2016 Pelican 3310PL – 378 Lumen Edition

Concept: 5 out of 5
Execution: 5 out of 5
Yeah, but: Pelican Ugly.

The Long Version: The Pelican 3310PL is the best flashlight ever created. It's probably also the least sexy flashlight ever created, but even that’s part of its appeal. There have been a few generations of the 3310PL, so make sure you're buying the new one with “378 Lumens” clearly marked on the packaging.

That headline feature, the 378 lumen output, is a tremendous output from such a small light. It’s easily the brightest light I own. But better than that, it also has the most useful light output of any I own. It combines a very tight long-throw beam with a very usable and smooth spill that's brighter than my favourite flood headlamp. It’s rare to find a light that gets one of these right, let alone both. Perfect for exploring a haunted house. And, sensibly, the light defaults to high power when it’s turned on, but has two more settings as well.

The low-powered setting on the 3310PL puts out 39 lumens, which is still better than the best efforts of so many lights from just a few years ago. That's enough for a huge range of tasks, and much better than the full output if you need to use it at close range. At this level it’s useful but not blinding, while the spill still provides enough oomph to light the peripheries. So whether I'm looking for a pair of shoes in the back of the closet, or lighting a stairwell in a power failure, the 3310 is effective and useful.

The third mode is a 1hz strobe. This is a bit unfortunate, since it needs to be clicked through when switching from low power to high, but at least it's a slow flash. It could be used as a location marker for an air drop or rescue attempt, reflecting the 3310's serious-yet-practical possibilities. My other flashlights might do a faster strobe, intended to disorient my enemies in combat, or a cutesy "SOS" pulsing pattern that I'd rather not use for a great many reasons. So while I would prefer not to have the strobe mode complicating things at all, it certainly could be worse, and perhaps some day it might actually be useful.

The three options in the "pick two" joke for flashlights are usually Bright, Small, and Long-Lasting. The Peli 3310 really does pull off all three. It's not small enough to be an “everyday carry” penlight, but it can be tucked in a back pocket easily enough when needed, and adding it to a jacket or a bag is trivial. And it can run on high for eight hours, which is amazing, and will last eight days on low power. Yes, days – or about two hundred hours. On just three AA batteries.

While the light doesn’t seem to have a regulator to keep its brightness level constant, there’s clearly still some kind of witchcraft involved in making this output and run time possible. Personally, I approve. And I don’t mind a light that gradually dims rather than suddenly dropping to nothing, especially when it’s this bright, for this long, and runs on batteries that are as cheap and abundant as AA’s. I have an eight-cell charger and fistfuls of low-discharge rechargeables, so forget those spendy and toxic specialty disposables.

So: about that appearance. Yes, it's ugly. But it's a flashlight that glows in the dark. That's freaking awesome.

Pelican, like knife maker Spyderco, isn't afraid to experiment with practical and functional designs that don't take aesthetics into account. That's awesome, because like knives, flashlights have a bad case of the Mall Ninjas. Frankly, too many lights are pandering to people who imagine themselves to be the last warriors standing on the brink of civilization, ready to wage a battle that only they can see coming. The result is a sea of toughguy-grade aluminum torches with serrated bezels that are designed for hitting people — as if that's ever a sensible life choice. Those who want Combat-Ready Tactical Lights will absolutely hate the look, feel, and construction of the polycarbonate 3310PL. And good riddance to them.

The 3310PL is ugly and amazingly practical. Its body has a flat profile that won't roll when it's put down. The photoluminescent plastic is a little smooth, so it has thick ridges that provide a solid grip, even with gloves, but it's only ridged on the edges so that they don't interfere with its pocket-friendly shape. The result is a light that’s nice to touch, durable, light, won’t scratch, and sealed against brief water immersion. The only way I'd change its design would be to give it a flat base so that it could tail-stand more easily. This light has ample power to light up a room, and enough run time to make that a practical option. But Pelican does know a bit more about flashlights than I do, and they probably concluded that even if the tail was flat the narrow body of the light wouldn’t properly balance the wider head, and they’re probably right.

