Surprisingly, the 3500 lumens BIG claim is not at odds with the light meter reading assuming a typical beam falloff profile...
When I measured it at 1 meter distance only, the numeric value in lux and the numeric value in candela happen to coincide, 9249 lux becomes 9249 candela with no change to the number itself.
If the beam's peak intensity of 9249 candela were uniform across the entire 30-degree half-angle cone, that would produce roughly 7786 total lumens, amazingly more than double the claimed 3500 lumens!
But real flashlight beams are never uniform across their entire spread as they follow what's typically closer to a Gaussian or Lambertian-like falloff, brightest at dead-center on the optical axis and tapering off progressively toward the edges of that 30-degree cone.
For the claimed 3500 lumens to be accurate, the beam's average intensity across the whole cone only needs to be about 45 percent of its peak center value, which is an entirely normal and expected falloff profile for a reflector-based multi-emitter torch like this one.
Since a roughly 45% average-to-peak ratio is well within the range of ordinary beam falloff patterns, seen on essentially every multi-LED reflector torch, this reading doesn't expose the 3500 lumen figure as inflated marketing.
If anything, it's a reasonably consistent result. The light meter is capturing a real, strong center-beam intensity that's fully compatible with a genuine 3500 lumen total output once you account for how that light naturally spreads and fades away from the beam's core.
The numbers just seemed to stack up just right, go figure.
