How can I determine which flashlights have the maximum regulated output for the longest duration?

As you are looking for a range of different purposes. There is no one-size-fits-all here.

I have a basic (headlamp) one from Black Diamond that will illuminate up to 80 meters (260 feet) with a max of 300 lumen output. This is plenty to see trails for hiking, running, climbing, camping etc. There are many options to choose from in this range. Your local outdoors shop likely stocks around 20 different ones. Even a 100 lm one is adequate for basic needs. These are usually very light and easily transportable, and have great running time - about 25 h range on high setting and up to about 200 h on low (11 m/35', plenty for around a campsite). These usually run on AAA batteries or similar.

Bike lights go up to about 5000 lm, which is incredibly bright (about 4x brighter than halogens on car headlights). If you are say, a down-hill mountain biker in competition, you might want one of these, but otherwise you can go for much dimmer ones without compromise. These come with the trade-off in that they are large, heavy and consequently not so transportable. They are not designed to be carried by hand, but clamped to the bike. They also only tend to have about 2-3 h run time and then require recharging (2-13 h according to article I found here).

Vehicles should have their own lights, and there are very few situations where you couldn't mount lights on a vehicle to run off the internal power supply that would be more than adequate for off-roading, even on the darkest of trails on a rainy night.

posted over 5 years ago

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bob1‭

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