I finally was able to pick up a Surefire XSC for my 365XL. I have been waiting what seems like forever. Surefire effed up the rollout but finally got this thing out to market.
I got mine in hand and installed (although no holster for it yet).
First impressions are pretty good. The controls are simple. There seems to be a whole lot of thought put into how this light operates.
First off it's really simple to operate. I've messed with other light/lasers that I hated. You have to toggle through all kinds of stuff and push things on the side of the light to toggle or whatever. In my personal opinion that is a horrible idea. To have anything you need to toggle through sucks for a weapons light and particularly a carry light. Fortunately the Surefire is very very simple without any of that BS going on.
One of the first things I've noticed was that the XSC has two modes. One is what I would call 'the primary' go to mode and the other is what I call 'secondary'. The primary go to is that you tap the switch and the light is on. Period. At first I wondered why this is so but after thinking about it it's pretty smart.
If someone gets out of their car and tries to attack me I am not worrying about negligent light discharges. I need to know what is going on and get every advantage to gain control of a really fast, really high stress situation. Tap it and get on the trigger. There is no toggle. Quick tap and you are on constant.
On the other hand if you hold down the lever for like 1/10th of a second or more it's momentary. If you need momentary you have it but to me it seems like a secondary type of control. The only difference between the primary and secondary mode is how long you hold down the control lever. Quick tap=on. Quick (but longer) hold=momentary.
The needs of someone who is maybe a SWAT officer or something would be vastly different (even for lights). If they were stacking up to take out a dangerous felon, they would be somewhat concerned about negligent light discharges so the primary mode might be different. Plus in that specific scenario they have more time to prepare before someone kicks the door in.
That luxury of time (even if a few seconds) is not the primary go to for the XSC (in my opinion). Again if someone gets road rage in the middle of the night and jumps out of a car and is coming after me I want the primary method to just be 'on'. I can be on my trigger and more 'ready'-ish than otherwise.
I don't pretend to be a light expert by any stretch and I certainly am not a cop and I won't be raiding houses anytime soon but based on my limited working with weapons lights this one seems to be very well thought out.
Other than that the jury is still out until I can get more time on it. This is just first impressions only.