Monday, February 15, 2021

Streamlight gets back in the game

Streamlight finally decided to properly compete against the Surefire Stiletto/Stiletto Pro (which I have, and love by the by):

https://www.streamlight.com/products/detail/index/wedge

I'd say it's positioned in between the Stiletto and Stiletto pro, and closer to the Pro in features, but closer to the base model in price.

It's not quite as feature rich as the pro, but in theory has the same light output on max and high... At least for short bursts at max anyway, which is really a HEAT limitation issue. There's just not as much mass of aluminum in the wedge to act as a heat sink, and the Stiletto Pro gets quite hot, surprisingly quickly. 

The Wedge has considerably longer battery life than the Stiletto Pro on 300 lumens (double the run time in theory, probably a fair bit less than that in practice), it's 15% lighter (3.3oz vs 4oz or just 0.5oz heavier than the 2.8oz base model stiletto), and it's a lot narrower (less than half the width in fact), at very nearly the same thickness.




Also, it uses a waterproof USB-C port, which means you get a full IPX7 submersion rating (at least 1 meter for at least 30 minutes), without having to stick a rubber plug or cover over the port (the same mechanism for water resistance your phone probably uses now). It also means MUCH faster charging than the Stiletto or Pro... or at least potentially so... They'd be silly not to take advantage of that, but manufacturers are sometimes that silly. 

That said, it's also about an inch longer, which may be a little too long for some folks pocket carry. It doesn't SOUND like much... just an inch at just under 5.5" total... But that inch is almost 25% longer; perhaps longer than a womans jeans pocket for example, where the 4.5" stiletto pro may fit perfectly. 


I'd definitely like to get my hands on one, and compare it to my Stiletto Pro... Which happens to be the best pocket light I've ever had, and that's saying rather a lot, since I've had a HELL of a lot of very high end pocket lights (including many from both SureFire and Streamlight). 



If the Wedge is even CLOSE to as good as the Stiletto Pro (or for that matter even the base Stiletto, since it's got much more light output at a longer runtime), then it's a home run; especially given Streamlight tends to price out rather a lot cheaper than surefire at a given feature level. 

The announced MSRP is $150, so the street may be anywhere from $110 to $130 (which is only $20 msrp over the $129/$100 msrp/street base stiletto) and WELL below both the MSRP and the street price of the Stiletto pro ($229 and $200 respectively).

... And that's a GREAT value by any measure, presuming it lives up to the spec sheet, or even close to it. 

UPDATE: There are a number of online retailers advertising it at between $85 and $99... which puts it BELOW the street price of the base model stiletto, and HALF or less than the street price of the pro. Which is INSANELY cheap for that capability. 

Accordingly, I've got my pre-order in... $100 flat, after tax and shipping, expected ship date has been listed by several sites as April 15th, but a couple have it as March 21st. We'll see what the actual date ends up as.