Reading On The Toilet

Surefire LX2

I rather like high quality, super bright flashlights.  Over the years I’ve had a couple of Inova lights.  They’re built like tanks and are much brighter than your average flashlight.  But recently I decided to upgrade to a Surefire light, widely considered the best flashlights in the world.  Surefire recently came out with the LX2 Lumamax, which is has two output levels, one of which is insanely bright.  My wife took a picture of me shining a friend of mine, and you can see the effect it had on his face:

LX2 Beam

If you shine someone in the face at night…when their eyes have adapted to the dark…they become unable to see at all for a solid 3 seconds or so, and see a serious white spot for a minute or more.  Not only is this an awesome flashlight, but it’s also a lot of fun to shine your friends and family members with.  If you’re about to hit the toilet with your laptop and want to read up on this light, there’s a very long thread/review here at the Candle Power Forums.  I bought mine from Optics HQ, and their customer service was excellent…so much so that I ordered another Surefire E2L Outdoorsman for a family member:

Surefire E2L Outdoorsman

Why the Outdoorsman?  Well, the LX2 is so bright it’s ridiculous.  The Outdoorsman is likely a better choice for those looking for a longer lasting light (Battery wise, the Outdoorsman’s low mode at 3 lumens lasts 100 hours compared to 30 hours for the LX2′s 15 lumen low mode.) that won’t destroy their own night vision when looking for something in a dark room.  But if temporarily blinding people is one of your primary reasons for getting a flight, or you just want a light that’s crazy bright, you can’t beat the LX2.  (If you want the LX2 but don’t want the super bright spot all the time…even the 15 lumen low mode is very bright…get yourself an FO4 Diffuser.  That was my solution for using my LX2 indoors.)  Very, very cool flashlight.  I’ll never buy another non-Surefire light again.