I am also in the market for good high lumen torch that is not expensive.
No such thing. So decide what your requirements are and build your budget.
Today, I found out that Philips has several models, offering upto 2500 lumens brightness. YouTube reviews indicate that these are good. Some of them offer up to 800 metre range!
You need to temper your expectations here. I see people complaining the torch at max won't last more than 15 minutes. That it reduces brightness. Yeah because the led gets hot as in very hot. Gets uncomfortable to hold and longevity of the unit as a whole will get affected without cooling or turning the brightness down. The other factor is your ambient temperature. If that's 40°C instead of less that will affect brightness too.
Let me show you a torch that has a decent runtime. How much it costs. What the manufacturer says and what it really puts out.
Price
Review
Weight is around 150gm with battery
3h45 on high at 1,200 lumens reaching 200m
What it really puts out?
High doesn't last long. Within 5 minutes it drops to 700 lumens and after 40 minutes drops to 500 lumens at room temperature.
If you cool it with a fan it holds the brightness longer but that is not practical.
This torch with a 4,000 mah battery will last 3.5h but with an output of around 500 lumens.
So you can see how the brightness curve is like in real life
The part that matters is it holds at that brightness for 3.5h. Is that bright enough? Long enough? Far enough? Those are the parameters you need to figure out
How bright for long is down to how big the battery is. This one is a 21700 cell of 4,100 mah. Cells are available. Lasts longer than the more common 18650
This torch is around five years old but can deliver decent output for enough time.
Check out another from the same era model that is well reviewed
Price
Review
Weight is 244gm with battery
Fenix makes it easier to see what you get as they provide performance graphs which Nitecore does not
What they state
What you get
You can compare the graphs with the review. But you can see the performance is better. Fenix manages to pack 5,000mah into their 2100 cells. Also the throw is 300m for brighter.
In reality, halve the distance to 150m and it will look like it's illuminated with a car light.
This website lists all the Philips models:
https://philipsflashlights.in/. This does not look like an official Philips site, don't know if fake. There is a site from middle east that looks exactly like this:
https://philipsflashlights.com/. The contact us link points to an address in Kerala, with just one Google review. I mentioned the site here because its easy to see all the flashlight models in this site.
ShadowHawk claims 10000/20000 lumens. But that is most likely fake.
This video compares a Philips 1450 lumen model with a ShadowHawk 10000 lumens one, and concludes the Philips one is brighter.
I suspect these Philips are rebrands. Without proper reviews it's hard to gauge how long, how far & how bright. Whether it is worth the price or not. How durable, how efficient the circuits are which effects temperature and hold time. All this goes into the price.
You get what you pay for. You want something to play with and not serious get these otherwise see above
The reviews I see only show the first few minutes at max brightness. Well as you can see from the reviews above that brightness doesn't last long and brightness drops. How fast and to what none of these reviewers will tell you
Philips LED Flashlight SFL5101/56 – Power, Precision, and Durability Experience unmatched lighting performance with the Philips LED Flashlight SFL5101/56. Designed for those who demand excellence, this flashlight combines innovative features, robust durability, and tactical versatility to ensure...
philipsflashlights.in
Equivalent with battery
Weight is 504 gm (!)
2x heavier than Fenix and 3x heavier than Nitecore
How long you plan to hold this ?