Product Review
EagleTac T25C2 flashlight
By Bear St. Pierre
I put my bear paws on the EagleTac T25C2 Tactical Flashlight for the past few months, and here’s what I found. First, it’s well built and durable. I have dropped it plenty of times, mostly on concrete (even my driveway), and it’s pretty much no worse for wear. It’s tough, and I have no doubt it would fare better than a bad guy if I need to get a sample of DNA from the tissue covering his brain housing group.
It’s bright, emitting a scorching 1180 lumens. The rechargeable Lithium Iion 18650 battery has performed flawlessly thus far, as expected. It runs for about an hour and a half between charges. You can also use standard CR123A Lithium batteries as well. The street price on this unit is about $100 without the rechargeable battery package.
I found myself pleasantly surprised with all the bonus hardware that accompanies the light inside the packaging. Included was an outside the waistband nylon case, a lanyard so it can be worn around one’s wrist for retaining the light (think reloads or drop-prone people), and a rubber tail cap to allow you to use the flashlight as a lantern by sitting it straight up. EagleTac also includes a hard rubber combat grip ring, allowing you to hold the flashlight like a cigar whilst depressing the button while using it with a handgun. There’s a spacer ring if you want to take off the combat grip ring. Last on the list is the pocket clip. The clip is made out of stainless steel, but coated in titanium, but more on the clip later.
The light is set up with “regular” and “tactical” modes. The tactical mode has all sorts of settings, including strobe settings and a moonlight setting. There’s also a host of other novelty settings that in my opinion are just gimmicks. You can probably signal the space station, or your friends or enemies, but those settings are a pain to use as you need both hands to access them (“Hold on, Mr. Bad Guy. I need to access my beacon setting…”).
I will say there’s a tailcap strobe setting which is at least marginally useful, and when I finally got it activated, I had a whole new respect for this tool. It’s accessed by rapidly depressing the tailcap momentarily two times. It’s genius, simple and I like it. I will say it was a pain to get it turned on, but now that it’s activated, it has got the potential to be useful.
I don’t think EagleTac thought their clip placement all the way through. Why can’t we have two if not three options of where to place the clip? The clip on this light is about 1½ inches from the on/off switch, leaving about that much flashlight to dig in your hip when sitting, driving, or bending down. I would have preferred to move the clip a little closer to the switch allowing more flashlight into my pocket and less digging into my hip.
The light comes with a lifetime warranty, but there’s a catch. A big catch. You have to send it to China for service. According to my friend John Boch, it takes about a month or six weeks to get it back.
In many ways I’m happy with this light, but there are some drawbacks. The EagleTac T25C2 Tactical Flashlight has earned 3.5 bear paws out of 5.