Really hard to beat a
Wurkkos FC11 for 30€ with the cell. Famous old brands like Maglite are years behind the current top notch products. And alkalines are decades behind. A li-ion battery holds charge for years and has soooo much more capacity it's mindblowing.
That cheap Wurkkos will emit light for 11 days on the eco setting - and that's not far off of how much light a classic incandescent maglite would emit! And tbh the low lumen setting often ends up being really useful for nighttime walks, you don't want to blind everyone you meet. But double click it and it goes straight to turbo, it'll get hot and shine for an hour but it's really way too bright for most uses. It also charges via USB C like a phone.
A bit more top end would be a
Zebralight SC64. It's not a huge difference from the Wurkkos, but their driver allows for sub-lumen operation. It'll glow for 4 months on the lowest setting and a week at 10 lumens (crazy efficient, the wurkkos glows for that time on 2 lumens...).
Or, a Hanklight. They're basically hand-built flashlights by a guy named Hank from China. The
D4V2 is the "standard" enthusiast flashlight for most people.
The argument that you can just swap alkaline batteries and don't need to charge them seems so outdated to me. All these lights use standard lithium cells, the 18650 factor is most common (battery power tools, electric cars... everything uses them). Flashlights are one of the few products where they're user replaceable. You can have 2 or 3 18650 cells and just swap them out when needed. That said, if the flashlight glows for literally a week or multiple months... yeah, leave those alkalines in the stone age.
