I test TLR-1 lookalikes from LA Police Gear and Goonbeam to find out which one performs the best.
Two Lights Similar to the TLR-1
The Strearmlight TLR-1HL is a great light. I love the switches, and performance is right up there with the best pistol lights. It’s adaptable to a wide range of pistols, and holster manufacturers have been supporting it for a long time. So if you’re going to come up with your own light, why not build a similar form factor so you can benefit from the holster support that already exists.
Why would you buy something similar to the TLR-1HL? I can only think of two reasons: price or performance. The TLR-1HL is priced reasonably, and you can usually pick one up around $129 (see https://werkz.com/streamlight-tlr-1hl-black.html), so a light would need to be priced at or under $100 to be significantly less than the already-competitive Streamlight price. The other possibility is that you need more performance than the TLR-1HL provides.
That brings me to our two contenders, the GoonBeam Pistol Light V1 Short Kit, and the LA Police Gear Sliderail XWL. I’m going to call these the “GBeam” (because that’s what’s printed on the bottom), and the XWL, respectively. Let’s look at the specs from the manufacturer:
| GoonBeam GBeam | LAPG XWL | Streamlight TLR-1HL | |
| Price | $89 | $79 | $129 |
| Lumens | 580 | 800 | 1000 |
| Candela | 39,000 | Unlisted | Unlisted |
| Runtime | Unlisted | 1.5 hours | 1.5 hours |
It’s pretty hard to compare the specs because the manufacturers don’t list candela. At first glance, it appears the GBeam may lag behind the others due to the low lumen rating. And that is exactly what we intend to find out in our testing.
GoonBeam?
First, let’s talk about the name It doesn’t say “professional level lighting” to me. My first advice to the owner would be to change the name.
So how did I hear about GoonBeam? We had one of our readers ask if we could test their products. So I went online, found them on Etsy, as well as on Reddit, and finally found a store link for them. I heard second hand that it’s one guy who is building the lights himself. Etsey reviews were decent, with one saying, “Excellent quality, exceeded my expectations, will definitely be referring other in the future.” If Modlite can start by improving on Surefire products, perhaps GoonBeam could do the same? I figure it’s worth seeing if a “very small” manufacturer can build something that competes with the big guys.
LA Police Gear
I’ve also heard that people like the LA Police gear light. I’ve heard that performance is good, quality is good, and pricing is competitive.
Other Lights?
I’m sure there are a bunch of other lights in the popular TLR-1 form factor out there. Aliexpress lists a huge number of lights in the $40 range. It is my hope that these two samples are somewhat representative of the options you may find out there.
Physical Observations
The GBeam came with a couple of rechargeable batteries, apparently to keep cost down for the purchaser. The body and key appears to exactly be a TLR-1 Chinese clone. The switches feel very much like the TLR-1HL as well. The battery door operates the same as the TLR-1. In short, except for the beam pattern, this looks like a good TLR-1 copy.
The LAPG XWL came with a couple non-rechargeable batteries. The switch on it also feels similar to the TLR-1, but the battery door opens via a catch on the bottom rather than the lever up top. I see no significant advantage or disadvantage to this battery door configuration. The XWL also has cooling fins on the bottom of the body; these fins don’t interfere with the holster because they utilize space that the light bezel travels through.
Practical Testing: Warehouse
We test in the warehouse to give you an idea how the light focuses in the center and how well it spills to the sides. It also gives us a chance to subjectively measure the amount of pain or disorientation the light can inflict on a subject.
Interestingly, all 3 of the images seem to show similar lighting patterns. The GBeam appears to have a hotter hotspot, less spill, and a cooler color temperature. It’s hard to see a big difference between the 3 lights here.
As the subject, I can tell you that I couldn’t tell the difference between the Streamlight and LAPG lights. They both were a “wall of light” to me. However, the GBeam was “painful light” causing me discomfort to look directly into.
Lab Testing: Lumen
Lumen is a measurement of total light output. This is the most popular light measurement but it doesn’t tell the whole story. From our equipment we can measure lumens over time, which gives us a few measurements, including lumens and runtime. Most lights start out at their highest lumen output, gradually drop over the first couple minutes, level out, then drop off at some point.
This data tells us that the highest lumen output through about 1:17 is the TLR-1HL. That’s not a surprise as the TLR-1HL consistently ranks as one of the best performing lights. We can also determine the following from the data we have gathered:
| Metric | GBeam with Panasonic Batteries | GBeam with Rechargeables | LAPG XWL | TLR-1HL |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Max Lumens | 587.9 | 568.1 | 973.8 | 1265 |
| ANSI / PLATO Lumens | 565.0 | 548.5 | 803.3 | 1163.5 |
| Lumens @ 2 minutes | 534.3 | 541.3 | 687.2 | 1103 |
| Lumens @ 10 minutes | 460.1 | 484.5 | 352.2 | 672.1 |
| Lumens @ 20 minutes | 216.8 | 446.4 | 357.2 | 575.5 |
| ANSI / PLATO Runtime | 01:31:25 | 00:41:14 | 02:48:04 | 01:34:22 |
| Runtime to <10lm | 02:18:23 | 00:47:23 | >04:30:00 | 02:30:00 |
We have a number of notable items in the data here:
- The TLR-1HL has the highest max lumens, ANSI / PLATO FL1 lumens (which is an average of readings from 30 seconds to 120 seconds), and it outperforms the other two lights through 20 minutes (and beyond)
- The GBeam rechargeable batteries may have failed during this test. After running the test, I could get one battery to charge, and the other one would read 0v even after being on the charger for hours. It’s possible the battery died during the testing, accounting for the low “rechargeables” result.
