SureFire Fury First Impressions

I’m not going to even attempt to do a full-on test and evaluation on this light because I don’t have the necessary equipment to measure and compare the light output and spectra, and I bought it with my own money, so I don’t want to break it or get it all dinged up doing destructive/failure tests. All the important facts and figures are available online, so I won’t reiterate them here. That said, here we go.

500-lumens? No sooner had I gotten my Surefire Z2X 200-lumen combatlight, Surefire announced the Fury 500-lumen flashlight. This is just like how after I got my 750-gram Answer Scythe Pro carbon fiber BMX fork, Answer released the 650-gram Dagger Pro. To quote Fabio, “Bastage!” I didn’t really need another new flashlight, considering the Z2X was still on the original batteries it shipped with, and that light was already over double the brightness of the Surefire LED conversion head on my Centurion C2. After looking at it over a couple of months I managed to convince myself that the low/high switchable output would be useful on night hikes, and of course it never hurts to have more output! After a week of messing around with it, here are some impressions and random chatter:

• 2-stage power is good for normal, everyday use. The low setting is bright enough for navigating in total darkness or looking for something in your bag/pack, and conserves battery power yielding an incredibly long burn time. The high setting is painfully bright and still has a longer burn time than the traditional bulbs and even a lot of older, lower-powered LED lights did.
• 2-stage not good for a combatlight for use with a pistol, but Surefire makes a combatlight version of the Fury with a grip ring and full-power-only. Get that one if you intend to use it for that purpose.
• At about 35mm, the Fury is larger in diameter and a little longer than Surefire’s other 2-CR123 lights. As a result, it is a tight fit in most pistol mag/multi-tool/light pouches. If it fits diameter-wise, the flap might still end up a little short (empirically tested in BFG HW-1 single pistol mag pouch). It fits in 40mm grenade pouch fine with lots of flap Velcro engagement (tested in Tactical Tailor 40mm grenade pouch). It also fits fine height-wise in TT Admin Pouch, Enhanced, but takes a little work to get the giant bezel bell under the elastic bands. There is a version of the Fury with a crenellated bezel ring – expect this to cause additional fitment problems with storage!
• There are flats machined into the sides of the bezel bell, but if you actually put the light fully on a flat surface, it will roll. The flats work if you have the light overhanging the edge of a flat surface (like the edge of a countertop) with a flat in contact with the edge. The traditional hexagonal Surefire bezels worked much better to prevent rolling, but made the lights more difficult to get in and out of pouches. I personally would have liked to have seen more roll resistance (by moving the flats forward to the tangent point so they work), but since this light will mostly live in a pouch on a chest rig in the field, it won’t be a big issue.
• My old Centurion C2 had double end-cap o-rings, but this one has a single o-ring. The 2-stage lights have a clicker-switch tailcap instead of a momentary button with twist-on, so the requirement for twisting decreases significantly (twist on at beginning of session, twist off for lockout at end).
• I put on a Surefire under-the tailcap lanyard ring and it fits fine as expected.
• The edges of the recesses where the Surefire logo and Fury nomenclature are somewhat sharp. It doesn’t have a burr and it (probably) won’t cut you, but it is noticeable when you hold the light.

I am overall pleased with the light. I would personally liked to have seen the hard anodizing in olive like the M-series lights, or even grey. If I could have only one flashlight, this would be the one I’d choose.

Highly recommended

Four out of four gear monkeys

Made in the USA (except for the foreign-sourced LED emitter)

$155 USD MSRP.