Nitecore EDC29 EDC Tactical Flashlight, 6500 Lumen USB-C Rechargeable Slim Flat Shape with Spotlight Floodlight Strobe Modes Digital Display Sticker

As a college student, I walk home late at night pretty often, and having this flashlight with me has made a huge difference. It’s small enough to carry without being a hassle, but the brightness is unreal. The high-lumen mode lights up entire streets, and the strobe function is great for personal safety—it’s reassuring just knowing I have it.What I like:Super bright – The turbo mode is like turning on daylight. Even the lower settings are plenty for walking at night.Great for emergencies – The strobe mode is quick to activate, and I feel like it would help in a bad situation.Rechargeable and lasts a while – Charges fast with USB-C, and I’ve only had to recharge it a couple of times despite using it regularly.Feels solid – It’s sturdy but not too heavy, and the safety lock prevents it from turning on in my bag.What could be better:Gets warm on high settings – Not a huge deal, but you’ll notice it after a while.Turbo mode dims quickly – It doesn’t stay at full power for long, but that’s expected with something this bright.Overall, I’d recommend this to any student, parent, or anyone who wants a reliable, high-powered flashlight. It’s been a game changer for me.

I bought an EDC27 after 2 years working on the job as a CO. I had a previous Nitecore flashlight with one brightness setting for two years working as a CO before that, so I trust the brand and I wanted something with adjustable brightness, so I bought the EDC27. Seeing the EDC29, I had to get it, to have a backup just in case (and so I could cycle one out to charge while I took the other one to work.) It has some new features that in my opinion make it a head up over the EDC27.EDC27 is a great light and the EDC29 builds on this success.In case you're curious, I'll give a brief overview:EDC25 and 27 are very similar in function, really the only difference is an LED screen that gives you a timer for how long until the battery is expended (which is shared on the 27 and 29.) The 25 uses 4 green LEDs, each representing 25% battery life. Also, the 25 uses 4 blue LED's to indicate brightness intensity, while the 27 and 29 display a number of lumens on a small black/white LED screen. How close these lumen intensities are to the actual number of lumens they display is debatable, but I'm sure if you wanted to test them, you could. On the lumen intensities that overlap on the 3 models I own, they are comparable brightness, so at least there's that consistency. All you need to know is that the bigger the number, the brighter the light is.All three lights have multiple brightness functions. The difference is intensity.All of them have a 15 lumen (low setting)From there, the power levels are different.EDC25 and 27 have 65 lumen, 200 lumen, 1000 lumen and a 3000 lumen (ultra) bright mode. This ultra mode has a timer that counts down and has a limited time because of heat generated. The 27 has a dedicated strobe light setting.EDC29 has 100 lumen, 400 lumen and 1200 lumen with a 3000 lumen (search) bright mode and a 6500 lumen (lumin shield) bright mode. These two ultra bright modes have a timer that counts down on the screen because of heat generated. The 29 does not have a dedicated strobe* setting.The EDC 25 feels less substantial than the 27 and 29. Both the 27 and 29 are robustly constructed and feel solid and sturdy in your hands. The 25 isn't flimsy by any means, but it feels noticeably lighter than the 27. The 27 isn't as heavy as the 29.One of the things that sets the 29 apart from the 27 and 25 is the lockout switch. With the 25 and 27, you have to short press and long press the power button to get the light to unlock and come on (which takes several seconds.) The 29, you slide the lockout switch and click the power button and you're on. Literally as quickly as you can slide the switch and push the power button.A positive of the slide lock that I've noticed is that you're less likely to turn on the light accidentally. With the short and long press locks of the taller power button of the 25 and 27, if it's clipped to the top of your pocket while you're sitting, you do have the potential to turn on the light inadvertently while you sit due to movement depressing the button. The sliding lock virtually eliminates this.Several other features about the 29 that set it apart from its predecessors are as follows.1) If you forget to lock it before you put it in your pocket, if it's at a certain intensity (high), there in a sensor in the light that will automatically dim the light to save battery and produce less heat.2)The 29 is more of an oval shape than a rectangle shape with rounded corners like the 