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I’ve mentioned this before, but I think current flashlights are a modern marvel.
I was watching an episode of “Star Trek: Voyager” the other day. The crew was in a cave and had these two large flashlight things strapped to their wrists to give light. This is supposed to be in the 24th century. By that point I expect lights to be a couple millimeters across and implanted in directly above our eyebrows. They’ll take power from our brain and have variable lumens from 10 to 1,000,000.
For now, we have this.
Table of Contents
What am I reviewing today?
Today’s miracle of modern technology is the Streamlight 66608 Microstream. As the name implies, it’s small. As you can see in the picture below, it’s only slightly longer than my index finger. I do not have particularly large hands. I added a standard ink pen for perspective.
It has two modes: high is 250 lumens and low is 50 lumens. Run time on the USB rechargeable battery is one hour on high and 3.5 hours on low.
This is not a “tactical” light.
It doesn’t have a lot of modes. There’s no strobe. No bezel for striking or pointy end for breaking glass and it’s really not bright enough to use for blinding people, although if it was had I’d probably try.
It’s just a quality, easy to carry light. It takes little space and weighs all of 1.2 oz.
It also comes in awful packaging. It’s hardly unique in this, but I, personally, see no reason whatsoever for me to ever have to use a tool to open a damn package for something like this.
Anyway, once you clear the surrounding armor you get a pretty complete kit.
I haven’t done more than skim the manual because it’s all pretty self-explanatory, but it’s there if needed. It’s also about one page long, just in several languages. Oh, and the warning about not staring straight into the beam. Uh huh. I’m kind of in the camp of taking out all warning messages from everything and just letting nature take its course. But I digress.
The lanyard has a metal loop that goes easily around the clip, so if you want that approach you have it. It also has an adjustment built in so that you can tighten it around your wrist if you want to make sure you can let it go from your hand while retaining it.
The USB cable is just as useless as it looks; it’s way too short to be helpful. It’s not like I have a shortage of USB cables around here so it’s not an issue.
Two modes and soft on.
High and low modes. Lightly press the end switch, and you get high mode until you release. Double press and you get low. For high constant on, just press it all the way to the click. For low constant, double press and make the second one click. Like I said; pretty simple.
When I first got it the end switch was pretty stiff but it’s gotten better over the past month or so.
The two pictures below were taken at near dark, not complete. Plus I was in town, so normal light pollution exists. And my phone’s camera tries to “help” me as much as it can. End result, it makes the light this device throws look less than it is.
As you can see, the low beam in those conditions looks like it barely exists.
The high beam looks, and is, a lot better.
It’s rechargeable.
The battery is a built-in Streamlight 66607 lithium ion, and is capable of taking about 300 recharges before it needs replacing. One of the things I learned from skimming the manual. And the battery can be replaced, which is a nice touch. Amazon carries the batteries: Streamlight 66607.
As you can see in the picture below, part of the light slides out to uncover the USB port. In some other lights this would change the light shape. In this one, it just uncovers the USB port. Which protects it from dirt and water, so I’m for it.
It’s kind of hard to tell, but that light is red. That means it’s charging. When it turns green, guess what? It’s charged. Like I said; pretty simple operation.
Conclusion.
I’ve been carrying this almost continuously since I got it. When I’m doing delivery work at night, I still have my bigger one for finding addresses and such. But for normal, every day use, it’s kind of hard to beat something as small, light, and powerful as this Streamlight. Even if I have the Surefire I can still clip this into a pocket and hardly notice it.
Amazon has them in three colors. Mine is the coyote; red and blue are also available. Click the link below to get one.
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