State Of The Industry

It has been a few years now since we have written about the state of the flashlight industry. During this time, we have seen some interesting developments which we would like to comment on.

As it stands, it continues to be the case that the vast majority of flashlight sales on the internet are still constituted of cheap, poorly made, and potentially dangerous flashlights. Many of these products, often advertised on marketplaces like Amazon, tout fraudulent performance figures like 100,000 lumen outputs. These deceptive listings continue to be bolstered by likely fake reviews, uninformed consumers, and Amazon's laissez-faire enforcement of its own policies.

To make things even worse, many of these products are still being sold with potentially dangerous lithium-ion batteries. Surprisingly, eBay recognized this issue and has since completely banned the sale of lithium-ion batteries from its marketplace. Amazon, on the other hand, has not. A quick search reveals multiple sponsored listings for unprotected 18650 cells with capacities of 9900mAh — an obvious lie.

Perhaps one of the most disappointing observations has been that the designs of these flashlights are virtually unchanged from five years ago. Everywhere you look, it is the same generic design that was pedaled by marketing campaigns like Shadowhawk's X800 — an organization which has since been indicted by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

From this information we can conclude that most consumers are still getting ripped off when shopping for flashlights. Simply put, manufacturers and informed consumers are not doing enough to shift this disappointing trend in a positive direction.