650 Lumens and Optional Laser for the Little Guns
Nightstick is expanding its offering of compact Weapon Mounted Light (WML) options. The new iterations are the TCM-10 and the TCM-10-GL; they’ve been upgraded to push 650 lumens off a single CR123 battery, and the latter model also sports a green laser.
The new lights are 100 lumens brighter than the TCM-550XL and TCM-550-XL-GL, and their candela remains the same at 4,612, but that seems reasonable for the price point.
The new WMLs are described as having a 650-lumen high beam distance of about 450 feet, with a total runtime (on high) of about two hours. That’s plenty of illumination distance for the typical concealed carry gun owner, though more lumens (and more candela) are rarely, if ever, a bad thing. It’s science!
At 2.5 inches long, 1.1 inches wide, and 1.2 inches deep, the lights are an unobtrusive addition to an EDC weapon — and honestly, a necessary one. Every pistol should have a holster and a weapon light before any other upgrades, just as every defensive rifle should have a WML and a sling. Those two things allow for security/retention and positive target identification (PID) in low/no light.
But I digress.
Like other Nightstick offerings, the TCMs utilize a “precision-engineered total internal reflection [TIR] lens” to capitalize on every bit of light output and provide what they describe as a “crisply defined outer halo” for feedback. The aiming laser on the GL is daylight visible at a wavelength of 532 nanometers (532nm), which is one of the two most common “everyday” civilian use measurements of visible (non-IR) green lasers. The other is 520nm, which is commonly found on laser pointers.
Note: do not throw an aiming laser onto the rails of a handgun and assume it is lined up with the bore. Lasers must be zeroed, just like weapons.
Ambidextrous control switches are on the rear end of the lights. These are utilized to command a variety of user-programmed modes, including strobe and “safe” light lockout.