Batteries load through the back of the light, which twists to open in a way that’s only slightly disconcerting. The back detaches, but remains tethered to the body, and the battery contacts move a little differently from the rest of the tailcap. The back also locks in place with a secondary mechanism, turned with a screw driver or the plastic tab on the lanyard, but this isn’t needed to keep it closed.

And have I mentioned that the entire body glows in the dark, which means it can be found immediately when the need suddenly arises? Try that with some black metal tacticool milspec battery-eater. There’s a reason why nobody sells those things with a case and hardware to mount it as an emergency lighting station for factories, which Pelican provides as the 3310ELS variant. This is a well-designed and mature light meant for real emergency preparedness, not just enthusiast preppers.

So how much would you pay to own the best flashlight yet made? Would you pay between $50-100? Most of my lights fall in this range, and the new 3310 comprehensively outperforms them all. How about over $100? It's easy to spend that much on a "serious" light if you want to. Over $200? There are lots at that level as well — there's really no upper limit. But the Pelican 3310PL costs less than $40. All that and it's one of the cheapest lights I own.

I want to buy one for every member of my family and every room in my house.

last updated 14 september 2016

Pelican Micro Case

Concept: 2 out of 5
Execution: 2 out of 5
Yeah, but: They're Peli Case Lite, but that's still pretty good.

The Long Version: Pelican Cases are legendary: waterproof, foam-filled, and indestructible. These aren't quite them.

The 'Micro' cases are a different idea. They're good for holding small items, but are designed for less stringent protection. Although they're not recommended for immersion, they're still called 'water resistant', and that resistance is impressive. I've kept one submerged under eight inches of water - approximately one kitchen-sink deep - for half an hour without any getting in. Pelican does still consider them crush-proof, but they don't include the abundant foam of the non-micro cases.

The Micro cases have a simpler construction than their full-sized siblings, with the waterproof - sorry, water-resistant - seal being part of the rubber liner for the bottom half of the case. Some have a thin lining, others have a thin wavy lining that gives a snugger fit, but not much more protection. The top of the case is lined with foam for the opaque models, but there are also ones with unpadded transparent lids. The idea is that it's easy to see the electronics inside, which is great for cell phones, as well as being an advantage for general organization and stock-keeping. It gives up some of the shock protection, but these cases really aren't intended to survive a bear attack. In exchange you get cases that are better suited for general use.

I typically use my Micro cases for heavy-duty crush protection when I'm carrying something delicate inside a larger bag. The 1060 is the largest Micro size available, and with internal dimensions of about 8" x 4" x 2", it snugly holds my Sony PCM-D50 audio recorder and Dead Kitten windjammer. The 1030 has outlasted the camera it was bought for, but now gets used for general odds-and-ends that I want to keep safe and dry. The variety of small sizes makes these cases great for protecting and carrying things, but even I wouldn't say that it's worth having Micro cases stockpiled around the house 'just in case'. I'll expand my collection if I ever become an avid kayaker; until then it's just nice to know that they're out there if I need one.

Pelican 7060 LED Flashlight

Concept: 4 out of 5
Execution: 5 out of 5
Yeah, but: This is the first time I've seriously considered a perfect 5/5 rating.

The Long Version: In 2004 the Los Angeles Police Department had a problem: their standard-issue 2-pound Maglite flashlights were too heavy and expensive to keep using. By the spring of 2007 Pelican had turned the LAPD's requirements for a new light into a shipping product: the 7060 LED. To save everyone a lot of reading, I'll say it now: this is by far the best flashlight that I've ever used.

Here's the rest of the quick version: It's regulated with a flat 90 minute run time, incredibly bright, large but not outrageous, has two switches, and is rechargeable.

