Rule 1: Always carry a knife.
Personally, I’ve got pretty good night vision but no claws so…
Fair! I would be in the flashlight camp because I find that I need to see things a lot more then I need to cut/pry things. For example over the weekend a glass fell and shattered so I set my light on the floor to find the small shards as we cleaned it up
flashlight in the winter, knife in summer
The flexible approach, nice
Flashlight at work. No knives allowed.
That’s a good point, one of my favourite things about lights is that you can take it anywhere. I’ve had mine at airshows, on the Eiffel tower etc with no issues. I don’t think I could do the same with a knife
Honestly, a knife is more useful. But I enjoy the “showing off” aspect more for a light. Like, I’ve never shown off a knife to a group of people and got a positive reaction. But you pull out a multi-thousand lumin light when it’s dark, you are going to get a reaction.
My swiss army knife is great because I have a beltpouch for it. I guess what I really need is a beltpouch for a good small torch, but I’ve so far not done that. Interesting thing to consider. However, there is always a torch on my phone, and never a knife, so I might choose the swiss army knife again for that reason…
I think you should check out https://lemmy.world/c/flashlight :)
I used to carry my Huntsman in one of the Victorinox leather belt pouches and attached a Olight eos i3T to the side of it. Worked perfectly well
Around home I use a light a lot more, and can always get a knife from the kitchen drawer if I need one. Outdoors, probably knife, though it seems like a false dilemma. You want a knife of reasonable size, but even a tiny keychain light (I mean the coin cell Photon style, not a high power one) makes a ton of difference. And a small modern 1aaa light is almost as good as a big light. Add a little bit of elastic cord and you have an impromptu headlamp.
Flashlight. I use it more often than my knife.
A knife is more essential of course, but still. I can open most stuff with hands, teeth or other tools, but I cannot see in the dark.
Knife, hands-down. My eyes will adjust to the available light. I can’t cut things with my bare hands.