New Flashlight

So the other day I picked up a new flashlight for work. I had the following things in mind when I purchased my new flashlight. First of all it had to be bright. So I looked at several LED flashlights... Secondly it needed to be easily portable (working an 8-12 hour shift carrying a huge flash light doesn't work out too well). And most importantly I wanted it to have a strobe feature on it.

So after hours of searching on-line and looking at different stores I gave up my old 6 cell Mag-Lite and purchased a brand new MAG-LITE XL50. Now you might be wondering what this little light has to offer. It's a little shorter than the old 2xAA Maglite that I used to keep in my car. This little light is WONDERFUL. I found it to be plenty bright enough (104 Lumens) and plenty of durability built right in to it (it's a mag-lite). It also has a tail cap switch which has 3 functions to it (High, Low and Strobe).

Now many of you will probably be wondering what a strobe light feature is good for. Well in the security business any type of light will help see in to a room. But in the off chance you catch yourself in a situation where you are caught by surprise a flash of a strobe light will definitely give you the advantage to decipher if the subject you are encountering is going to give you trouble or if they are totally innocent. Secondly a strobe feature as I have found out gives you an easy way to signal to police or other agencies that might be trying to locate you.

Now on to the good stuff about this amazing little light I picked up. Besides being bright, durable and having the strobe light I picked it up for around $30.00 at a local store. Not a bad deal at all... Lots of high end flash lights offer similar features to this little mag-lite (XL 50) yet use EXPENSIVE BATTERIES. We all know what I am talking about, the flashlights that use CR123 batteries and such. Well the beauty of this flashlight is that it runs off of AAA batteries (3 of them). I simply went to the store and picked up a pack of re-chargeable batteries to use (about $10.00). Charged the batteries up and the light runs great. Now some of you might be asking WHY RE-CHARGEABLE BATTERIES? I have found that using the Re-chargeable batteries saves LOTS of money. Sure the initial start up cost is going to be a little bit more for the charger and the batteries. But think of it this way... Every time I need to replace the batteries in my flashlight (once a week or so) That will cost me about $3.00 to do so. So with in one month I have spent more money on the batteries than if I bought a new pack of re-chargeable batteries. Makes sense now?

So in my conclusion and after using the new XL 50 for about 2 weeks now I have found the following, The battery life is phenomenal (Mag-lite claims it can run for 8 hours 45 minutes on High and 36 Hours on Low). I have only charged the batteries for the initial time and haven't had a problem yet. The Strobe feature has come in handy a couple of times and the size of the flashlight is perfect for in pockets of a jacket or pants. As a huge bonus I haven't felt weighed down and don't need to carry my big (6 cell) mag-lite everywhere I go anymore. It's a perfect light for working in dark areas and hasn't given me any issues at this point.

Anyone have any other suggestions of good flashlights let me know?

Oh yeah and here's a link to Mag-lite's page for the XL50 so you can learn a little more about it if you want to. http://www.maglite.com/maglite_xl50_led.asp

Hopefully this will work for you as well as it has for me...