Meet the Family:

The photo above shows my collection of 'serious' lights. On the far left, giving off the lovely orange light, is my trusty 2xAA Mini Maglite. Mine was already an old light when I found it in a parking lot twelve years ago; this model is often the first "good" light people buy. For this photo it's using a pair of freshly-charged Eneloops batteries. To the right of it is my Pelican M6 2330 LED, a model that uses a pair of 3V CR123A batteries, and these cost so much that I don't keep a spare set on hand. On other side of the same coin, the batteries cost so much that I barely use the light, so they're probably still fairly fresh. Next to it is my 2410 "Stealthlight" - yes, the bright yellow one - that I reviewed here. It's also using freshly charged Eneloops, but it takes four of them. And finally, on the far right, is the 7060 LED. All of these lights have their bezels 18" from the seamless paper that forms the background, so there's no trickery involved in this photo. The 7060 really is that much brighter than the rest of the group.

There's no perfect do-everything flashlight, just as there's no one perfect camera, car, or pair of shoes. There are some that are better in each broad category, but I won't be attaching my Pelican 7060 to my keychain and I wouldn't explore a dark building with a Pelican L1 or a Gerber Infinity Ultra, which are the lights on the far left of the photo above. But if I had bought the 7060 first, it and the Gerber would be the only two flashlights that I'd own. The LAPD's 7060 is far superior to the M6 unless I really need a light that will fit in a pocket, and it's only second to the 2410 for one specific task that I rarely need. (More on that later.) The maglite has only sentimental value.

Like the kids from my high school, flashlights that are bigger aren't necessarily brighter: it all comes down to what's driving the lamp. So the fact that the 7060 dwarfs the rest of the family and that it's the brightest is a bit of a coincidence. If having a smaller size is a serious factor, you can probably find lights that use the same Cree 3W LED as the 7060 but with a more compact power supply and construction. I'll leave that as an exercise for interested buyers, because last time I did serious flashlight comparison on-line, I wound up buying the most expensive light I've ever owned.

And With That, Back to the Light:

Compared to the centre of the beam, the corona isn't particularly bright. But if you're close enough to what you're lighting that the spot is too narrow to use, then there's going to be plenty of brightness in the spill of the beam. The composite photo above gives a good impression of the brightness of the light overall. The inset image is shot at -4EV - which is recording only 1/16 as much light, or 6.25% for the metric types - and shows the ringed pattern of the beam better. There's actually three separate levels of intensity, with the width of the main beam being 10% of the throw distance, a dimmer corona being 30%, and the total spill being about 60% of the throw. If you light a wall that's ten feet away, the centre is 1' across, the brighter corona is 3' across, and the total spread is 6'. Neat.

A lot of other reviews have made a big deal about how far the 7060 throws its light, and it's very true. If you're doing serious research into this light, believe whatever the other reviews tell you. If you have a more casual interest, it's probably enough for me to say that I can put a decent spot of light on the roof of a grocery store that's at least 250m away. It's not a searchlight, but it might let me know if someone's actually stealing that car when its alarm goes off sixteen floors below in the middle of the night.

If you read as many flashlight reviews as it takes me to decide to buy a new light, you'll quickly learn that almost every LED light is said to have a "white" beam. To a normal person this is true, but I'm a photographer. The photo above is a composite of two calibration shots taken on a neutral grey target. The left-hand side is the light from the LAPD's Pelican 7060, and on the right is the effect of the Recoil 2410. (They are metered differently and can not be used to compare brightness.) The stripe running across the middle of the photo shows what a true daylight-balanced light source would be. It's a little hard to see in this small photo, and most monitors are free spirits when it comes to colour reproduction anyway, so trust me when I say that both the Pelican 7060 and 2410 are tinted green. The 2410 is a little more blue and a little less green (6050K, +25 magenta) than the 7060 (6000K, +29 magenta) which gives it a slight advantage.

