My buddy sent me this light to T&E here on the blog.... I abided. I have heard of this light, but before this post I had never gotten my hands on one. As far as first impressions go, this is an impressive little bugger. The first thing I noticed upon taking it out of the box was how light it is (2.83oz) and how cool the grey color looks! Unlike the surefire X300 and Streamlight TLR-1, the APL is much narrower (due to only using one CR123 lithium battery) and shorter, making it much more compact all around and keeping the pistol that it is mounted to as light and slim as possible.
Inforce claims that this light puts out 200 lumens out the front of the light. I found this to be false... false in the sense that it puts out more than claimed. This light uses the most current rendition of CREE industries' smaller sized LED emitters, the XPG2-Q5 (neutral white tint). To get technical, this particular emitter puts out 260 lumens at the LED while driven at 1A. I measured my example and it draws 1.1A from the battery. Taking this into consideration and assuming an 80% overall efficiency, I calculated this light to put out approximately 230 lumens out the front. not much of a difference but 15% is enough for me to post about.
The way that this light works is easy and ambidextrous; there are paddles on either side right where your trigger finger would normally reside while out of the trigger guard. one quick push will turn the light on or you can hold it down for momentary on. I like how my off hand thumb could also actuate this light on the other side of the weapon.
The Cam-Lock system is a great, intelligent way to lock the light on either a Glock type rail or a Mil 1913 rail system. The light comes with an additional "wide" bar cam that is designed for the Mil 1913 rails. Changing the cam is as easy as removing the two allen screws as shown in the above picture.
The lockup is super solid on any of my railed pistols and it looks damn good at the same time. I really am a fan of how the lines and edges of this light fit and match the firearm. This thing feels right at home on my M&P 9.... sorry Chris.... you aren't getting this back haha!!
The APL also comes in boring black and rad FDE if you can find it but I really dig the grey coloration myself. As you can see above, the APL is barely longer than the slide of my M&P. A similar Surefire or Streamlight would stick out about an inch past the slide. Also note in the bellow picture (which doesn't do it justice) that the APL is barely and I mean BARELY wider than the M&P;
Sure, for the same money you could get a Streamlight TLR-1 HL that puts out a claimed 630 lumens, but lumens are not everything.... especially on a pistol mounted light. Think about it, in the middle of the night you hear a crash downstairs and you grab your sidearm to investigate, do you want to be blinded by your own light by just shining it on a wall? Believe you me, when your eyes are adjusted to the night after waking up in a daze, shining over 500 lumens against a wall 8 feet away is enough to give you sun spots on your vision... something you don't need if you are sneaking around your house at night to see if someone broke in or if some other member of the household just dropped something in the kitchen during a drunken stupor. Don't shoot your drunk friends!
Stay tuned for a coming update that will show you how all of my lights compare to one another in a great big beam test! The APL will be included in this test so check it out soon!
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