For a longtime I have been skeptical about Surefire’s claims of general awesomeness. I have checked them out at Sportsman’s Warehouse and was generally not impressed. My feeling was; why buy a flashlight when my Petzl Myo XP headlamp (topic for another post) was just as good, if not better. As much as I tried my inner gear geek could not resist. So when I spotted one at the GI Joe’s going out of business sale I had to buy it.

I purchased the SureFire 6P LED (6P at REI). Normally its around $80 but because of the sale I got it for about $60. Generally Surefires, like many other name brands, don’t go on sale (sign of the times I guess). To do some comparison, I put fresh batteries in my Petzl Myo XP headlamp and headed outside with a camera. It is hard to get accurate representations of what you actually see when using a camera in the dark. But in comparison you can definitely tell the difference.

» Read more: Putting Surefire Flashlights to the Test