Streamlight ProTac Ten Tap

Hello again, time for another flashlight review from me, big surprise huh? If you’ve followed any of my reviews you might think I was afraid of the dark. I preach weapon lights are second only to a clean, loaded weapon with which I am very familiar. You might also know I’m a Streamlight brand fan and as far as I’m concerned they hit a home run and scored a field goal at the same time with this new light.

So let me introduce you to the new Streamlight Protac*HL “Ten Tap” LED tactical light. Why “Ten Tap”?? Well this light is programmable for 3 different programs. The first one is the factory default setting. You get High/Strobe/Low in that order. So to use high click it once. Too get to strobe, click it twice and low give the button 3 pushes. It’s not hard to do at all. That’s the first program.

The second program gets you High only. That is the one I use. It is 600 lumens of blinding, stupidly bright light. It is incredible for a flashlight of this size, even for much larger ones too. This one though is simple, you get High and that’s all.

The third program gets you Low/High in that order. Hit the switch once and get low beam and twice gets you the “sun” back.

Now back to the 10 Tap thing. To change between the programs simply tap the button 9 times and on the 10th tap hold it. It will burn for about 2 seconds and then go dark. You have then changed to the next program. So you will be on program 1 by default. If you want program 2 which is High do that once. If you want program 3 Low/High you do that twice. It might sound a tad complicated but it really isn’t. I figured it out on the first try. So there you have the programs and the meaning behind Ten Tap.

So let’s talk about how bright the thing is. How much is 600 lumen? Well scientifically I don’t know but I bet it is enough to cook vampires. Seriously though in layman’s terms this thing will leave your opponent blind for the better part of 20 mins. It causes real live pain to your eyes and I had a big purple spot in my eyes for a half hour afterwards. It is an insane amount of light. That’s the best way I can describe it. If you need more light than this then get a searchlight. As a weapon light or carried as a duty flashlight this to me has no equals at least in my rather large inventory of good tac lights. For the size/weight to light output it’s unbelievable. The programs are also an added bonus. Check out the pictures, the far ones were at 100 feet and not even near the max range of the thing. The two close up’s were 25 feet.

You’ve got your standard aluminum body with a nice finish. The push/click button in the tail of the flashlight is housed in rubber. I don’t like a flashlight where you can’t push the button a tad bit and light it up. The one’s where you have to click on and off I think need this type of switch where just a little push get’s it fired up and then its quicker to kill it if you need to. So I like the switch.

Batteries, your standard cr123’s. Two of them, which is pretty much the norm when it comes to quality tactical lights. Most I have run on 2. I’ve got a 4 cell 900 lumen one from another company as well and you can see where the new 10 Tap surpasses that one. The batteries will sit for 10 years unused and still be good! That’s a huge benefit. As well as that style of battery has a wider range of operating temperatures over say AA’s or C’s and D’s. On high you get 1 hour and 15 mins run-time, low gets you 18 hours and strobe about 2.5 hours of light. Not bad!! Considering a xenon 60-100ish lumen bulb will kill the same set of batteries in about 20-25 mins in any other light and isn’t NEARLY as bright.

The bulb, 50,000 hours of life. Do you know how much that is? Well at 1 hour of use per day (which 99.9% of us will never use) that is about 137 years worth of light. So when I’m 179 years old I will donate this light to Mike Coker and he can run a review contest for it 🙂 It will still be good. The Cree C4 technology in these bulbs is shock proof! I have many lights with this type of pill in it and I have beat some of them silly, never broke one, been trying for several years. GREAT BULBS!!

Use options: It’s a regular smaller flashlight. You can glove compartment it, bedside stand, drawer, pouch on your gear or in your pocket, tool/tackle-box, whatever, the options are limitless. More importantly to me is that it’s your standard 1 inch tube. So it will fit in any one of the seemingly 100’s of weapon mounts available today. Pretty much any kind of mount, forward grip mount, offset mounts,whatever you like, will accept this 1 inch flashlight. Everybody makes this size mount. I have not yet seen a pressure switch for this but I’m sure it will be along. There may already be one, I haven’t looked very hard for one yet. This light is too good for Streamlight not to accessorize it if there isn’t one yet. For now I’m going with the mount I pictured left from Botachtactical.com. It’s from KZ, reasonably priced and will put that sweetheart right where you need it to be for use on your rifle. It is an incredible combination value from Botach. Look at light package #20 on Botachs website. You get a break for buying it as a combo.

Lets start winding down with some Manufacturer specs: It’s 5.4 inches long, weighs 5.6 ounces with batteries. It has o-rings for waterproofness. 1 meter for 30 mins waterproof it’s tested at. The lens is unbreakable they say, I always laugh when I hear that but I’m sure it’s tough. In the hands of US Marines or most any Govt employee/Cop/Soldier NOTHING is unbreakable. None the less, the lens will take a beating. It has a strong removable pocket clip and the head can be removed and the light hung from a ceiling. Does a great job of lighting up our tent with the head off. Last, the head is anti-roll.

Wrapping up: Obviously you can tell this light does it for me. I LOVE this light. It is so ridiculously bright I can’t hardly get over it. It’s tough, lifetime warranty and at a cost of $70 I think they are giving these things away. If it said Surefire down the side of it the thing would be $300 or more. You absolutely cannot go wrong with this light. It is not my first Streamlight either, like my 20th, all of them still work. I picked a Streamlight Scorpion out of a blown up Hummer onetime and it fired right up. I can’t say the same for anything else in that vehicle including the poor gun team that had been in it. In the past I used a Surefire Xenon on deployments to the sandbox and at work. NOT ANYMORE!! This is the best duty light I have ever personally owned for Mil/LE/Home use. Streamlight makes a superior product at a price that’s actually more than reasonable. This is their best duty light yet as far as I am concerned.