How many lumens do I need for EDC?

For everyday tasks, a light that tops out around 500–1000 lumens with a usable sub-100-lumen low covers almost everything: 1–20 lumens for close work and preserving night vision, a couple hundred for walking and searching, and a brief high burst when you need to reach across a yard. Chasing 3000-lumen turbo modes buys ninety seconds of brightness before thermal step-down, so weigh the runtime graph, not just the headline number.