As we all know, LED Flashlights are enormously popular across the world from law enforcement/military personnel through to campers, hikers, dog walkers and children. But how do you choose the right on from the thousands of flashlights sold on market? Here are the steps which can help you to choose the most suitable LED flashlight:
1. What do You Need It For?
Firstly, you need to determine what you will use the flashlight for. For search and rescue, hunting, or long range vision, you’ll need a torch with big brightness and durability. For camping, hiking, fishing, sailing, recreation, you still want a powerful beam and and something that’s built to take hard knocks. For general household use, indoors, around the shed and attic for shorter distance vision, then you’ll find a smaller torch with less features (100-300 lumens brightness) would be ok.
2. Decide how much brightness you need
Flashlights aren’t just a tool anymore, they’ve become a cool gadget that’s handy and fun to use. Flashlight Connoisseurs would always say more brightness is better but you need to decide how explosive or tame you need the beam to be for your purposes.

3. Weight and composition and waterproofing
Because aircraft grade aluminium is now used to craft some of top-line flashlights these days, they are becoming lighter. Stainless steel and hard plastics are still used in many makes and models.

The threads on the aluminium flashlights are so closely woven that they are waterproof to IPX-8 International Standards which means they’ll still work when submerged to a depth of 2 metres.
4. Size
LED Flashlights have become incredibly compact in recent years. With the use of American Cree energy efficient technology, flashlight engineers have been able to generate huge amounts of very bright light from ordinary AA batteries. Lithium batteries provide even greater power for high performance LED flashlights.
5. Type Of batteries
Normal alkaline batteries: easy to source from your local supermarket, handy and convenient. However they don’t have the runtime or shelf-life of lithium batteries

Disposable Lithium Batteries such as CR123A batteries have a longer runtime and shelf-life than alkaline but cost a little bit more echargeable Lithium-ion Batteries are the best power source for top quality LED torches. With long runtime and shelf-life as well as the added convenience of being rechargeable, the real advantage is that you’ll never be out of batteries.
6. Price
As with everything, you get what you pay for. You can spend $20-$50 and get a small LED that’ll serve you well for a short time. The top brand names will cost you $30-$200 depending on the brightness and functionality. For the big search and rescue torches, you’re looking at paying over $200.