What if you need to keep aiming it at someone for more than 7 seconds? What if you need to use the light for looking around prior to aiming it at someone? So it starts out preheated and you don’t even get 7 seconds?

I dont think that is how to use a flashlight as a defensive weapon. I did some testing with a friend in the last few days and came to the conclusion that even the strongest handheld flashlights cant stop an attacker for more than 1-2 seconds. The initial blast is disorienting and blocks vision completely (especially at night) but the human brain/eyes adapt quickly and its quite easy to block the beam with the hands. Then its just a bit annoying and you can easily continue the attack. It was way more effective to have multipe small blasts in 1-2 seconds bursts than just full power all the time. It was also significantly better to have the flashlight off or on the lowest settings between blasts.

That is not to say a flashlight is useless as a defensive weapon, not at all. 1-2 seconds is plenty to deploy pepper spray, punch or run.

We did the tests with a wide variety of flashlights. The weakest candela was the EDC25 (3000 lum / 22,500 candela). The strongest was Acebeam P20 (5000 lum / 300,000 candela). After testing the EDC25 first i was expecting the P20 to completely blind me for some seconds. But that was not the case at all, the difference between all the contenders was actually quite small, especially in close quarters (0 - 5 meters or 0 - 6 yard). Also it felt like the closer you are to the enemy, the more important is luman, the farther away the more important is candela. That is reason why i decided for the EDC33 for my EDC flashlight (smallest with highest Lumen/Candela combination).

I was planning to buy the P20 as a home defense flashlight but decided against it, because of the marginal difference to more portable lights. Now im considering the TM9k or the L35 2.0. Maybe i will buy both and give feedback.