All the other weapon lights croaked.

Cruel & Unusual Punishment
No ordinary flashlight should be expected to endure this kind of abuse. And SureFire is certainly no ordinary flashlight.

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I recently attended a regional police department's shooting match (as a civilian vendor), which was conducted at night in order to demonstrate the application of weapon-mounted tactical lights.

I purchased my SureFire X200® after hearing from a trainer from a different law-enforcement agency about how all the "other" lights usually failed during his classes, and how the X200 had been the only dependable model. So, when I heard that the officers at the match I would be attending had almost exclusively purchased, shall we say, "off brands" of lights, I mentally said, "uh oh." I didn't have the heart to tell them that they probably bought a bunch of junk, so I just gently offered the use of my X200 to any officer at the match who didn't already have a light or just wanted to try it.

At the match, true to their ill-reputation, every single weapon-mounted light except for the two X200's in attendance croaked. If the switches didn't break, the filaments in the bulbs did. Twice, I watched an "off brand" light literally fly off the gun while an officer was shooting, forcing the officer to transition to a handheld light. I literally lost count of all the weapon malfunctions that seemed to be induced by the "off brand" tactical lights. By the end of the match, the non-SureFire lights weren't even regarded as decent flashlights. I disassembled one of the Brand-X lights that broke, and the engineering was absolutely laughable. The bulb was not shock-isolated; it was simply a cheap, dime-store flashlight bulb that fit into a two-prong socket. No wonder it didn't last 20 rounds.

Several officers borrowed my X200 to shoot the match. The light worked perfectly and there were no weapons malfunctions. Then I mounted the X200 on my G19 and shot the match for fun after all the officers had finished. Not a single jam. The X200 ran perfectly of course - and the light from the X200 was just as bright as before the match. (By the way, for anyone who regards a weapons-mounted light as "too expensive," don't forget to deduct the $75 to $100 that one won't be spending on night sights. Tritium lights are a thing of the past.) In short, I'm absolutely tickled with the reliability and performance of my X200, as were many of the officers at the match. I just heard today that they put X200's on order. My X200 certainly wasn't the cheapest light I could have bought, but I'm very happy I only had to spend the money once.

Eric W.
Airway Heights, WA