As you may have noticed in my last post, my M&P sports a Streamlight TLR-1 HL. I’m a big fan of this light – it’s got a nice balanced throw/flood optic, and takes pretty standard CR123a batteries. It’s also a super common light, which comes in handy when selecting other accessories, like holsters.
Most holster companies seem to make holsters to accommodate the dimensions of the TLR-1 and/or the Surefire X300 – these are far and away the most common two weapon mounted lights on the market today, but the X300 is nearly twice the price, so for my wallet’s sake I’ll be sticking with the Streamlight. It’s also plenty bright, as tested by the John Chapman’s metric (published here, on Whiskey Delta Gulf).
Also worth noting is companies like Olight offer lights like their PL-Pro Valkyrie. The problem I have with these lights is for one, there’s no guarantee a holster for them exists, which is a pretty big issue. Also, they use rechargeable batteries, which is nice, but for something like a weapon mounted light that sits more than it’s used, it’s actually better to have something with a standard lithium battery (like CR123a) that has a longer standby time than most rechargeable batteries.
For all these reasons, I chose the TLR-1 as my WML for my carry pistol – if your budget is different or your use cases are different, there are many more options on the market today than there were even 3-5 years ago, including lights with integrated lasers, and all sorts of fun new concepts coming out all the time. As a relative amateur firearms user (don’t carry one for work and have fairly limited training), these were the items I selected for my use case – your choices may be different and that’s OK.
I recently made a purchase from PHLSTER of a Floodlight holster, which I’ll get in to in a moment, and because of a promo, it came with a set of enhanced WML switches also. Let’s start with the holster.
*triumphant fanfare*
This is the Floodlight. The neat thing you’ll note off the bat is the holster is labeled by light, not by firearm. This means exactly what you think it does – you can use any pistol (within reason) in the holster, and as long as it has (in my case) a TLR-1 attached, you’ll be good to go.
I have had a bit of firearms-related ADD over the years, so for me this was a no-brainer – I’d rather be able to swap to different firearms and just keep my light than be married to a particular pistol just because of my holster choice.
Now, I’ve never really given appendix carry a serious look until I bought this holster, largely because despite being fairly skinny, I still have a bit of a gut in the front. I have to say I’ve been quite favorably impressed with the Floodlight – I do have to make up/down adjustments when sitting down or standing up, but only minimally, and concealment is top-notch – I spent a weekend out of town recently with a bunch of guys, a few of whom know I carry and many of whom don’t. We were in pretty close quarters and spent quite a lot of time around one another without anyone noticing, and all I was concealing with was an untucked lightweight flannel.
I still could stand to lose the gut (for a variety of reasons), which would definitely help comfort when carrying appendix, but my initial impressions are quite favorable.
With the Floodlight, my biggest complaint revolves around retention – it’s adjustable with a bit of elastic shock cord, and I’ve snugged it up a bit from the factory tension, but there’s not really much of a firm “click” that I’m used to from many holsters, it’s more of a soft-bordering-on-inaudible “clonk” of the gun sliding in to place.
I don’t have any issues with it falling out, especially not with a belt attached appropriately, it just isn’t quite what I’m used to so I remain a touch leery.
I’ll continue to report back as I try appendix more and hopefully as I lose my gut…
…and as for the WML switches, I quite honestly haven’t even mounted them yet, so I’ll drop a review of them once I get around to installing them!
Update: info on the grip stippling here.
-T