So colour-critical photography is the only time that I might reach for my Pelican 2410 instead of the 7060, although the power difference might be a bigger consideration in actual use. But it's worth noting that both of these lights are passing pretty strict standards to even be considered. My M6 has only a slightly visbile green tint, but it's so not-white that it's essentially unusable (6300K, +40 magenta) for my photography. And the M6 is far better than my old 4xAA Princeton Tec "Impact XL" LED. There's a reason why the Impact isn't in the family photo - as the green sheep, it has wandered off and I can't be bothered to look for it. But once again: for normal use by a normal person there's little or no functional difference. The tint issues that are critical to photography probably wouldn't even be visible to someone who isn't attuned to looking for it.

About The Construction:

There's a certain irony to the original LAPD mandate of designing a flashlight that can't be used to beat people up. The 7060 is still a hefty light, and certainly feels tough enough that it could do some damage. The grip is very good, and the balance point of the flashlight is almost at the front switch, making it top-heavy. Add the aluminum heat-sink to the equation and I have no problem imagining some out-of-court settlements. Perhaps the LAPD and/or Pelican forgot that the Monadnock PR-24 baton that Rodney King made famous is also made from plastic?

Even with all of the comparison photos that I've seen, I was still surprised by the size of this light when I first took it out of the box. The black ABS plastic body doesn't have sex appeal of finely machined metal, which would have both reduced the case's diameter and allowed a smaller heat-sink, but its larger size makes it a better tool even though it makes it a worse toy. I was also surprised at the weight of it, since it being called 'light' is in comparison to a 3D Maglite, but others that I've handed it to have been surprised at how little it weighs. Regardless, this isn't a flashlight that gets tucked in a pocket. Pelican does include a souvenir belt holster, which might be useful for someone who rarely plans on carrying their light this way, but I've already lost mine. When I need to take it out of the house I'll just add it to the bag that I usually carry to work, which has a pocket just right for the 7060, or include it with my various camera gear.

The two bright spots below the head of the flashlight are the terminals for the recharging dock. The charger is a grey plastic that doesn't match the look of the 7060, and is designed to be wall- or vehicle-mounted. To keep the light in place in a bouncing squad car the charger must need a very tight grip on the light, and as a result it will scratch the body of the light no matter how carefully it's inserted and removed. The Pelican video shows it being snapped into place; other advice I've seen says to carefully slide the light down into the cradle. Neither works, but snapping it in is easier. It's a tool, so a few scuffs don't bother me.

The last point that's worth noting about the Pelican 7060's construction is that it has two independent on/off switches, both of which allow momentary-on control. I find that I use the one on the body more than the one on the tail, but it's certainly nice to have both. Now whenever I use my 2410 (body) or 2330 (tail) I wonder why they weren't designed with two switches. It seems like such a natural idea now that somebody's done it, but I couldn't imagine why it would be useful until I tried it.

And Finally:

Perfect marks are very hard to get around here: a score of 2 out of 5 is for something that's decent and serviceable, with a lofty "3" being reserved for something I really respect. To get a ranking of "4" requires an exceptional idea or a near-flawless execution. I'd really like to find something that gets a truly perfect score, and the 7060 comes very close, but it lacks that final spark of brilliance to put it over the edge. I'm honestly not sure what a 5/5 product will look like, but I think I'll know it when I see it. Until then, I have only the most minor complaints about what is otherwise a flawless light.

Pelican Recoil 2410 LED Flashlight

Concept: 4 out of 5
Execution: 4 out of 5
Yeah, but: Great light, good price, but it could still be better.

The Long Version: The interesting thing about the Pelican StealthLite Recoil LED 2410PL Flashlight isn't the marketing department's 90's throwback to groovy Stealth technology. (I'm not sure exactly what a 'stealth light' would look like, but it would probably emit infrared and not be bright yellow.) Instead you should pay attention to the word "Recoil," which means that the Pelican 2410 has a bright 1-watt LED immediately behind the lens that is turned to fire backwards into the reflector. Picture a satellite dish with a bulb shining into the dish from the tip of the receiver, and imagine it beaming light back into space instead of gathering weak signals from it. What you get is a tightly focused - collimated - beam coming from a reflector that's not compromised by having the light source poking through the middle of it.

