Surefire XSC

[alamo5000]

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.

[TGS]

Operation of a WML should ideally be conducted independently of what you're doing on the trigger....i.e., don't use your trigger finger unless it's a SHO situation. Otherwise, operation of the light should have zero impact on how fast you get your finger to the trigger. The way you're describing use of the light sounds like you're defaulting to using the trigger finger to turn on the light prior to moving to the trigger.

[alamo5000]

Operation of a WML should ideally be conducted independently of what you're doing on the trigger....i.e., don't use your trigger finger unless it's a SHO situation. Otherwise, operation of the light should have zero impact on how fast you get your finger to the trigger. The way you're describing use of the light sounds like you're defaulting to using the trigger finger to turn on the light prior to moving to the trigger.

I won't make an argument [because you are correct]. I have limited light carrying experience. This is my first conceal carry light.

That said I posted it to discuss the light because it's a very new to market product and I thought others might be interested in my first thoughts (and more like points of discussion) after getting mine. I got one of the first wave of shipments. That said I am all for learning so definitely keep it coming. Surefire announced the light ages ago and got everyone hyped up about it but then didn't deliver anything until almost a year late.

With that out of the way whether or not I control it with either hand the programming of the XSC is still the same and it's different from other lights so I wanted to see what other more experienced people had to say about my observation. A really fast tap on whichever control lever goes straight to constant on which on first impressions seems like a well thought out thing specifically for a carry light considering it's purpose.

In contrast the Surefire 300 series a short push is a momentary only. You have to try a lot harder to get it to constant on by flipping the lever up or down. With that light a quick tap is momentary. With the XSC a quick tap like that is straight to constant on. It's just something that I noticed. Same company, just two different light control methods. In both cases (or any case) training and a lot of practice is needed.

[TGS]

With that out of the way whether or not I control it with either hand the programming of the XSC is still the same and it's different from other lights so I wanted to see what other more experienced people had to say about my observation. A really fast tap on whichever control lever goes straight to constant on which on first impressions seems like a well thought out thing specifically for a carry light considering it's purpose.

It's the same switch that was rolled out for the Surefire XC-1B about 3 years ago, nothing new or specific to the XSC.

It works fine. It's just different from the X300 switch because they can't build the X300 switch on a light as small as the XC1, XC2 or XSC.

There's no inherent advantage of the switch in running the gun compared to an X300 switch. In actual use it's neither better nor worse than an X300 switch....the "greater force" you're talking about with the X300 is in no way an appreciable detriment to operation.