over a larger area so the intensity at a single point is lower. You may find this is specification that's less used by torch manufacturers, but it's useful to know what it means.
Throw & the standards (ANSI/NEMA FL-1)
Sometimes on the spec of a torch you might see '200m ANSI throw' or something similar. ANSI FL1 is a standard that is used to test the distance of how far a torch can light up. It's done using a calculation based on the Lumen & Candela figures. Some of the larger torches are pushing the 2000m boundaries.
------------------------------------------------- LED Emitters -------------------------------------------------
'Emitters' are the actual LED's that produce the light. New ones come out often and It's good to know what's good and what's outdated.
This is an LED Emitter mounted onto a MCPCB. A MCPCB is just a bit of copper with Positive and Negative connections to solder onto. They come in all different sizes and can have multiple LED's on one board.
If you want to change the LED on your torch you can often just buy a new LED already attached to the MCPCB (in the correct size) and just solder the two power cables onto the connections.
Good LED's
| Emitter | Description |
|---|---|
| Cree XP-L HI | Bright outputs combined with good throw make this a good light for raw output. CRI is okay. |
| Cree XHP35 / XHP50 / XHP70 | Physically larger LED's but with very high outputs. The XHP70 is good for 4000lumen per emitter. |
| Luminus SST-20 | Very High CRI and good output. One of the best LED's at the moment. |
| Luminus SST-40 | Lower CRI than the SST-20 but with higher output. |
| Nichia 219C | Very nice tint and good CRI but generates a fair bit of Heat and not the brightest. A little bit dated too. |
| Nichia 219b | An older LED emitter but one with a lovely warm tint and very accurate colours (High CRI). Lower output. |
| Samsung LH351D | Nice range of High CRI tints and good output. |
Bad and outdated LED's
| Emitter | Description |
|---|---|
| Cree XML-T6 | A very dated LED that's only used on the cheapest of the cheap torches now. |
| Cree XP-G2/G3 | Fairly effecient but with bad tint, Low CRI. It's not terrible, but you can do better. |
| Cree XML-U2 | This ones pretty dated too like the T6 but can be found on lots of Amazon sold torches. |
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