Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Let's get the negative out of the way first: This light is definitely not _anywhere_ near 1000 lumen (it looks to be about as bright as 200 lumen flashlights I have - and not even remotely close to my good 1,000 lumen flashlight), and no, you will not be seeing useful illumination at 600ft. Having gotten that out of the way, I will say that I didn't expect it to be 1,000 lumen at this price point anyhow; anything coming from east Asia that claims to be 1000+ lumen and sells for <$50 USD, isn't anywhere near 1000 lumen. I will say even though I had low expectations, it puts out even less light than I had hoped, even taking the price point into consideration. Because the light output is grossly (fraudulently) advertised, I can give this only one star, since many people will be buying this item based solely on the lumen rating. If they had advertised the lumens accurately, I would give it a full rating since the light does meet my immediate need (night skating). I also would not use the integrated USB battery charger. Those are invariably failure points in these cheap Chinese lights. If you want it to fail quickly, use the integrated charger. If you want it to last, us an external charger. I will not be testing nor trusting the integrated charger on this item. I'm testing the battery capacity in a balancing charger and will update this review once three discharge/charge rounds have completed and I have an accurate measurement of the battery capacity. I expect it will be under 1,000mAh as that is what is usually the case with cheap electronics from China. Now that the negative is out of the way: The light does have a good pattern for doing work in a dark area, and is sufficient for jogging, skating, or even bicycling at a moderate speed. The light offers several strobe modes: 1. Rapid strobe 2. SOS strobe pattern 3. A locator beacon strobe (flashing once every 3.5 or so seconds) The light always comes on full (lol!) brightness (which is to say, not bright at all) but does allow for six brightness levels; simply hold the button for more than 1/3 of a second and it will cycle down through dimmer brightness levels, and then start again from full brightness. The throw is nice for jogging, skating, with a decent hot spot directly in front (maybe 20 degrees), and a wider flood of about 70 degrees, and a dimmer outer flood pattern around that at about a 105 degree cone of light. The light comes with a carrying case, which is nice I suppose (and TBH is probably where the bulk of the price went; the quality is NOT in the LEDs, and most certainly not in the battery), helmet clips (awesome - I doubt they'll work with my roller derby helmet though), and an instruction manual. The manual claims this light uses two XP-G2 LEDs, so naturally I went to cree's web site and looked up the data sheets.. lo and behold, the maximum brightness of this LED is well below 200 lumen. Two of them under-driven to avoid overheating and to get respectable battery life... would probably be about 200 lumen combined so my first paragraph assessing the brightness was spot-on - er, pun intended. :) I'll update this review after I finish with the battery capacity test, but won't be deducting any stars as I've already rated this light a 1 based on the lie of 1000 lumens. If driven to full brightness, the brightest XP-G2 LED variant when cool would be 180 lumen, of which two of those with 100% reflector and lens would be a theoretical maximum of 360 lumens, for both LEDs at maximum rated current, combined, when cool (<25C). If I could give this light a negative number of stars as a rating because of the ridiculous 1000 lumen claim, I would. Update on battery capacity; I have a pleasant surprise for you: They did not skimp on the 18650 cell; unlike most cheap chinese gadgets that come with 18650 cells, this does not appear to be a rewrapped salvage cell. The capacity turned out to be 2457mAh! This is surprising because that's where they skimp on most devices to get the price down. However given the false advertising (see: bogus 1000 lumen and 600' throw claims) this does not earn any stars back, since most will use the 1000 lumen claim as THE reason to buy.