My daily carry LED, an Inova T5, is missing.
Well, I was looking for an excuse to buy an LED/AA light anyway. I have 3 Surefires, but they aren't LED and burn through CR123s too fast, so I keep them for specific purposes. I was looking at a Fenix, but I had seen someone on this forum mention the Ray-O-Vac Sportsman Extreme at Wal-Mart. The last time I did this, I
regretted it. The $20 Brinkmann Maxfire I read about on another forum as an "even cheaper G2" lasted about 20 minutes before the thing just quit. But, I thought I'd at least look at the light, which was supposed to be putting out 80 lumens, 3 watts on two AAs. When I got to China-Mart, I found the light is usually $25, on sale for $20. They 1-watt version was even cheaper. Okay, nice looking light, and on sale, so what the heck.
It doesn't have the wide spill of the Surefires. The light is less blue than on my "mIa"-Nova. Darn bright, with a hot center spot and no dark spots in the beam-I think the flashlight guys call them "artifacts." Anyway, there aren't any. It is much easier to pocket carry than the Surefires, but not as easy as the sleek Inova. It has deep gripping checkering and a good hand shape, probably easier to keep a grip on than the Inova. It's sort of a green to gray color, came with a pocket clip (now GONE) and wrist strap with a tiny, and I do mean tiny hole to mount it on a ring in front of the tail cap. I ditched it and put on my own with a tiny snap ring. Best part-obviously, AA batteries and a 2-3 hour run time quoted.
Normally, I would hesitate to recommend anything based on a 24-hour try out, so I'm not recommending, just mentioning these since they appear to be on sale-maybe a close out, as the price tags were red and didn't look like the usual Wal-Mart tags. YMMV, and this thing may quit tonight, but it seems to be built well. Plus, I figured the one sure way to have my Inova turn up was to go out and buy a replacement, right?
Link to the look:
Rayovac - Sportsman Xtreme LED Flashlights