Explainers
Learn the specs
Flashlight specifications are unusually easy to misread, and the one number everybody knows — lumens — is the least useful on its own. These explain what each figure means and which ones should decide your purchase.
If you want it all in one place, start with how to read a flashlight spec sheet.
Lumens vs Candela: What Actually Makes a Flashlight Bright
Lumens are the total light a torch produces; candela is how concentrated that light is in the centre of the beam. Lumens tell you how much you're lighting up, candela tells you how far you can see. A 1,200-lumen flood light and a 1,200-lumen thrower make the same amount of light — the thrower just aims almost all of it at one small spot, which is why it reaches 700 metres and the flood light reaches 90.
5 common questions answered
CRI, Tint and Colour Temperature Explained
Colour temperature (in kelvin) is whether the light looks warm orange or cold blue. CRI is how accurately it renders colour compared with sunlight — 90+ is high CRI and makes skin, wood, blood and foliage look right instead of washed out. Duv is the sideways error: two lights at the same kelvin can look pleasantly rosy or unpleasantly green depending on which side of the black-body curve they sit.
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18650 vs 21700 vs AA: Which Flashlight Battery
21700 is the current default for a full-size light: the most capacity and the highest sustained output. 18650 is the same idea one size down, with a far bigger range of hosts and cells. AA and AAA lights trade a lot of performance for the ability to buy a replacement anywhere. Built-in cells are the most convenient and the least repairable — when the cell dies, the light usually does too.
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Thrower vs Flooder: Choosing a Beam Type
Pick a flooder for anything within about 20 metres — walking, camp chores, working on something with your hands, any headlamp. Pick a thrower when you need to identify something far away across open ground. Most people are best served by a balanced beam, and anyone who needs both is better off with two lights than with one compromise.
4 common questions answered
How Many Lumens Do You Actually Need?
Far fewer than the marketing suggests. Most tasks are comfortable at 50 to 300 lumens, and that is where you will leave the light for hours. A 1,000+ lumen turbo is a burst you use for a few seconds at a time. Buy a light whose sustained output and low modes suit your task, not one whose turbo number is biggest.
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What Is Anduril, and Do You Want It?
Anduril is open-source flashlight firmware that replaces a fixed set of brightness modes with a continuously adjustable ramp plus a deep configuration menu. If you like being able to set exactly the output you want, tune thermal limits and configure aux LEDs, it is excellent. If you want to hand the light to someone else and have it just work, its Simple UI mode — or a conventional interface — is the better answer.
5 common questions answered