COAST
Portland, Oregon, since 1919 — a salmon knife sold out of a Model T that became the light on every hardware store shelf in America.
COAST is the light you buy at Home Depot at nine at night because the job isn't finished. Family-owned since 1919, when Henry Brands sold a salmon fillet knife out of the back of a Ford Model T, it is now the most widely distributed lighting brand on this page — and the only one where you can run the same headlamp off a rechargeable pack or three drugstore AAAs. The catch is the water rating: both flagships are IP54, which means splashes, not rain and not immersion.
- 1919Founded as Coast Cutlery Co. in Portland, Oregon
- 400+Utility and design patents worldwide, company-stated
- IP54Water rating on both flagships — splash only, not immersion
What we'd reach for
- XPH34RThe flagship headlamp. 2,700 lumens, 120 hours, magnetic base, PURE BEAM twist focus, and dual power — the Li-ion pack or three AAAs. Fifty dollars at Home Depot.
- RL35R1,100 lumens and voice control. Nobody else at this price does it, and if your hands are inside a wall cavity it is less of a gimmick than it sounds.
- XP11R3,000 lumens, 200 hours, USB-C, and the same dual-power trick.
- HP7 and HP7RThe Slide Focus and Beam Lock flashlight family. Discontinued now, but still the model most people mean when they say "a Coast."
- WPH34R and TXM55RThe trade-facing work headlamps, 2,000 and 1,500 lumens.
- HZ050Intrinsically safe — Class I, II and III, Division 1, Groups A through G, plus Zone 0 Ex ia IIC T3 Ga. The strongest US hazloc marking in this lighting group, on a 270-lumen light that appears to be discontinued.
- Helmet and Hard Hat Clip SetThree dollars. Turns most of the range into a hard-hat light.
- Knives and multi-toolsStill in the catalog, a hundred and six years after the salmon fillet knife. The cutlery business never actually went away.
In about 1915, a hardware salesman named Henry W. Brands designed a salmon fillet knife for Pacific Northwest fishermen — a stiffer blade with a spoon built into the handle for scraping. He had a local metalworker make them and sold them out of the back of a Ford Model T.
It worked well enough that by 1919 he was doing it full time, as the Coast Cutlery Company.
That is still the legal name. A 2025 federal docket names the defendant as “Coast Cutlery Co. (an Oregon corporation doing business as Coast Products).” The company is still in Portland, still owned by the Brands family, now run by David Brands, the third generation.
What COAST is actually good at
Two things, and neither is lumens.
The focusing beam. PURE BEAM, TWIST FOCUS, SLIDE FOCUS, BEAM LOCK — the optics are the brand identity, and a sliding focus at this price is genuinely uncommon. Ledlenser does it better and charges four times as much.
Dual power. The XPH34R runs off its rechargeable Li-ion pack or three AAA alkalines in the same body. That sounds minor until the pack dies at the far end of a shift and you can buy AAAs at any gas station. Nobody else in this group solves it that way, and it is arguably a better answer than a bigger battery.
Add the $2.99 hard hat clip and a lifetime warranty, and the value case is coherent.
The rating that should stop you
Both COAST flagships — the XPH34R headlamp and the XP11R flashlight — are IP54.
IP54 means protected against splashing water. It does not mean rain for an hour, it does not mean jets, and it absolutely does not mean immersion. For comparison, Nitecore’s HC65 UHE is IP68 — submersible to two meters. Fenix’s HM65R is IP68. BioLite’s Range 500 is IP67.
If the light is going anywhere wet — storm work, drainage, paddling, caving, a bad day on a roof — this is the wrong brand, and the price difference does not cover the risk.
The lumen number is not one number
COAST’s own site rates the XPH34R at 2,700 lumens. Home Depot, Walmart, KMS and B&H list the same part number at 2,075.
A 30% spread on identical hardware almost certainly means one figure is a turbo or boost peak and the other is closer to sustained output. Which is precisely the practice the ANSI/PLATO FL 1 2025 revision was written to constrain — and COAST, to its credit, is a PLATO member, alongside Streamlight, Petzl, Black Diamond and Ledlenser. Nitecore is not.
Treat 2,700 as a burst.
The court found the advertising false
This is the part a gear site should not skip.
In Leatherman Tool Group, Inc. v. Coast Cutlery Co. (D. Oregon, October 2011), Leatherman sued over COAST advertising its knives as 440C steel hardened to 57–59 HRC and individually hardness tested.
The court found those statements “literally false” and material to purchasing decisions. Three of the four preliminary-injunction factors went against COAST. The injunction was denied on one ground only — Leatherman could not prove irreparable harm. As the court put it, without a basis for the claimed diverted sales, it could not conclude Leatherman had been irreparably harmed “from Coast’s false statements.”
That is a finding about knife steel in 2011, not about lumens today. But a company that has had a court call its spec claims literally false has earned some skepticism about spec claims, and the 2,700-versus-2,075 discrepancy above is worth reading in that light.
And a coincidence involving our own roster
Five weeks before the Leatherman case, on 6 May 2011, COAST was sued in the same Oregon district by Zweibrüder Optoelectronics — the company now called Ledlenser — for trademark infringement. COAST counterclaimed.
Here is the part that makes it interesting: Leatherman had taken a majority stake in Ledlenser in January 2011. So within five weeks in one district, COAST was defending against Leatherman and against the company Leatherman had just bought.
We do not know how the Ledlenser case ended. The public docket shows no termination and no published opinion, and we are not going to imply an outcome we cannot source. If we find it, this page will say so.
Where COAST fits
Trades and jobsite. The core buyer, and the reason the brand is in every hardware store in America.
Anyone who wants a focusing beam cheap. The whole pitch.
Anyone who cannot risk a dead rechargeable. Dual power on AAAs.
Not for: wet work of any kind at IP54. Not for ultralight — 182 grams against Nitecore’s 47. Not for spec-chasers; there is no cell ecosystem and no emitter story. And not for current hazardous-location work — the HZ050 has the strongest US marking in this whole lighting group, Class I/II/III Division 1 plus Zone 0, but it is a legacy 270-lumen AA light that retailers list as discontinued. Verify availability before you specify it.
Why we rate them
A hundred and six years, one family. From a fillet knife in a Model T to Home Depot’s shelf, still in Portland, still owned by the Brands family.
Dual power is a real idea. Rechargeable convenience without rechargeable risk, at fifty dollars.
They stayed in cutlery. Knives and multi-tools are still in the catalog. The company never stopped being what it started as.
Where COAST sits across the three disciplines: rope rescue, rope access, fall protection — three jobs, one pile of gear.
When it needs to be cheap, focusable and running on whatever batteries are in the drawer, we reach for COAST.