The Best BUDGET Handgun Light : Streamlight TLR-1 HL

Full Review + Product Links:

The Streamlight TLR-1 HL is an excellent weapon mounted flashlight. In fact, it is my whitelight of choice for home defense on my home defense pistol. But what exactly makes this weapon mounted light so special, and why do I think this is the ideal weapon mounted light for the vast majority of every day protectors? Let’s dig into the review.

The Streamlight TLR-1 HL is not the cheapest light on the market. The flashlight fluctuates in price for around $150. With the Olight PL-3 Valkyrie coming in at $80 with extremely similar specs, many consumers will ask why buy the Streamlight?

This is the case with the vast majority of tactical gear. Usually, there is an American made top tier option, which for pistol mounted white lights is generally accepted to be the Surefire X300 series. Next you’ll have a high quality, American company, mid tier option for about half that price but likely made in China. In our case that is the Streamlight TLR-1. Lastly, you’ll have a chinese option, like the Olight PL3 Valkyrie.

Every tier will give you about 80% of what the higher tier gives you, at half the price.

The TLR-1HL fits squarely within this model. Its capabilities, features, and functions are great. It’ll give you most of the capability that you’d get with a more expensive option like surefire, at half the cost. Cheaper options exist on the market, but they’ll give you a significant drop in capability as compared to that top tier option, even though they come in at 1/3 to a 1/4 of the price of the top tier option.

For most people, I think that Mid tier is the sweet spot, whether its the TLR-1, a Glock handgun, a Holosun red dot. It’s why the TLR-1 is so popular.

But let’s go over practical performance. The TLR-1 HL is really bright. Featuring a 1000 lumen, 20,000 candela output, it is plenty bright for home defense needs. In fact, for much of the law enforcement community, the TLR-1 is the baseline standard for weapon mounted lights.

The flashlight is powered by two CR123A batteries.

The flashlight can be mounted on either Glock or 1913 accessory rails, with adapters for both. On a full size glock frame, the flashlight will sit flush with the trigger guard.

The flashlight features a very secure QD system. Simply turn the screw counter clockwise to loosen, push in and release the flashlight from the frame. Installation is the opposite order but equally intuitive.

The controls and design of the streamlight are excellent. The flip lever activation can be engaged by either the index finger or support hand thumb, making turning the light on and off extremely untuitive without the need to break grip. If you want to engage the strobe feature, simply push the lever down twice. This is superior in my opinion to the push button activation of Olight.

The light has held up for thousands of rounds of recoil for me and is still going extremely strong. Ive owned his model for years and have had no issues.

Holster compatibility is a big draw. Pretty much every major manufacturer supports both surefire and streamlight. Olight has much more limited holster support. I like running the TLR-1 because of its compatibility with universal holsters like the blackhawk omnivore for shooting a variety of different guns at the range. Although for duty use you’d be best off with a tightfitting model specific flashlight and gun kydex combo.

The TLR-1 HL is bright enough that some people do run it on rifles. However, streamlight‘s HLX is a better option for this context since it has more power, a tapeswitch option, M-Lok mount compatibility, and it goes on sale for around $100 frequently.

The only problem that I’ve had with this flashlight is that the original battery door eventually broke on me somewhere around year 1 or 2 of heavy usage. However, replacement parts are so easily available, I simply bought a replacement on amazon and had it up and running again in no time.

Overall I love the TLR-1 HL. I do strongly caution you if buying one used however, as the knockoff fake TLR-1s are so realistic and so close to the real thing, it is very hard to tell the difference. Last week I released a fun video, where we compared the fake against the real thing and we tried to figure out which one was real and which was fake. Obviously the black one is real since you watched this video, but go ahead and check that one out to make sure you don’t get scammed when you make a purchase.

Thank you guys for watching and if this video was helpful please consider subscribing to the channel. See you next week!