Let’s look at the newest flashlight to come from Klarus, the G35. This is basically a new version of their light the Klarus G30, which was recently discontinued in favor for this upgraded design. The body of the light is exactly like the G30 in almost every respect. It’s got this grid netting on the body. It’s got a nice feel to it in your hand, which is good for spotlight. It’s got that same hole in the near the bottom of the body for a ring. It also has the same tail cap. We’ll come back to that in a minute. The head is where the significant difference is.
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Now the G30 was a very dedicated floodlight. It was meant to completely light up a small area in front of you. The Klarus G35, interestingly enough Klarus has gone completely the other way with it. If you’re at home and you just turn it on, you’ll be pretty surprised because this flashlight will appear to be just about all hot spot. In fact, at the lower settings you can be forgiven for thinking that you were actually looking at just a very, very small not a splash but this light actually instead of going for a flood goes for beam throw. It’s just an absolutely incredible amount of beam throw. This flashlight has 2,000 lumens and the maximum beam throw on it is 1,000 meters, which is 2/3 of a mile. The G35 as far as just distance is an absolutely incredible spot light.
There’s really not much else for the size and price that can compete. The way that it does this, is that it’s got a completely reworked head from what the G30 had. The G30 had a very, very shallow head, very shallow reflector. With the G35, it’s completely different. Smooth reflector and a very large cone shape and this basically concentrates almost all of the light into the hot spot. That’s how you have a light that’s got a beam that can travel about 1,000 meters. It’s a really impressive amount of distance and that of course is the light’s biggest distinguishing feature.
It’s also a dual switch light, so the interface is very nice for that. The tail switch, if you want to hold it in the reverse grip is pretty nice. One tap puts it onto the lowest brightness setting to start with and subsequent taps brighten it up. And holding the button down gives you momentary on at the brightest setting. That’s the kind of interface I normally like with these lights. I like especially flashlights that are meant to be used outdoors, possibly for searches or for other activity, which require you to conserve battery power. It’s nice to work up from the lower setting instead of always having to blind yourself a little bit and then get down to the lower setting.
A little double tap will also give you the strobe. Pretty standard for a tactical light manufacturer like Klarus. And another double tap will give you an SOS. But the incredible distance on this light, it’s pretty sure thing that someone will see it. Besides the tail switch, it’s also got the side switch for that more traditional grip. The controls are nearly identical, double tap for SOS and double tap again for the strobe. Holding it gives you momentary on at the brightest setting. The biggest difference is that the side switch, when you tap it once instead of coming on at the lowest setting right away, it will come on at whatever it was turned off at. It does have a memory function on there. Which is pretty nice if you do want to be able to just pop on at the brightest setting or one of the other brightest settings. So for a very bright light like this with a lot of in between options, having some control with the memory function over what you’re going to get right when you turn it on, that’s a really nice feature to have.
The lights very durable, feels really durable in your hand. One meter of impact resistance and IPX 8 rating. Which means it’s waterproof to the point where you can drop it in up to two meters of water. That’s pretty nice if you’re out and about outdoors, if you drop this in a shallow area of a lake or something or maybe in a shallow area of a river on a float trip. You’re still going to be good. Maybe you shouldn’t have brought it out with you on the river anyway but you won’t pay too heavy a price for it as long as the water is not too deep to stand in. This is definitely a flashlight that’s designed around being used outside. It’s definitely durable enough and it’s definitely got the range on it to enable you to see just about anything that you’re human eyes can see around you.
Another way that this flashlight is great for outdoors and for ranging far from your home base, is that it’s actually got a pretty unusual feature for a flashlight. Now normally this takes three 18650 batteries to run. That’s pretty fair for a 2,000 lumen light, that you want to get three hours of run time on the turbo mode and up to 200 hours on the low mode. That’s what you want. You wan plenty of battery. You want plenty of capacity. You want your light to have the stamina to last you over a weekend or over a long search. But if you don’t have three 18650 lithium ion batteries. If you’ve run down a couple of them, but you still really need the light. You’re in some kind of emergency situation, you need the light. It is actually still possible to run the light. This is a really handy feature that Klarus has built in. You can actually run the light off of just one single 18650 battery or even two CR123 batteries.
Obviously the brightness is diminished. You’re not going to have anywhere near the same stamina but you’ll basically have just enough that way that you can signal for help or look for what you need to look for real fast. It’s a really nice feature that Klarus put in there, that the light can work either on maximum capacity on the three 18650s or if the circumstances are less than ideal, which they often are. Then you can actually go to one 18650 or two CR123s and still have a functional light. That was a very forward thinking part of the design.
Now a part of the design that I’m actually a little less happy with is the tail cap. I mentioned before that they had kept the body of the G30. I love the way they’ve redesigned the head with the G35. I’m less satisfied with the way they’ve kept the core tail cap design. The G30’s tail cap was always a little fragile. That could cause some issues at screwing it and unscrewing it. It does seem like the G35’s tail cap is much stronger. Maybe they’ve built this one much sturdier. But we’ll have to see. It looks like Klarus has decided that they can basically reinforce the spinning inner part of the tail cap and then that way keep it from having the same issues. It does definitely seem to be sturdier than it was before. But it remains to be seen whether it’s going to last over a longer period of time.
Some last thoughts on the G35 here. It also has a battery indicator giving you a rough idea of how much battery power you have left. Obviously really useful when you’re running around outside. You want to know how much longer your flashlight is going to last you. G35 definitely lets you do that. It also has an intelligent temperature system like what most of Klarus’ lights at this level have. As the light starts to get too hot, as definitely when you have lights going 1,500 lumens and up, you’re going to have some heat control issues. But this is a smart flashlight. It will automatically monitor its own temperature and as it gets too hot it will dial down the brightness. It’s a nice feature to have to know that you don’t have to also worry about watching your flashlight’s temperature when you’re obviously going to be focused on other things.
Overall, Klarus G35 is a really good light, seems like it could be a really nice light to have for nay kind of outdoor excursion. Something that’s going to be a little bit more reliable and consistent especially thanks to that feature where you can just use one battery to run it if need be. It looks like it’s an overall pretty good light and you should definitely take a look.
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