The weak yellow light in the photo-illustration above is coming from a two-double-A Mini Maglite (without the Nite Ize LED upgrade), and the strong light is from the Pelican 2410. The 'orange-peel' textured reflector design is so good that the light thrown is in a square, matching the shape of the LED. This gives the flashlight a very long throw for a light using modest AA bateries, but at the expense of very little corona to light the periphery of the beam. Pelican rates the output at 32 lumens, which I have to trust because I can't measure it myself and am not really sure what it means. But it does sound pretty impressive, especially compared to the AA MiniMag's 5.3 lumens.

The 2410 runs on four AA batteries, and the body has a flat cross-section that makes it very easy to carry in a pack or tuck in a back pocket, albeit with the head protruding. Its plastic body comes in black or yellow; the "PL" version that I have costs a few extra dollars but has the glow-in-the-dark bezel that makes the light easy to find when it's off. I highly recommend it. It's also submersible, pressure-rated to 500 feet, and resists all kinds of chemicals that I wouldn't want to have splashed on me anyway. The plastic-bodied Pelican lights are occasionally derided by those who prefer more "milspec" designs, which may be why Pelican chose the macho name for its reversed-LED design. But no matter what it's called, this light's bright yellow case, glow-in-the-dark bezel, and plastic body that can't be used as a weapon isn't going to please those who wish they were Special Ops troopers. Get over it. The Pelican Recoil 2410PL is a great functional light, so pretend you're a Fire or EMS rescue worker instead. It's a more humane mental space to be in, anyway.

It's a sad truth: flashlights can be bright, small, and long-lasting, but they can't be all three at once. The Recoil 2410 is both larger and dimmer than my Pelican M6 2330 LED, at the bottom of the photo above, but the M6 also uses a pair of 3V lithium batteries that cost $15 a set and lasts about four hours before it drops below its rated 41 lumens. The hardware-store favourite AA Maglite at the top of the photo is also smaller and perhaps a little more stylish than the 2410, but is nowhere near its output. What all of these lights lack - but my little $40 Gerber has - is a regulator. This is a piece of circuitry that evens out the battery power so that the light output stays consistent for most of the battery life. It's a neat feature. If Pelican added that ability to a similar light I would consider buying it as well, and would certainly recommend it over the current design.

But it's also worth noting that this light is somewhat specialized. I have many flashlights, of varying power and cost, and this is the one that throws a narrow beam of light very far and is so cheap to feed that I'll use it without worrying about its run time. (I actually use Eneloops rechargeables in it, so it costs nothing and lasts nearly forever.) It's too large for every day carry, so it's unlikely to be the light that you always have on you. It's too bright to light up a mixing board in a dark club or to read a sheet of paper while doing a presentation with an LCD projector. But it's great for "penetrating darkness," as another reviewer wrote, which is what I use it for. I bought this light with the excuse that I can use it for photography, both for being able to compose and focus for available-darkness images, and to use it for 'painting with light'. Normal people might want to keep one in the car for emergencies, or on the bedside table for prowlers.

For a brighter all-purpose light, it can't beat the lights that run on multiple CR123A batteries, like my M6. General keychain and task lighting falls to either my Pelican L1 or my Gerber Infinity Ultra, which are modest lights with soft beams. But if I could only have one light that had to do everything, the Pelican 2410 is the one I would choose. The powerful light with good running time from inexpensive batteries is too good to pass up, and it's a worthwhile addition to any kit.

Updated 2 July 2008: I'm my own worst enemy. In researching this review - I do that sometimes - I found another flashlight that I want to add to my collection. It has many of the features that I love about my Peli 2410, such as the light carrying weight and nice clean light colour, but blows it (and my M6 2330 LED) away in brightness, throw, operating cost, and convenience. And I have a birthday coming up soon. So look for a couple more flashlight reviews this month: the as-yet-unidentified purchase, and my M6 before I send it to Craigslist.

Updated Again 17 July 2008: My review of the new light, a Pelican 7060, can be found here. It's a light so good that it has almost retired my 2410.