As Reply observes, flashlights have changes so much. Our practice is to have several inexpensive ones in our kitchen cabinet and cars. IME, they work better than I remember any older ones working - without the need for multiple large batteries which drained rapidly.
I’m not sure how “nice [and] broad” of a beam you need to walk where you are, but IME even small LEDs provide plenty of light for all but the roughest off-trail walking.
With such decent lights being so cheap and readily available, we basically treat them as disposable in terms of replacing batteries and/or discarding and replacing.
I occasionally dive down the flashlight rabbit hole. I tend to find something I like and then use it for several years and ignore the entire field. Right now I’m using a Sofirn because they have a lot of lights with high CRI LEDs and without blinkie modes. Mine’s the SP40 which is marketed as a headlamp, but I never use the headband. Lo/Med/Hi settings and no strobe. Just on and off when you click the button, and cycle through the levels if you hold it down.
So yes, you can still get relatively simple lights with no strobe settings, but pretty much everything has modes with multiple light levels because most customers want the option to choose between really bright and really long battery life depending on what the situation demands.
As a personal preference, I prefer the flashlights that take traditional batteries. That’s mostly because I use flashlights infrequently. With rechargeable flashlights or flashlights that take special batteries, there’s the recharging aspect that needs to be managed. If those batteries are dead, I can’t just pop in new ones. But if they take regular batteries, I can put in new ones and use the flashlight immediately. I do have rechargeables and ones that take 18650s, but I don’t use them frequently enough to where I’m always on top of the recharging schedule. Fortunately, the LED lights are stingy with their battery requirements. The regular batteries work for a long time.
These are amazing, single mode, zoom that really works, endcap on/off. You’ll need one 18650 battery each, purchased separately. I’ve had a pair in daily use for 2 years, outstanding light.
$18 is a disposable flashlight. $150 is a very expensive flashlight for what I require of it. $700 is a flashlight for people who are criminally self-indulgent unless they have some rare special need beyond my imagination.
Seconded. The conversation reminds me of the pens one. I get that there are people who like high quality pens but my crap disposable ones are good enough for my needs and I have dozens in the house. Flashlights are used rarely in my house and a couple of crap ones are good enough for my needs. One is dead? Toss it and find another.
The difference are for the not quite flashlights but the stuff I wear to be seen running or biking in the dark. That’s when strobing makes me more noticeable and saves battery life. Strobing is for that purpose, being seen with extended battery life, not seeing.
I bought several of these Vont flashlights a few years ago for emergency supply. I use one as a routine flashlight around the yard and the rest are kept in various rooms for when/if the power goes out.
I didn’t realize until a couple minutes ago that the top pulls up to make a lantern (there are handles to carry it with). It would probably infuriate the OP however, since there are strobe and flashing light modes if you repeatedly press the on button.
I have a couple of these, and am happy with them. They’re bright enough to light the sidewalk ahead of me at night, and they’re small enough to put in a pocket:
Here’s a lantern-type light I got for my aunt. It’s bright and omnidirectional, and it weighs less than a pound (though probably more than a pound with batteries in it):
The ones I really like are shown at left:
I put a little snip of red & green shrinktube on the straps to tell them apart and the one has a rubber band. They look enormous but all four lights in the shot use the same 18650 batteries. The black ones are single modes but the one on the right isn’t all that great (I usually keep it in the car). C3PO there is my newest light (not a single mode) and, in the few months I’ve had it, discovered I sort of hate the side button. Big, endcap clickies for me from now on. Too bad, I really like the light otherwise, very well built, intuitive mode selection, magnetic endcap. I actually bought two ($18/ea deal at the time, they’re more now), the one in the pic has a bit of purple tube on the strap and the non-shown one has yellow.
Those look like the fixed-lens version of the ones I’ve got.
So you want something that is not cheap, but is not $100; has no strobe; lightweight; and bright enough for walking at night. I’d go with a Surefire G2 Nitrolon for around $40, or something made by Pelican. Pelican has a lot of quality lights that fit your needs. Surefire lights are combat-proven, and Pelican flashlights were tried and trusted by the Space Shuttle mechanics.
I asked them once what is so special about Pelican that they’re always buying those instead of something else. They said it’s because they’re non-metallic. All of the other quality flashlights at the time were made of metal. Of course, back then (late 90s/Early 00s) there was really only Surefire and MagLite.
The bike light “slow blink” at 2x or 3x a second is pretty different from the strobes of like 10 or 15 Hz though. The slower one is great for alerting drivers, but the really fast strobe can be nauseating or even epilepsy inducing.
