No Stupid Questions

Some are absurdly bad in this regard!

"Oh, you want to reduce the brightness? Scroll through 7 modes, including 4 epileptic seizure-inducing strobe modes, before you can get to low brightness mode."

I like using a lot of my flashlights diffrent functions at diffrent times. Although mine also has the option to turn off from whichever if you hold the power button so I don't have to cycle through, which is nice.

It is basically I/O limitations, and the majority of lights in this area likely have an origin in cycling lights as far as the silicon is concerned. I think that is the original high profit niche that drove a custom asic for the application of a PWM LED controller with integrated charging. Pretty much all other lights are built to a price. The chip likely has additional functionality but the actual designs are all built to a bare minimum price (or max profit margin). From this perspective, you'll see a lot of the feature set differently. On a bike, one button is convenient as well. They usually fash too bright because of the default clock speed of the chip and a design that does not deviate from the chip's example implementation.

Agree. I hate having to click through 4 modes just to turn it off. On, dim, on and off slow, strobe…off. No!

Yeah, I've used strobe a few times.

The anduril settings make it easy imo.

But, we use it they're at the house plenty, the strobe. If I'm out in the yard at night, doing some kind of crap in the rain (hello helene, the most recent event that I used it), flipping to the strobe is a quick and easy signal I need help. It lets everyone else stay dry (er, until I need them to come out lol), and means I don't have to fumble with my phone in the wet and dark.

It's not an every day thing, and it isn't meant to be afaik.

It's handy enough that my best friend and his husband now use the lights I bought them after they saw how well it worked and wanted the same thing.

We've also got a sort of awareness of it in the neighborhood now. My using it drew attention, and I explained why I was doing so. Everyone close enough to see the flash now knows that if it's only on for a minute or so, it's no big deal, and I know that after word spread, if I leave it going longer, they'll know I need help, or at least check.

One of the neighbors bought his own wurkkos as word spread. It's such a good signal at night that it's likely going to be a thing in the entire neighborhood rather than just our block.

There's even diffusers you can get for most lights that come in colors, so you could expand the signalling to have different meanings per color, if it became useful to do so.

Seriously, you have no idea how nice it is to not be fucking around in a storm either running back and forth for things, or having someone else just standing around miserable while you work just in case you need help.

It's kinda niche, but at this point, I've got those kind of lights for everyone in the house just in case we need to be coordinated when sound is difficult (like in a freak hurricane lol).

My Pretzel headlamp turns on and off in steady full beam. Can choose to cycle through low beam and flashing if I want to with quick depressions of button. Switch to red light and back by depressing and holding button. Sometimes use low beam to save battery, red light to keep from loosing night vision, flashing to be seen, not see with.

So i carry a sure fire. They don’t. The one I carry takes a rechargeable 18650, and has 2 settings “intellibeam” that adjusts brightness based on near-and-far and intensity, and full-on-burn-your-eyes-out.

They have other lower cost models. Alternatively , if you’re not looking for something that’s incredibly bright, stream light offers a very inexpensive penlight that’s pretty handy. (Only complaint with that is they take AAAA’s)

Yeah, my grandpa's has like 3 of them for camping. They're rechargeable and made really solid. You control the brightness by pulling on the front which slides the glass thing making it wider and darker or blinding bright but narrow.