A flashlight is a basic piece of survival equipment. It is legal everywhere, totally portable, and useful for both mundane and self defense tasks. Most people will use a flashlight more than any other tool. Therefore flashlight should be part of your basic personal equipment.
Applications
The primary purpose of a flashlight is to see in the dark. While this is self-evident it frequently gets lost in discussions of blinding attackers and identifying targets. Shining a flashlight into potential hiding places or danger areas is a demonstration of active awareness. Since surprise is a key element in many victimizations, active awareness will solve some problems before they develop.
A high output flashlight will impair an assailants vision, and coupled with movement has some self-defense value. Remember that this is a momentary impairment and not disabling, so a blast of light should include you taking a few quick steps in a direction other than straight back.
Flashlights can aid you in your deadly force decision making process and target identification. Again this takes just enough light to see to what you need to see, and does not require the full intensity of the beam to make a determination in most cases. This is relevant with weapon mounted lights and and techniques that put the flashlight and firearm together, as we do not want to point our firearms at things we haven’t decided to shoot.
There are a few companies that make jagged or scalloped bezels to improve the striking capabilities of the small flashlights, but I don’t think they are useful. I am certainly not against striking with the flashlight, I just don’t believe that a full-force strike is going to do any more damage because of a few 1/8″ points. After extensive international travel nobody has ever raised an eyebrow at my having a flashlight, but a “spiked” flashlight would probably be a different story. A striking bezel isn’t enough of an issue to make a good light a ‘don’t buy’ it’s just a personal preference.
If you are going to go with a full size flashlight, you can’t beat a 4 ‘C’ cell Mag-Lite. The advantage of ‘C’ cells over ‘D’ cells is that it makes the body of the light thinner and easer to grip and reduces the weight of the light. C cell lights are closer to being batons than D cell lights.
Desirable Features
In the smaller flashlights I look for a pressure tail-cap rather than a click on/off switch. I prefer bright lights (80 Lumens or more), and I would like them to be relatively inexpensive. I am a big fan of the Surefire G2 Nitrolon for these reasons. The additional bells and whistles of strobes, colored colored LEDs, are nice features but not critical.
I would like to go to a high output LED system instead of Xenon bulbs to increase the durability of the light. The Fenix P3D has been very well reviewed by people I consider to be knowledgeable so I will probably get one of those as my next flashlight purchase.
Suggested Models/Brands
Small Flashlights:
Fenix P3D Cree
If you have to have a striking bezel:
Surefire 6PD
Full Size Flashlights:
C Cell Maglite
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