I bought a head lamp that was convenient to buy. It’s great. Except it cycles through 5 modes.
The ideal interface for me would be a switch with off, red, and bright broad white as the settings. I never use the bright narrow, or the blinking white, or the blinking red. Truly annoying.
(but it was cheap, available, takes standard aaa batteries, and works really well, I’ve i get it into the correct mode.)
are your friends - as well as quite a few reddits…
No need to spend an obscene amount of money, today there are many far-east brands to be had in very high quality, CONVOY comes to mind. (given that pretty much 99.99% of all flashlights sold on this planet come from China anyway, you can as well buy them there directly instead of funding the middle-man)
Also, that segment is nowadays so specific, that many chinese brands (which happen to be the most innovative, also), offer you to chose:
Reddit - Dive into anything should make for a very entertaining weekend - and I am pretty sure you can get what you need staying int the dobble-digit range 
Simon from Convoy Flashlights covers my needs for nearly 10 years now … and provides consistent high quality products
Thanks for all the good info here. Part of the problem for me making a choice is when there are many possible solutions, I can sometimes get a little overwhelmed by them all.
Several days ago this is what I ordered, the Stanley Fatmax SL5W09 2,200 lumens. Reasonably priced on Home Depot at $50.
Thanks, @MindsEye_Watering ! I’m charging it up today and will get to play with it tonight. It looks very promising, and reasonably priced. It should be fun!
We just got back from a dinner party and I took the Stanley torch outside to play. Pretty damn bright, and a nice spotlight! This will work nicely, and I’ll see how long it lasts.
Thanks again, @MindsEye_Watering .
You’re welcome.
The Stanley torch works well but to me its pistol trigger switch is a little annoying. I wish its on-off operation worked a little better. And it is too easy for it to be accidentally operated. I wish it had lockout capability.
Otherwise, yes, this Stanley torch is pretty cool.
The more I use my tiny OLight Baton 4 and a not-as-small OLight Baton 3, the more impressed I am by the good quality of their products. I also have an OLight Baton 4 Charging Case and an OLight OClip.
I just bought an OLight Marauder Mini. At $200 it’s on the expensive side. To compare its brightness with the Stanley Fat Max spotlight beam I took a daytime picture. The Stanley Fat Max is on the left, and OLight Marauder Mini on the right. Both are decently bright.
The beam of the OLight Marauder Mini can be set to spotlight, or floodlight. The picture is, obviously, its spotlight. It also has seven brightness levels and can shine light in four colors: white, red, green, and blue.
For some scale and a size comparison, here is the OLight Marauder Mini and the Stanley Fat Max. One added plus of the OLight Marauder Mini is that it uses the same magnetic charger as the OLight Baton 3 and the OLight Baton 4. Here, the OLight Marauder Mini (orange) is at the upper left, the Stanley Fat Max (yellow and black) is at the upper right, and the OLight Baton 3 (black) is at the lower right.
Here, the magnetic charger is circled in yellow.
All in all, the Stanley Fat Max provides the best value. It recharges using a USB-A to USB-A cable, and you can buy four of them for the price of one OLight Marauder Mini. The OLight Marauder Mini is very nice, however, and it is quite a bit smaller than the Fat Max. The Marauder Mini can fit in my car’s glove box while the Stanley Fat Max does not.
One night soon, I’ll compare the beams in the dark.
I’ve been very impressed with the OLight Marauder Mini and it offers a nice, diffuse beam.
Amazon has it now for $140, reduced from $200. ➜ OLIGHT Marauder Mini 7,000 Lumens Bright Flashlight with 600 Meters Beam Distance, Powerful RGB Flashights, Rechargeable MCC3 Magnetic Charging for Outdoor, Hunting, Searching (Orange) - Amazon.com ■
It is very powerful and has 2 beam modes, a diffuse beam and a spotlight, and each mode has 7 brightness outputs up to 7,000 lumens. The spotlight suits my needs very well.
It fits comfortably in the hand. It also has red, green, and blue lights (diffuse beam only) for different needs, although I don’t know how useful green or blue would be. It’ll be interesting to try them at night.
In a self defense situation the strobe light can be useful. It is powerful.
The instructions from OLight are obscure (➜ https://manuals.plus/olight/marauder-mini-flashlight-manual.pdf ■).
The instructions on 1lumen are better (➜ Olight Marauder Mini | High-power flashlight with 7,000 lumens and RGB | 1Lumen ■).
From these I made my own short instructions (P, Px2, Px3 = press, and double and triple press; PH = press and hold)
● LOCK: automatically locks after 30 seconds
● UNLOCK: rotate switch, P
● A toggle switch for spot beam or flood beam
● Px2 = turbo, in spot beam or flood beam
● Px3 = strobe (only in flood beam)
● PH ➙ white ➙ red ➙ green ➙ blue ➙ white
● ON (LOW) ➞ while off rotate to unlock, PH ⇨ light turns on at its lowest output level ⇦
● ON ➞ while off light turns on at its last output level ⇦ , P ⇨ light turns on at its last output level ⇦ (only L1-L6; L5-L6 only remembered for 10 minutes, else L4)
● BATTERY INDICATOR ➞ at the switch, rotate; 2 o’clock is max, to 5 o’clock is min.
My flashlight search is over. The OLight Marauder Mini is a winner for me. Thanks for everyone’s useful suggestions here.
I’ve got one of those, I’m a flashaholic, and it’s a nice light. I do find the lockout after a few seconds of non use annoying though.
It is a minor annoyance, yes. There are better ways to lock/unlock the power button. I also wish there was a way to manually lock the switch, instead of waiting 30 seconds for the switch to automatically lock.
All in all it’s an excellent light, and this is just a minor annoyance.