McGizmo Haiku Review

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Bob Loveless made fixed blade knives. Many others had done so and most were made in factories by the thousands. But Mr. Loveless’s knives were well-thought out, well crafted, and offered design features that others, at the time they were originally made, did not. His designs have become classics. With his passing around two years ago, the price of even his cheapest knife has become very, very high. More complex or sought after pieces, such as his sub hilt fighter, approach five figures when they are, ever so often, released for sale.

Don McLeish’s lights are, in my mind, the Loveless knives of flashlights. Don has taken a number of steps to ensure that his lights work, work well, and look great. Over the years he has refined his designs. I am not sure that they will reach the price of a Loveless classic, knives being more commonly high end items than flashlights, but all of the care and attention that went into making the Drop Point Hunter a landmark knife, exist in Don’s lights.

Personally, two of his lights have really appealed to me. The first was the Lunasol 20. I liked the form factor, the two different kinds of light (both flood and throw) and liked the idea of the Piston Drive. I then had a chance to actually use two piston drive lights and realized that I didn’t like it all that much. By the time I came to that realization, the Lunasol 20 had reached prices too high for me. Then in 2009, April, if I am not mistaken, the Haiku was released. Looking at the light and the specs I realized that this was my perfect EDC light. I love flashlights. This is ultimately how I came to this site and others. I like knives, but I love flashlights. And the Haiku was literally exactly what I wanted. But I couldn’t afford it. I pined after it for almost two years. I went through about a dozen other lights. But in December of 2010 I receive a Haiku as a gift. In the month I have had it, it has never left my side. There is a very strong case to be made that the Haiku is the perfect EDC light. I will try to make it here. As such, this is more of a polemic than a review, but I will still try to do some reviewing. Having had the Haiku for a month I can say that objectivity is gone. I love this light.

An EDC flashlight, for me and I think for a lot of other people here, has to do a few things. First, I think that LED technology makes it unnecessary to have a multi-cell light. You can get so much light and runtime out of a newer LED that two cells does not offer much of an advantage in the EDC role. Second, I think that a light needs to have multiple levels of output. It makes the light so much more useful, really multiple lights in one. These two requirements make up the core of what an EDC light should be. It should be small enough to have with you and functional enough to meet most of your lighting needs. If you are going to be signaling passing airplanes or raiding a building, you need something other than an EDC light, and in those situations I can see these requirements not applying. Other things that I prefer, though are not requirements are: 1) a pocket clip; 2) the ability to tailstand; and 3) a good UI. All of these things, I think, make an EDC light even better. The pocket clip keeps the light handy, the tailstanding feature adds even more versatility, and a good UI makes the light easy to use.

The Haiku does all of this exceedingly well. In fact, it does all of this, in my opinion, perfectly.

It has one cell and can take protected rechargeables, as well as primaries. It runs on 123As, which I prefer, if not for power density (which is fast becoming a non issue with newer LED emitters), but for shelf life. By taking both rechargeables and primaries, the Haiku has the best of both worlds.

It has three perfectly chosen output levels. They are 4, 30, and 135 lumens out the front. That is what Don’s post over at CPF says. But I think the high is higher. I have a 200 lumen Surefire and the Haiku easily bests it. Either way, the high is plenty bright. But the brightness is not the Haiku’s only good point. The levels themselves are perfect. First, after many, many lights I think three levels is perfect. The low is to see in the dark without spoiling night vision. The medium should be generally useful outside in the dark. The high should be blinding and capable of hitting targets a good distance away. Not only does the Haiku have three levels, they are spaced well. Some lights, such as the Incedio from Lumapower (which is a great little light) does not have enough differentiation between the levels making them less than useful. Two levels is better than one, but not ideal. More than three and you have a hard time finding useful stops along the way to really bright.

The pocket clip is the standard McGizmo pocket clip, available as a stand alone product from the Sandwich Shoppe. It is bolted into the light itself, unlike the inferior and frustrating clip for the Nitecore EX/DX lights. The clip is perfectly centered and does not stick out from the bottom of the light (like the Arc 6’s clip does; it’s the same clip, just poorly placed). The clip is very tight, it is titanium, and it really, really works. Not only does it work as a clip, but the McClickie body (the body tube used in all not PD McGizmo’s) is a masterpiece of design. It fits well in your hand and is neither too big nor too small.

The McClickie body allows for tailstanding quite well. The thick titanium in the rear of the light adds both weight and stability making tailstanding easy and reliable. Furthermore, the beam pattern, which I will get to later, makes for a beautiful indirect lighting source when bounced back from a white ceiling. The light easily illuminates entire rooms.

Finally, of the requirements for an EDC light, the Haiku’s UI is masterful. Click once for on, click again for one level higher, again for one level higher, again to return to the original level. There is last level memory, so if you want your light to come on in firebreathing mode it can do that, or if you prefer to save your night vision and not wake your significant other during a trip to the john, you can do that too. I have all but abandoned complex UIs in lights. Why mess around with presses and clickes and twists and triple twists when lights like the Haiku and the Muyshondt Aeon (another of my favorite lights) offer an intuitive, easy to use process. Hopefully the days of click versus press are quickly ending in favor of streamlined, hand-it-to-your-nonflashlight-friend simple UIs.

If this was all the Haiku was, it would be among the greatest EDC lights out there right now (I feel confident in saying this as I have had my share in the past two years). But where the Haiku moves past its competition is the beam. The beam on the Haiku is hard to describe. I think of it like this: there are two kinds bifocals on glasses—edgeless and edged. In the edgeless lenses the bifocal is blended seamlessly into the lens until at the very center of the bifocal you get the maximum magnification. In the edged version, there is a bright cut in the glass indicating the lens has changed. The Haiku’s hotspot to spill is like the edgeless bifocal—it is very bright in the center, but the spill is still quite useful. This combination of good hotspot and spill is something I have never seen in a light. It is just perfect. The beam also has an impressive amount of throw given the lack of a bulky head. With the other features taken into consideration, the beam pattern makes the Haiku, in my mind the very best EDC light available.

So now here is the question that everyone wants to know the answer to: is it worth the money? I got mine as a very generous gift, but if I were to pay for it, I would have to say yes. It does everything not just well, but exceedingly well. I know this is something that people claim is impossible with gear, but I think this light is perfect. Go get a Mini Quark from 4sevens, save your pennies for a few years, and then get a McGizmo, a Haiku if they are still available. You will not be disappointed. The Haiku is the greatest EDC light available.

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