Best rechargeable flashlights

CRI 90 versus the CRI 70 typical of a cheap cool-white emitter is the single most noticeable upgrade in a flashlight, and it is nothing to do with brightness. Reds stop looking brown. Wire insulation colors become distinguishable.

The cost of high CRI is output: the same emitter family loses roughly 10 to 20 percent of its lumens for the better phosphor. A 1,200-lumen high-CRI light is doing well.

18650 is the right cell format here — replaceable, standard, and enough energy to hold a useful level.

Skip this ifyou need maximum reach per dollar. High-CRI emitters throw less than the cool-white ones they replace.

2,000 candela and 90 m are consistent with each other, which is a better sign than it sounds. The FL1 beam distance is the square root of candela divided by 0.25 lux: the square root of 2,000 over 0.25 is 89.4 m. Streamlight's published figures check out to within a meter.

Two hours on high for 500 lumens implies roughly 2.5 watt-hours of usable energy, which is about right for a light this size. Nothing here is being oversold.

62 grams is pocketable in a way that a 21700 light is not, and that is the trade you are making against a bigger cell.

Skip this ifyou want reach. 2,000 candela is a close-range beam and no setting will change that.

A 5,000 mAh 21700 at 3.6 V is 18.0 watt-hours — nearly three times what the ProTac HL-X carries. That is the case for the 21700 format in one number.

380 m of reach on 2,800 lumens works back to about 36,100 candela, almost identical to the ProTac's 35,000 from 1,300 lumens. The Fenix is spending its extra output on spill, not on distance.

169 g including the cell is only 7 g more than a ProTac on CR123A, for nearly triple the energy. That is what four years of cell development buys.

Skip this ifyou need a shelf-stable light. A rechargeable cell self-discharges; for a drawer light, CR123A primaries are the right answer.

1,600 lumens in a body this small is a thermal problem, not an optical one. Every light in this class steps down within a minute or two, and the honest way to read the number is as a burst.

Olight's magnetic charging is the best-executed version of the idea: no port to flood, no cable to thread, and the light sits on a dock.

We could only reach the brand's retail listing, so output and charging are the only figures we assert.

Skip this ifyou want to know how long it holds high. Without a published step-down table, the headline is unverifiable.

259 m works back to roughly 16,770 candela, about 8.6 candela per lumen — a moderately wide beam that still reaches further than several lights with more output. The candela figure is ours, not ThruNite's.

ThruNite states the 1,950-lumen Turbo lasts 60 seconds. That is the most honest line on the page: most makers quote a headline and leave you to discover the step-down. Treat the working output as whatever High turns out to be, which ThruNite does not publish.

The 3,400 mAh 18650 computes to 12.2 watt-hours, the same store as a Fenix HM65R-T, and it is a standard removable cell rather than a sealed pack. Firefly at 0.5 lumens for 41 days is the figure that earns it a place in an outage kit.

Skip this ifyou want a light that sits in a drawer for a year and still works. A rechargeable cell self-discharges; the Streamlight PolyTac runs on lithium primaries that keep for roughly a decade.