25 and 27. It's still relatively flat, but definitely not as flat at the 25 and 27. In a pinch, it's large enough to use in your fist as a grip tightener if necessary. It's not large enough (you can see from the photos) to be used as a weapon on its own, but in an emergency, you could hold the light inside your fist while you strike.3) The 29 has a larger battery capacity than the 25 or 27. On 15 lumens (the setting I use most frequently, the 27 displays a runtime of 38-40 hours of run time. The 29 displays a runtime of 65 hours. As the 25 seems identical in function, but simply uses 4 lights to indicate battery capacity, I assume it's runtime is similar to the 27.4) The 29 has a "tactical setting." If the light is off (and unlocked) and you half press the power button (the taller one), it will turn on a 15 lumen light for a long as you hold the power button down. It will do the same thing with the larger button next to the power button for a 3000 lumen "search" light. Where if you just need light for a second or two, you have this option. I don't know how useful this would be for your average user, but it's available.Cons:1) Because of this larger battery, better LEDs, larger size, the 29 is heavier than the 27 or 25. The 25 is already lighter than the 27 (losing the LED screen) saved a small, but noticeable amount of weight. The 29 has a similar weight to your average cell phone from a basic "what it feels like" test done by me while I sit here.2) The 29 does not have a dedicated "strobe" setting. It talks about strobe in the manual, but let me explain. The 27 has a large button next to the power button that you can "half" press for the 3000 lumen "turbo" light and fully press for a dedicated strobe function (which strobes at 3000 lumens rapidly while you hold the button.) The 25 and the 29 both have these same buttons, but they function differently. The 25, you can half or fully press the button for the 3000 lumen "turbo."*With the 29, you can half press for a 3000 lumen "search" light or fully press for a 6500 lumen "lumin shield" light. The "lumin shield" is almost painfully bright and the light generated noticeable heat, even several feet away from the flashlight on exposed skin. But by pushing this "lumin shield button" you can achieve a strobe like effect depending on how quickly you can press and release the button.All of these lights generate noticeable heat with prolonged use. The heat they generate is commensurate with their model numbers. The 29 generates the most heat the fastest and takes the longest time for that heat to dissipate.There's times that I've had the flashlight inadvertently turn on while it's clipped in my pocket (since you won't always remember to lock it) and feeling the heat from the light let me know it was on.All in all, I've trusted Nitecore lights for the past 4 years working the toughest beat in the state and they've never let me down. The 29 is a nice addition to the like of EDC lights from Nitecore.

This is a fairly impressive light, with very good peak power for its size and relatively nice controls. I'm not entirely convinced that the display screen for selecting modes is the best way to do things on a flashlight, but it's an interesting idea and has some advantages.This is a device that is mainly built to deliver short, intense bursts of light while remaining compact and easy to carry around. I can see it being amazing as an auxiliary light for exploring caves or navigating the woods at night, but it's not going to be able to run for nearly as long as most modern flashlights, and its thermal limits on how long it can stay at full power are some of the tightest I've ever seen. Believe it or not, this thing manages to feel like someone pulled it out of a survival horror video game and into the real world, which is something I say both affectionately and with some concern.It's a bit strange to me that this thing is marketed as an "EDC" light, given how specialized it is for high-brightness, short-duration use. When I see "EDC", I usually assume this means "general-purpose", and I'm unconvinced that this is a general-purpose light. This will be coming with me on camping trips and hikes, but it just doesn't quite seem like the right thing to bring to work with me every day.Good bits:- Extremely powerful and easily-accessed two-mode turbo settings, giving a 3000-lumen narrow beam with a half-press and 6500-lumen flood with a full press. When you need a really bright burst of light, you can get it in about one second without having to think about it.- Quick access to the lowest-brightness mode as well by holding the main button at half-press.