Not too little, not too much . . . always the right amount of light
When I was young(er), a tactical flashlight was any flashlight you had on duty. These tended to be rather weighty affairs, with multiple D-cell batteries housed in a cheap plastic or aluminum tube, and activated via a side-mounted switch. They generally put out about 10 lumens of rather diffuse illumination, with a corona that looked as if it may have been given off by a Christmas tree light. Then we upgraded, so to speak, to Maglights. These were quite stout, some were smaller, and all gave off more light than their predecessors. You could even adjust the beam via a rotating bezel. Sometimes we would try, with limited success, to attach these to our rifles with hose clamps in creative attempts to have a functional weapon light.

Finally, in the late 20th Century a company called SureFire (formerly Laser Products) came out with a reasonably sized, highly robust, truly tactical light that put out a “blinding” 60 lumens of light via a quality beam, using a tail mounted button that was appropriate for the task. Since that happy day, SureFire lights have only gotten more robust, more powerful, and more versatile. Now, they can add another superlative: more intelligent. This is because the SureFire P2X Fury with IntelliBeam (IB) technology does what no other flashlight can do: sense how much light you need and automatically make the appropriate adjustment. For those of us who have only known “dumb” lights, typically with only one to three settings to choose from, this sounds either too complicated or too good to be true. Fortunately, its not on either count.
