Flashlight and Weapon Light Comparison

Some of the editors of GunWebsites.com spent an evening (and night) working on low light shooting drills. We do this regularly, and this time we decided to bring along some of our collection of handheld flashlights, weapons lights, hands free lights and keychain lights to test, evaluate and compare. Here are the results of our simple beam comparison test. We review lights made by Surefire, Streamlight, Princeton Tec, Fenix, Coast and others.

A group shot of the various lights we tested for this review

We Reviewed Handheld Flashlights, Weapons Lights (for pistols, shotguns and rifles), Hands Free Lights and Keychain Lights by shining them at a large 4'x4' circular graph from a distance of 10 feet in almost total darkness. We were outdoors in the hills around Tucson, AZ on a moonless night. We looked at the lights beam with our digital camera, a Kodak C743 7.1 megapixel With and without a night vision device. We posted the results below so that beam shape, intensity, coverage and spill over could be seen for each light and compared to each other.

Handheld Flashlights

Fenix L2D
Coast V2 Tactical
Streamlight Stinger XT
Streamlight TL-2
Streamlight Scorpion
Surefire G2
Surefire G2 LED
Surefire E2E
Surefire E2D body w/ KL4 Head
Surefire E1B
Surefire L4
Surefire E2D
Surefire E2D LED

Weapon Lights

Surefire X200B
Surefire X300
Streamlight TLR-1
Streamlight TLR-2 Light & Laser
Streamlight M6 Light & Laser
Streamlight M3
Glock Tactical Light 22
Z5 Tactical Wave Light
Surefire M900A
Surefire M600

Chemical Light Sticks

Military Surplus Light Sticks
Infra Red Light Stick
"Cheap" Light Sticks

Hands Free Lights

Surefire HL1-B-TN Helmet Light
Princeton Tec Scout Headlamp
Princeton Tec Matrix Headlamp
Petzl Tactikka Plus Headlamp

Keychain Lights

Streamlight Twin-Task 1 Cell
Streamlight Nanolight
Photon Micro-Light II
Maglite Solitaire
County Comm LED light

Lasers / IR

Laser Devices DBAL A2
Generic Green Laser
Pelican IR Strobe

We would like to thank our sponsor, Tucson Guns and our editors on the Gun Websites Shooting Team for supplying the lights we used in this test.

Care to guess how much this pile of lights might cost?? (We don't want to, LOL)

Handheld Flashlights
Flashlights are the most common illumination aid. We each own many, here are the models we brought with for our testing and review. Some of these lights have multiple brightness settings, for our testing and evaluations we used all lights at their highest power setting.
Fenix L2D
9 - 140 lumens 2 x AA batteries 56 grams
Coast V2 Tactical Power Chip Torch, Model: 7736
65 lumens 3 x AAA batteries 4.5 ounce
Streamlight Stinger XT
125 lumens rechargeable battery 11.1 ounce
Streamlight TL-2
78 lumens Two CR123A batteries 4.2 ounces
Streamlight Scorpion
78 lumens Two CR123A batteries 4.7 ounces
Surefire G2
65 or 120 lumens Two 123A batteries 4.10 ounce
Surefire G2 LED
80 lumens Two 123A 4.10 ounces
The Surefire G2 (yellow) and G2 LED (white)
Surefire E2E with GG&G Tactical Impact Device (TID)
60 lumens Two 123A batteries 3.10 ounces
Surefire E2D LED body with a KL4 Scout Light Head
65 lumens Two 123A batteries 3.20 ounces
Surefire E1B
5 5 or 80 lumens One 123A battery 2.80 ounces
Surefire L4
100 lumens Two 123A Batteries 3.40 ounces
Surefire E2D
60 lumens Two 123A batteries 3.20 ounces
Surefire E2D LED
5 or 120 lumens Two 123A batteries 3.70 ounces
Weapon Lights
Weapon mounted lights offer many benefits when shooting at night. In addition to the obvious illumination and sometimes lasers, weapon mounted lights let a shooter concentrate on the target and other tasks such as clearing malfunctions, movement and use of cover. Here are the weapon lights we shoot with regularly
Surefire X200B
60 lumens Two 123A batteries 4 ounces
Surefire X300
110 lumens Two 123A batteries 3.7 ounces
Streamlight TLR-1
135 lumens Two CR123A batteries 4.18 ounces
Streamlight TLR-2 Light & Laser
135 lumens Two CR123A batteries 4.72 ounces
Streamlight M6 Light & Laser
80-90 lumens Two CR123A batteries 3.3 ounces
The Streamlight M6 mounted on a shotgun
Streamlight M3
80-90 lumens Two CR123A batteries 3.3 ounces
Glock Tactical Light 22 Model: TAC 4065
Two 123A batteries 1.8 ounces
Z5 Tactical Wave Light
65 lumens Two 123A batteries 3.16 ounces
Surefire M900A with LaRue Throw Levers
125 or 225 lumens three 123A batteries
Surefire M600 First Model Scout Light

