The SureFire Tactician arrived late in December and in my opinion not any too soon. Like many, I’ve been using SureFire lights since the days of the 6p with its 65 lumens. I’ve watched them transition from incandescent to LED from a few lumens to a lot of lumens
A quick note on lumens is due. We searched buildings with 65 lumens for years, and while 800 lumens may be nice, it’s a lot. After bouncing a super-bright light off of reflective surfaces a few times, which the interior of homes and other structures tend to be full of, you will see why a ton of light isn’t always desirable. While the “all the lumens” crowd isn’t necessarily wrong, it’s more situational dependent than some believe. Just like “need” and “want” are different things, some will disagree, that’s ok.
The first thing I did was removed the steel lanyard clip, as I wanted to use as pocket carry. The Tactician has a bit rougher Texture then some of the others, but this will certainly enhance your ability to hang onto it. The pocket clip is certainly robust, quite frankly maybe one of their best to date. A bit wider and certainly longer than some of their other offerings on the executive series type lights.
The Maxvision Beam is wide with good transition from the center spot strong to almost its outer edge. While it’s not a long throw light, it’s not (in my opinion), what this light was intended to be. From room cleaning distances out to 50 yards or so it produces a nice wide area lit up enough to positively identify things.
Many people, myself included, never warmed up to the “click on” tail cap SureFire went to. Some people modified newer lights with older tail-caps. Over the years of teaching low light building search I’ve seen people unintentionally click the switch fully on and have a fully illuminated flashlight at inopportune moments. Maybe it’s just me but the press on, release off type of tail cap is just right. I went to the defender series lights which chewed on clothing at an unprecedented rate …Ok, maybe not that bad, but the crenellated bezel, known as the DNA collection device in some circles, was a bit hard on stuff. I’ve never been a big fan of multi use switching either, although I really loved the Aviator when it was originally released. So what’s old is new again.
Back to the Tactician: 800 lumens of wide-beamed LED with an old-style switch, an included lanyard and improved steel clip. What else could we want? Some of the executive series had a small indent on the tail cap and corresponding indent on the body so that you could back the tail cap off so the light would not be in advertently operated. This would be a good addition to this tactician flashlight, but I’ll just mark this one with some paint to serve the same purpose.
All in all, a little old mixed with the new has given us maybe the best handheld tactical light to date.