Streamlight Stinger 2020 review

We have not tested this flashlight. We own none of the products on this site and have no laboratory. This review works from Streamlight's own product page, read on September 22, 2026, and from the arithmetic those figures allow.

Most of the reviews on this site spend their length explaining what a maker has left out. This one does not. Streamlight publishes output, peak beam intensity, beam distance and runtime for every mode, plus weight, length, an ingress rating, an impact rating and a warranty — and the intensity and distance figures reconcile against each other. It is the most completely documented light we cover, alongside Streamlight's own ProTac HL-X.

What Streamlight publishes

The two figures that check each other

Almost every maker publishes either an intensity figure or a distance figure, never both — which means there is nothing to test the number against. Streamlight publishes both, and under ANSI/PLATO FL 1 they are two views of the same measurement.

This matters more than any single number on the page. A maker who publishes one unverifiable figure is asking to be trusted. A maker who publishes two that can be checked against each other, three times over, has made a claim you can falsify. Only Streamlight and Maglite do this among the brands we cover — see Streamlight vs Maglite.

The beam is deliberately broad

It would be easy to read 12.5 as a weakness. It is a decision. A patrol light spends most of its life inside ten meters — a vehicle interior, a stairwell, a back yard, a face — and a tightly concentrated beam in that space is a bright disc surrounded by darkness. The Stinger's wide hotspot lights the whole of what you are looking at.

The cost is reach per lumen. The ProTac HL-X publishes 374 m from 1,300 lumens where the Stinger publishes 315 m from 2,000 — more than half again the output for sixty fewer meters, because the ProTac concentrates more than twice as hard. If your work is a treeline rather than a room, that is the light. Throw versus flood covers the trade properly.

Two hours at full output is the headline figure

Read the bottom three rows. Three of the six brightest tactical lights we cover publish no runtime at any level, so there is no way to know whether their output is a working level or a thirty-second burst. On that column the Fenix beats the Stinger outright and deserves the credit — see the PD36R Pro review. What the Fenix does not publish is an IP code, an impact rating or a candela figure — it states only that the light is waterproof to 2 m.

Two battery packs, which changes the usual objection

A proprietary cell is normally the thing we count against a duty light, because a flat proprietary pack a long way from its charger is a dead light. Streamlight publishes a quantity of 2 for the SL-B26 pack, which is not a detail to skip past: the spare is in the box. Swap it at the start of a shift and the endurance question mostly goes away.

The charging is also less narrow than the light's reputation suggests. Streamlight lists three routes — existing Stinger chargers, a USB cord, or the SL-B26 bank charger — so a vehicle cradle is one option among several rather than a dependency. If you already run Stingers, your existing chargers work.

What Streamlight does not publish is the pack's capacity, in either milliamp-hours or watt-hours. That is the one real gap in an otherwise complete sheet, and it means the stored energy — the figure this site normally computes for every rechargeable — cannot be derived. We will not estimate it.

The interface, and why duty lights are built this way

Streamlight publishes independently functioning head and tail switches plus a mode selector. That arrangement exists for a specific reason: a tail switch can be worked with the light held in a fist beside your head, a head switch with the light held conventionally, and the mode selector sets what the switches do before you ever need them.

The consequence is that you choose your mode at the start of a shift rather than cycling through three levels in front of whatever you are looking at. On a general-purpose light that is over-engineering. On a duty light it is the whole point, and it is one of the things what makes a flashlight tactical actually comes down to.

What it costs you

• 350 grams and 19.48 cm. This is the heaviest light in our tactical set and it does not go in a pocket. On a duty belt or in a vehicle door, the mass is irrelevant; anywhere else it is the first thing you notice.
• IPX7, not IP68. Immersion to one meter for thirty minutes, and no dust digit at all. Streamlight's own ProTac HL-X publishes IP68, which is dust-tight and rated deeper. For a light this expensive that is a conspicuous step down inside one catalog.
• No primary-cell fallback. The ProTac HL-X takes two CR123A lithium primaries when its pack is flat, and those store for roughly a decade. The Stinger has a spare pack and no such escape hatch.
• No published cell capacity, so watt-hours and cost-to-run cannot be computed.
• No published candela for strobe, though Streamlight does give it a 3.25-hour runtime, which is more than most makers say about strobe at all.

Who should buy something else

Skip it if you carry it rather than wear it. 350 g is a belt-or-vehicle decision. For pocket carry at real output, the EDC field is the right place to start.

Skip it if you need reach. 315 m is respectable and it is not what this light is for. The Nitecore P30i publishes 1,000 m and the Olight Warrior X 4 630 m.

Skip it if you want dust protection or a primary-cell fallback. The ProTac HL-X publishes IP68, runs on CR123A primaries as well as its pack, weighs roughly half as much and costs less.

Skip it if raw output is the point. The Nitecore P20iX publishes twice the lumens. It also publishes no runtime, so what those 4,000 lumens cost you is unknown — which is exactly the trade this light exists to avoid.

The verdict, stated as what it commits to

Streamlight commits to 2,000 lumens for two hours, 25,000 candela, 315 meters, 350 grams, 19.48 centimeters, IPX7, 2 meters of impact resistance and a lifetime warranty — with a full table for medium and low, a strobe runtime, two battery packs in the box and three charging routes. Every distance figure reconciles with its own intensity figure.

That is not a light that wins a spec-sheet comparison on any single row. It is the light whose spec sheet you can actually check, which is a different and rarer thing, and on a tool somebody may depend on it is the one that matters. The gaps are real and small: no cell capacity, IPX7 rather than IP68, and no primary-cell fallback. For the wider field ranked on evidence rather than headline output, see the brightest tactical flashlights and police and duty flashlights.