- As a result, I tested using our standard-issue Panasonic batteries, and the GBeam produced the lowest lumen rating.
- The LAPG XWL light produced at least 10 lumens in excess of 4 hours and 30 minutes. If you want a long lasting light, that’s one to consider. However, I think it will be rare to have a pistol light in use over 20 minutes.
In short, the TLR-1HL has the highest raw output.
Lab Testing: Duty Cycle Consistency
We recently had a survey asking if people actually use their lights constantly for longer periods, or if they seldom run their lights for more than a few seconds at a time. A significant percentage said they never use their lights over 2 minutes. As a result, we created a duty cycle test, where we run the light for 15 seconds every minute for 10 minutes. The idea is that if a light is used only 25% of the time, then this can show how consistent the light performs. It’s the scenario where the user turns the light on, gathers info, turns the light off, and does this a number of times while investigating or engaging a threat. We gather max lumens for each of those 15 second cycles, record it, then see how consistent the light is in that usage. This scenario particularly favors lights that have a super high output for only a few seconds then throttle down to protect batteries or reduce thermal load.
Light Cycle: TLR-1 Similar Lights
Here we see all the lights perform fairly consistently, with the worst performer being the LAPG XWL, which varies almost 10% from highest to lowest output.
Lab Testing: Candela
We need both lumen and candela. Candela is how bright the light is in a particular direction, and is useful for punching through photonic barriers (such as someone in a dark doorway with a light shining toward you), seeing longer distances (“beam distance”) or for controlling a subject by putting intense light into their eyes. We test max candela at the center of the beam, then also test candela at angles up to 30 degrees to see how much “spill” the light has.
It’s obvious at this point that the GoonBeam is focusing (pun intended) on candela. At almost 38k, it far oustrips the 14,560 of the TLR-1. Looking inside the GBeam, I can see that the LED emitter is much smaller than the XWL, which can account for the more focused beam. The closer the emitter is to being a point source, the better the reflector is able to focus the beam. Even if the output isn’t as high as a larger emitter, having a more dense emitter in a small space allows it to be focused. Correspondingly, you can see in the chart above that the GBeam drops off severely at angles away from center — much more so than the TLR-1HL.
The TLR-1HL and XWL are both quite close in performance, with the Streamlight edging out the LAPG across the board. This is likely due to the higher lumen output of the TLR-1HL.
This test highlights the biggest difference in the lights: the GoonBeam provides candela over lumens.
Lab Testing: Color Temperature & CRI
Color temperature is a measure of how warm or cold the light is. Lights above 6000k appear “cool” and lights below 4000k appear warm. For me, the sweet spot is around 5600k. CRI is a measure of how faithfully the light reproduces colors across the spectrum; objects cannot reflect a color if the light source does not emit it. LEDs weapon lights typically have a hard time producing R9, which is a strong red tone. R15 is a medium skin tone, and also one to watch for.
All 3 lights produce a “cool” light. The TLR-1HL is closest to my 5600 target, but still quite a ways off at 6500k. The GBeam is at 7200, and the LAPG light is at 7400.
For CRI, I’m going to pick out a few key values. The average, “Ra,” is a good first one to look at, averaging the CRI values across the board. While the LAPG light has the best Ra, all the values are within 3 points. At that level, it’s hard to see a difference. R15, an important skin tone, shows the TLR-1HL lagging both the GBeam and the LAPG lights by about 6 points. While R9 is negative for all the lights, it is the most negative for the TLR-1HL as well.
For light quality, all 3 of these lights are fairly competitive, with the TLR-1HL having the warmer tone, but slightly less CRI for the important red and skin tone colors.
Conclusion
Each light fits a need. I can see reasons someone would pick each one.
GoonBeam GBeam: You want maximum candela in a known package with good holster availability at a price that is better than the TLR-1HL. You are also comfortable using a new manufacturer without a proven track record; we did have a battery die after first use, but that was easily remedied by putting in non-rechargeable batteries.
LAPG XWL: You want a light that is almost as good as the TLR-1 with good holster availability at almost a $50 discount.
Streamlight TLR-1HL: You want a professional level light with high output, good candela, and good light quality at a reasonable price.
Note that we’ve not durability tested the GoonBeam or LAPG lights, so the jury is out there.
