Flashlights & Lights
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Flashlights and Lights – A Quick Overview
With an endless selection of lights and flashlights to choose from it's understandable that you might become overwhelmed by all the choices. While were sure you'll find the right product for your application we thought it might be helpful to proved a quick commentary of the recommended applications for specific types of lights commonly found in lighting devices, namely Xenon and LED. Listed below is just such a brief description and it may be a good place to start before you look for the lighting tool that best suites your needs.
Xenon Lights
Flashlights with Xenon bulbs have some very distinct advantages that make them superior to LED in some circumstances. One of the most important for the hunting sportsman is the tracking of wounded game. The shear blinding intensity and color of Xenon makes it vastly superior to any other type of light for following blood trails. With Xenon the red color of blood pops out from surrounding backgrounds better then with any other type of light we know of. Now we love LED lights, but the truth is no LED flashlight we've ever tested has been as effective as Xenon on blood trails. If you're a hunter everyone in your tracking party needs to carry a Xenon flashlight or you're simply not using tools up to the task. Another interesting point, folks who normally need a little vision correction help, reading glasses and/or standard glasses, commented that the lack of glare associated with Xenon light was a big help when trying to focus on objects at close distances, significantly better as compared to LED.
However Xenon has one big drawback, it's a battery hog, and you simply won't find a high intensity Xenon flashlight that will last and last the way LED flashlights do. The bottom line, Xenon lights are special purpose lighting tools, so if you need a high intensity piercing beam of light or a great blood tracking light then Xenon is a must, but its not a great pick as a emergency, general purpose, or survival light, for that task LED is king.
LED Flashlights
There is little doubt that LED "light emitting diodes" have revolutionized the lighting and flashlight industry. Their dependability and service life is light-years ahead of what was achievable just a couple of decades ago, and the products just keep getting better and better. Here at Outdoor Outfitters we're big on LED flashlights, and offer some really great models that serve lots of wants and needs. Generally, we can say that LED flashlights work better then any other type of light for general purpose lighting, emergency lighting, tactical lighting, law enforcement lighting, or as your survival light. However, not all LED flashlights are created equal, there's a lot of junk out there, but don’t worry we've taken great care to properly select the ones we feel good about recommending. Keep in mind that generally the higher the lumen value the brighter the light beam but the shorter the battery life. You'll also find several models with high end rechargeable battery systems that work fantastic, and don’t have the battery memory problems found in older systems, they are a bit pricey but generally worth it if your flashlight is used often.