Sig Sauer Takes on Streamlight: The FOXTROT2R

Introduction

Sig Sauer’s electro-optics division continues to fill out their lineup of optics and weapon mounted lights. The FOXTROT2R (or “2R”) comes fast on the heels of the FOXTROT2, which produced around 450 lumens. This was about average for lights of this size, so there was no real reason for people to drop their TLR-7Sub (or “Sub”) or Baldr-S and move to the 2R.

That may change with the 2R. While it’s externally identical, it is now compatible with Sig’s rechargeable batteries, and it seems that the engineers at Sig’s electro-optics have found a way to significantly increase lumen output to a claimed 700 lumens.

If the claims are true, then those wishing to run the latest and greatest have a real reason to switch. Can Streamlight defend their throne?

Important Note

For this review, I will be using the Sub as a representative example of all of the above lights, since they all have the same output. If you see your everday carry light in the group above, and you run a pistol with a standard picatinny or 1913a rail, stick around to see if the Sig Sauer FOXTROT2R is the new pistol light for you.

First Impressions

The 2R has a a simple and attractive design, with most of the light’s body falling into the same profile as the bezel. The switches are a huge improvement over the FOXTROT1 and FOXTROT1X (pictured below, left to right), which both featured side-press switches.

What’s more, the 2R allows users to easily swap for different paddle shapes:

Sig also includes “high clearance” paddles for a wider array of pistol fitment. I have yet to see a pistol incompatible with the factory-installed switches, but perhaps this is future-proofing from Sig.

The programming of the light is simple. To active momentary mode, push down on the switches. To activate constant-on, push up. No strobe mode, no high-low toggle, no gimmicks. If you prefer more standard weaponlight controls, where a quick press activates constant-on and a long press activates momentary, you can reprogram the light to perform this way as well.

While working with the FOXTROT2R, I couldn’t help but notice its unique, whirlpool-shaped lens. I suspect this is how Sig achieves high candela (a claimed 20,000) from such a shallow bezel. Sig’s website has nothing to say about it, though. I even searched around for a patent related to the design, but no dice. They probably paid some intelligent engineers to design and manufacture this part, but they don’t even advertise it as a feature. Weird.

Fitment

The 2R uses a clever mounting system which allows it to fit snugly on a wide variety of pistols. Before mounting, the user simply slides the polymer rail key into the detent that best corresponds with slot on their pistol. You can see this polymer key in the image above, between the two jaws.

The jaws are secured by a single flathead screw, so the user needs to take care to ensure they don’t over-torque the aluminum threads. There is already a documented case of this in a review on Sig’s website:

To be fair, though, it looks like Sig’s customer service took good care of Stephen and sent him a new light very quickly. He left another review, later, with 5 stars.

Below are some images of various pistols sporting the 2R. It’s important to note that this light will not fit on a standard (non-Macro) P365 or Glock 43x MOS. Click on an image to bring it up full-size in a new tab.

Strangely, I couldn’t get the 2R to mount properly to a Taurus G3C.

I should mention that in order to mount to standard Glock or 1911-style rails, you must switch from the factory-installed “1913” rail key to the “Other” rail key. In order to do this, you must remove the mounting screw entirely, which is captured by an e-ring. This was rather annoying to remove and mine got mangled in the process, even when I tried to use the special tool Sig includes for doing exactly this.

Fitment vs. TLR-7Sub

Below, I have a sliding comparison between the two lights.

We can clearly see that the 2R is longer, but not by much. The difference doesn’t affect comfort for everyday carry (I know, because we have holsters for both the TLR-7Sub and FOXTROT2R with the XMacro).

The switches are higher up on the 2R, meaning you don’t have to drop your thumb down quite as far to activate the light. I like almost everything about them, but if I were to nitpick, they appear less durable than the switches on the Sub. Without torture testing, though, there’s no real way to tell.

I appreciate the team at Sig making their light visually distinct from the Sub instead of just copying it like so many others. Let’s see if the numbers stand out from the crowd as well.

Manufacturer Specs and Claims

While many of these claims are shared with the FOXTROT2, pay attention to the shift in output, as compared to the Sub.

Specification	Streamlight TLR-7 Sub	Sig FOXTROT2	Sig FOXTROT2R
Lumens	500	580	700
Candela	5,000	13,000	20,000
Runtime	1.5 Hours	1 Hour	1.5 Hours
Battery	CR123A Only	CR123A Only	16340 or CR123A
Construction	6000-series aircraft aluminum body, “impact and chemical resistant engineered” polymer switch housing	6061 aluminum body, polymer switch housing	6061 aluminum body, polymer switch housing
IPX (Waterproof) Rating	IPX7	IPX7	IPX7
Special Note	Proven benchmark of subcompact lights	Easily replaceable switches, unique lens	Easily replaceable switches, unique lens
Price*	$177.50	$160.99	$164.99

On paper, both FOXTROT lights appear to be an improvement over the Sub. But the Streamlight has the benefit of widespread holster support and proven heritage, which will be hard for Sig to overturn as a relative newcomer.

Let’s see if the 2R lives up to its claims.

Into the Lab: Lumens, Candela, CRI

Lumens

Here we can see the lumens that the 2R produced over the course of two hours, as compared to the TLR-7Sub. For this test we ran the 2R using its included rechargeable battery, and we used a brand new Panasonic CR123A in the Sub.

