Re: Anybody played with a NovaTac light?
NovaTac is an "okay" product. The way they heatsink the LED is not very good though. Surefire's heatsinking is not very good either, but it's better than NovaTac. If you break or otherwise dispose of lights frequently this will be less of an issue. Running the LED as hot as these designs allow you to (before the battery goes flat) will cause the LED to lose brightness relatively quickly, and/or can cause a sudden failure.
People like LEDs because there's no filament to break, but they are still liable to failure if overheated. They do not handle heat like incandescents and rely on good heatsinking for reliable operation.
My personal preference for a pocket-sized light is the Surefire U2. It is not the brightest in their lineup of pocked LED lights, but it has the best mechanical design: Rugged, GOOD quality switch (others like the LX2 are complete crap), don't have to turn it on to set the brightness/dimness, rugged, and even though it's not the brightest it's still very bright. Also very thrifty on batteries. Surefire updates the LED in the U2 once in a while so the brochure specifications are usually more conservative than actual performance.
