You can forget about hanging it from your belt, because this miniature sun — masquerading as a torch — is heavy enough to need two hands to operate. And with 15,000 lumens, the XM18 is bright enough to illuminate a small planet.
As you can see, it’s actually composed of 18 smaller LED torch components, all wrapped in a custom housing powered by 32 lithium batteries and cooled with its own fan. LEDs are definitely more efficient than incandescents, but 15,000 lumens worth still produces a lot of excess heat.
What’s even crazier is that the $US2500 photon cannon (built only as a custom order) is shaped like a hexagon, so multiple units can be easily mounted together. Because apparently the company is worried that 15,000 lumens might not be enough for their most discerning customers who need to blind entire herds of deer at once. [4Sevens via GoingGear]
Scott
Tuesday, January 31, 2012 at 8:29 PMI must have one of these for my keychain.
bob
Tuesday, January 31, 2012 at 9:16 PMI’ll just stick to my simple single led flashlight.
Ben
Tuesday, January 31, 2012 at 11:56 PMMakes my handheld HID spotlight look like a glow stick
Mattuso
Wednesday, February 1, 2012 at 12:14 AMI got a 4000 lumens torch, if I accidentally shine it in my eyes by dropping it or someone shines it at my face thinking it’s hilarious, I can’t see for 5 min…. I get hit with this I won’t see for 5 years!
On another note, how many lumens can we handle before it does damage? (I’m more talking lumens per seconds or min, obviously staring at a regular torch for an hour won’t do any good)
Jono
Wednesday, February 1, 2012 at 8:37 AMSun on the earths surface is 75,000 lumens per square meter
Sean
Wednesday, February 1, 2012 at 10:05 AMLets say a 10deg beam, then roughly 0.1 square meter spot at a meter distance, so 150,000 lumens per square meter? So this can do permanent damage at that distance in the same sort of time as staring at the sun? Or have I made an error?
TSH
Wednesday, February 1, 2012 at 12:17 PMYou have to take pupil dilation into account, not just the overall brightness.
chris
Wednesday, February 1, 2012 at 10:53 AMLED Lenser FTW