- Nice "safety" switch on the side, making it hard to accidentally turn the light on while keeping it very quick to access when you need it. Flipping it to the "safe" position instantly turns off the light, giving you a reliable way to do that.- Very solid construction with good thermal management. The considerable amount of heat this light generates on its higher settings is distributed quite evenly over the metal shell.- Active thermal control for the normal brightness settings does a good job of balancing brightness and temperature without being too distracting.- Reasonably even beam color. Nothing too impressive, but not distracting either.- Easy charging via USB-C, with good rate of charge.- Nice unambiguous access to the four normal brightness settings, allowing you to pick one using the display screen before you turn the light on.- Strobe mode is hard to activate by accident if you don't need it, but can be made readily available (replacing the turbo mode) if you do.Not-so-good bits:- Accessing the main settings is somewhat cumbersome, inevitably involving the dreaded "push one button multiple times to cycle through brightness levels" pattern that I so dislike. In this case, there are four brightness settings, which feels like too many. To be honest, I feel like they could have done very well with only one "normal" brightness level accessed by a full press of the main button, rather than four - had they done that, the light would have still had four total brightness modes (half-press low mode, main mode, and the half- and full-press turbo modes), and each setting would have been easily and immediately accessed with just one button action, providing no ambiguity or fiddliness. The way they ended up doing things does provide somewhat more utility in plenty of cases, I suppose, but I can't help but be disappointed by how close this light came to being a gem of sophisticated-but-effortless operation while still falling short of the mark.- Turbo modes have a very short time limit, remaining at full power for just 7 seconds before dropping back to a substantially lower brightness. Contrary to what you might expect, the lower 3000-lumen turbo mode has exactly the same time limit as the higher 6500-lumen one. The light does a good job of letting you know what the limits are by showing you a "stamina bar" type of thing on the screen, which drains while the light is on at full power, stays empty after it drops to reduced power, and recovers (at a speed depending on temperature) once the light is off. It all feels like something out of a video game, which is kind of fun, but also a bit silly.- While this light is capable of both narrow- and wide-angle illumination thanks to its independently-controlled center-and-ring LED arrangement, you as the user don't get much input into which emitters are active at a given time. In the lower modes, only the centers are active, and it's only the higher-power modes that enable the flood rings. This means that there is no low-power flood mode, which is somewhat disappointing. This doesn't really affect my overall rating of the light - and I can see plenty of cases where the way it works will be nice - but it does feel fairly specialized in a way that I wasn't expecting.- Runtime on a charge is okay, but nothing too impressive. It reports that it will last for about 48 hours on its lowest, 15-lumen setting, and things ramp off quite rapidly from there. I think you probably get only a couple dozen 7-second bursts on its highest turbo mode on a charge, and every single one of those noticeably reduces the voltage of the battery displayed on the screen. (While fiddling with it in the course of writing this review, the voltage has come down from about 4.2V (~100%) to 3.8V (~70%), which is way more than I expected.)I don't think this should be taken as too much of a criticism (and it won't affect my rating), since this is clearly a light optimized for compact size and peak power over all else, but I think it's worth noting. This is a light that needs to be recharged far more often than any other in my collection, and the lack of a swappable battery means that this can be a bigger hassle than many users might expect these days.All in all, I like this thing, but it's important to know what you're getting and make sure it lines up with your expectations. This is a good light, but also one of the last in my collection that I'd recommend to any random person without knowing what their needs are first.

Nice, flat, very bright flashlight. Pretty easy to operate. Has a "booster" button that is momentary contact, but when held down you get 6,000 lumens of light. Fairly broad beam with a good "halo" or roll-off around the outside center portion which is brightest. The flatness makes it easy to carry in tactical pants that have the side pouches...will easily fit down an ammo pouch.