Hands Free Lights
These headlamps and helmet lights didn't show up on the grid for the camera, although our eyes could see their beams on the target grid and the Night Vision device could pick up their beams (pictured).
Surefire HL1-B-TN Helmet Light
19.2 to 0.3 lumens Two 123A batteries 3.1 ounces
See our full Review of the Surefire HL1-A-TN Helmet Light
Princeton Tec Scout Headlamp
10 Lumens Batteries: 4 x 2032 Lithium Coin Cell Burn Time: Up to 48 hours Weight: 45 g 2 blinking modes
Princeton Tec Matrix Headlamp
1-watt L.E.D 2 AA alkaline batteries
Petzl Tactikka Plus Headlamp
Strobe mode 3 AAA 78 g	Red filter covers LED
Keychain Lights
These lights didn't show up on the grip for the camera, although our eyes could see their beams on the target grid. These were all too faint for photos, but since we did test them, we will include them in our review
	Streamlight Twin-Task 1 Cell one 3 volt CR123A 29 lumens typical with xenon bulb; 24 lumens from 3 LEDs 4 oz	The battery may have been going out on this one during the test, we'll test it again in the future
	Streamlight Nanolight 4 alkaline button cells 10 lumens .36 oz.	See our first review of the Streamlight Nanolight Click Here
	Photon Micro-Light II 2 x CR-2016 batteries 6.3 grams
	Maglite Solitaire 213 candlepower .86 oz w/ battery	Found this old Mini Mag in an old survival kit made 10 years ago, read the full review, Click Here
	Small, simple, LED light	Click here for more pictures and our review of these small simple keychain LED lights
Lasers / IR
In order to take many of these pictures and to be safe while shooting at night we brought along some night vision equipment. Laser are a benefit when wearing night vision, here are some examples of how well lasers work as illuminators and indicators
Laser Devices DBAL A2 IR Laser/Illuminator / Visible Laser with LaRue Tactical Mount
IR pointer and illuminator
Laser Devices DBAL A2 IR Laser pointing at a far hill
Generic Green Laser
One CR123 Battery
Pelican IR Strobe
	Pelican Mini Flasher 2130 IR LED 2 x L1154 Batteries 0.5 oz. For use with NVG equipment.
Chemical Light Sticks
Shooting in low light requires extra steps to ensure safety. We used chemical light sticks for marking the firing line, and each other. The glowing chemical lights last for many hours and can be used for many things. Here are some of the chemical light sticks we used during the review
Military Surplus Light Sticks
Chemical light sticks are used for many ways in the military and police agencies. These are the same chemical lights used by military and law enforcement		Using chemical lights in MOLLE gear to create an illuminated marker on this chest rig
Infra Red Light Stick
We had a few IR chemical light sticks that are a dark purple color to the naked eye, but to night vision equipment they are as bright as the standard green light stick
The IR light stick is on the far left	Looking at someone waving an IR chemical light stick in the distance	The IR chemical light is the purple one on the far left
"Cheap" Light Sticks
These cheap chemical lights are from a 99¢ store. The small packages of colored light sticks are 2 for 99¢ and the thinner longer chemical lights are 99¢ per tube of 10-16. These chemical lights worked very well. A few did not glow, but most of them did and they all worked as long as we were testing and shooting