COAST® PX45 275 Lumen TWIST FOCUS™ LED Flashlight, Black

I live in Burkina Faso West Africa where power cuts and places without any power at all are the norm. I always carry at least one flashlight with me whether I am home, at work, or traveling. I have owned many flashlights here and in the US where I owned a business that performed building inspections, facilities assessments, consulting services. The Maglite was always in my hand. Then I discovered the much more powerful Streamlite. Then came the plethora of LED flashlights. When I discovered the Coast line of flashlights my searching days were over. I have two Coast flashlights that I primarily use and a few that I have given away to African friends. The PX45 is by far my favorite. I wear it on my belt along with my Victorinox multitool every day, but relent and put it in my pocket when going to church.The light is phenomenal for a small flashlight. The beam becomes a yards-long light sabre in the air filled with dust blowing in from the Sahara on the Harmatten winds. I can illuminate objects more than 250-meters away. I can illuminate a large room on the full-spread focus and low beam during power cuts and I can catch someone's attention from more than a kilometer away. A full charge on my Panasonic Eneloop AAAs will last for more than 3-hours on high.Once when we needed to drop a plug in the outlet of a 16,000-liter water tank I strapped the PX45 to the plug and lowered it into the tank to direct the plug. The light was still on full when we pulled the plug two hours later and there wasn't a drop inside the light.Guys develop strange passions as we age. My tool passion is a good flashlight since I can't install, repair, or service what I can't see. This flashlight does the trick and I will have another with me when I return from furlough. One other use of this light is for protection. The errant dog will stop when blinded by this little giant. There are other really good lights out there. This just happens to be the one that worked best for me at a really decent price.

Update: Couple weeks ago finally received a replacement flashlight for the defective one I returned to Coast. It works the same as the second one that is in the attached video, disappointing, but at least I have 2 now. BTW my original Coast fixed focus flashlight still works great and I recommend it for the price, but as for the twist focus PX45, well, thats just a completely different story in my opinion, as is my experience with their customer service.Actual Coast PX45 flashlight flood performance [...]...still have not received replacement from Coast as of this date for the bad PX45 which was the first of two flashlights ordered together (see original review). The other PX45 which worked good at spot is now really terrible at flood with much larger dark area in center of the flood area. Coast warranty rep viewed above video and said this is normal, and if it is normal is not acceptable to me at all. The flood focus of this flashlight is not even similar of the Pure Beam focus video showing a clean even flood from spot that is featured on the Coast web site for the PX45 as of this date 2/25/2014. I bought these flashlights based in large part on Coasts video. Should have returned both flashlights to Amazon in the beginning and bought something else rather than deal with Coast warranty folks..thats l a learning experience.Original review:Have been using the fixed focus version and like it so decided to order 2 adjustable focus flashlights. Purchased 2 flashlights Jan 8, 2014. Delivered promptly. One flashlight functions properly, except small dark area in middle of flood, but tight beam very good. The other flashlight is useless, focus is only a half crescent to one side and does not even shine directly in direction flashlight is pointed.Contacted Coast and they stated they knew what problem is and would send prepaid ups label to return the flashlight with bad crescent half focus. Label received promptly and flashlight returned for replacement. No replacement received in a month. Called Coast and they verified receipt of the flashlight and a replacement would be sent. Now Feb 21 still no flashlight. Bad flashlight and worse customer service and I am still out $37 and don't even have the bad flashlight.No I would not recommend purchasing a Coast product.

I bought this to go into a bike light holder I already had. The holder came with it's own torch and it works great, but I wanted something meaner that would melt paint. This guy was just 1/32" to large in diameter to fit—damn! But back to the light...It is well made solid metal. The caps have O-rings. The metal work is top notch; cheap metal lights often have cap threads that are rough, and even sharp in some cases. The thread on this guy are great; clean and smooth. The finish is also clean and very nice. It comes in a nice foam padded display box that seemed a little much since I'll never use the box again, but whatever. Maybe some people like to display their lights. The focuses really well; the light is even all the way across. On half power the light is way brighter than my other LED lights; on FULL power...blinding. There are brighter lights, yes, and they cost much more. But for a bike light (and it's almost TOO bright use on a well lit street, though it's perfect for a dark street) it's a good deal.

I like the power, the throw, and I especially like the fact that I can easily use the tail "clicky" to switch from the lower power to the higher. The momentary-on is a feature I like, too. My other Coast light in my B.O.B. has a longer run time, which I wanted for that application, but here I wanted something with some kick and a clean hot-spot, and this seems to do it for me. I feel Coast lights offer a good value. Yeah ... some others may spec-out better, but these products, again, offer a good value ... I can't afford to spend one to two hundred on a flashlight ... so these do the job for me. I've made gifts of more than a few Coast lights. I think Coast lights warrant a closer look. I think they should offer a sheath upgrade as their sheaths are almost inadequate, and the one that came with this light is certainly so. But again, I do like the light and I bought a third-party sheath to deal with this.