One of the features I wasn’t planning to continue in these new reviews was my individual light video overviews on my YouTube channel: @cpfselfbuilt

Back in the day, I found these rather labour-intensive to plan out and produce (even with only minimal editing/processing). And the video format doesn’t allow you to easily update or correct information (except by cards or other pop-ups), which can be frustrating.

I also used them mainly to show the build and user interface – figuring it was often easier to explain visually than with a lot of text. But with these new 2023 reviews, I’m focusing on simplified point-by-point UI descriptions, to serve as manual replacements. So I figured the need for (time-consuming) videos was reduced now.

And to be honest, I also got tired of the constant complaints from many commentators on that site about the lack of outdoor beamshots in the videos. As I painfully tried to explain repeatedly, they have no real value for comparative testing if you are using an auto-brightness-adjusting cellphone camera (as I was for the videos) – everything would look misleadingly bright. And I was already providing fixed-camera-setting comparative beamshot pictures in my actual reviews – video recordings of the same would have no additional value. But it seems like outdoor beamshot videos was all a lot of YouTubers cared about, and the constant trolling on every new video was annoying.

But as I also had a lot of supportive subscribers on that channel back in the day, I figured I owed them a video introducing my return to reviewing. So I posted the video below, outlining my interest in the 21700 battery class in particular:

I must say, I’ve been a bit blown away by the immediate and overwhelmingly positive response to this announcement video!  I had figured that most people would have long-ago unsubscribed, and it was mainly bots that were left on the site. It seems I underestimated how much value people found in these videos.

I’m not going back to individual videos for each light, but I am thinking now of perhaps making some compilation videos showing off lights that have performed exceptionally well in my testing (for a given battery type, or use pattern, or emitter, etc.). That would give me the opportunity to work out any kinks in my descriptions or in the experience of handling the lights ahead of time (as any compilation video would be coming out after the reviews, not concurrently with them).

I’m still mulling the idea over, but please leave me a comment here or on the channel if you can think of something that would be particularly valuable for a video.

Any snark about outdoor beamshots will be promptly ignored. 🙂