There’s no question that the 2R produces a game-changing amount of light for a short window (826 as sampled by the ANSI-PLATO standard, compared to the Sub’s 580). Pretty quickly there’s a crossover, at which point the Sub is producing much more usable light.

Let’s get a closer look at the first ten minutes.

Here we can get a better picture of that crossover point. Up until the nine minute mark, there’s no question that the 2R is outpacing the Sub. After that, though, it drops off. At around one hour into the test, the Sub is producing 323 lumens, while the 2R is producing only 15.

The first ten minutes are going to be the most important for a weapon-mounted light. If you are in a situation where you’ve got your light activated and your sights on target, that situation will resolve fairly quickly. I struggle to picture a scenario where you’ll need three hours of runtime from a weaponlight, but if you’ve ever been in one of those scenarios yourself, leave a comment down below. I’d be curious to hear your thoughts.

At any rate, when it comes to lumen output, the 2R is a clear winner. How about beam intensity?

Candela

For those that don’t know, candela is a measurement of the intensity of a light’s beam. Imagine a high-lumen, low-candela light is a garden hose, and a low-lumen, high-candela light is a pressure washer.

Generally, pistol-mounted lights don’t have a very large lens and as a result cannot create an intense beam. This makes it difficult to identify targets at even mid-range. The Streamlight TLR-7A only produces ~5,000 candela, meaning identification at distance is a challenge. Does the 2R solve this problem?

Light	Candela* (0 seconds)	Candela* (30 seconds)
FOXTROT2R	16,190	14,840
TLR-7SUB	3,876	3,768

The numbers seem to indicate so. The 2R manages to produce as much candela as the TLR-1, a much larger light which utilizes two CR123A batteries.

Below are some screencaps from our upcoming video on the 2R, comparing its beamshot against the 7-Sub:

This is where candela comes into play. The floodier beam of the Sub fails to highlight my facial expression or handgun like the 2R does. We can also see a big difference in color temperature, which we’ll get to in the next section.

Color Rendering Index (CRI)

Manufacturing LEDS requires a compromise between three factors: Price, output, and quality. LEDs with high-quality light and high output aren’t cheap, and cheap LEDs with high output won’t produce quality light. Here is a great video on the LED binning process for those that are curious.

The numbers we’ve seen from the 2R so far can still be undermined if the quality of its output is low. Let’s see if the 2R can finish strong, as compared to the Sub.

From the chart above, we can see that the quality of the 2R’s light is about average. LED lights typically struggle in the “R9” category, which is a measurement of how accurately a light renders certain shades of red. The 2R comes in at -20.9, which is at least better than the Sub’s -35.1.

Also refer to the “Ra” measurement of 69.2 for the 2R, as compared to the 67.9 of the Sub. This is a measurement of how faithfully a given light reflects that of the sun. A perfect score of 100 would be a perfect replica of sunlight. The Fenix GL06, another light we recently reviewed, has an Ra of 81.9 and an R9 of 12.8, to put things in perspective. Recently the handheld market has seen a wave of high-CRI lights, and while the GL06 is hopefully starting a trend, many pistol lights still have very low CRI.

Here is another way to represent the data:

The black circle represents all possible shades of visible light, while the red oval represents the output of the pistol light. Ideally, the red and the black would line up perfectly, which would mean that the output is perfectly faithful to sunlight, and as a result objects reflecting its beam would have the vibrancy and color profile that they would have in direct sunlight.

The 2R creates the warped oval shape common among weapon-mounted lights. Look at quadrant 11, for example. The arrow which points towards quadrant 12 represents how an object that appears as baby blue in direct sunlight would appear lavender when reflecting light from the FOXTROT2R.

One more consideration is color temperature. This is a measurement of how “warm” light appears. Think of the “warmth” of the light from a campfire, versus the “coldness” of light on an overcast winter day. Counter-intuitively, the campfire has a very low color temperature (around 3,000 Kelvin) while the cold light on a winter day has a high color temperature (around 7,000 Kelvin). Below is a representation of the color temperatures of the 2R and the Sub:

While the 2R’s color temperature is all the way up to 7,113 Kelvin, the Sub is a much nicer 6,192 Kelvin. Ideally we’d see these lights closer to a number like 5,000 Kelvin, but as with everything there are compromises. Here it would seem Sig made a compromise on color temperature.

Why is all this important? If you are about to get in a self-defense situation, knowing the mental state of your target is critical. Whether or not they are inebriated could influence how you control the situation. If your target has lighter skin, you might be able to tell how drunk they are by how red his face is. With a poor-quality LED, you don’t get to work with that piece of information, as the red in their face will be washed out.

That being said, the 2R’s light quality is not so poor that it’s unsuitable for everyday carry, and it edges out the Sub in every metric except color temperature. If I were to carry it, though, I would keep this shortcoming in mind.

Takeaways

Overall, the 2R is an impressive little light, competing with lights twice its size. Here are my key takeaways:

Pros	Cons
Class-leading lumen output Class-leading beam intensity Rechargeable batteries Competitive price Compatible with a wide variety of pistols	Average CRI for a pistol light, but still relatively low Shorter runtime than TLR-7Sub Limited holster availability

As far as output goes, the FOXTROT2R is a clear winner. When it comes to widespread holster support, however, the Sub still dominates.

EDIT: since the completion of this article, we’ve finished our holsters for pistols running the Foxtrot2R – 9mm Sig Sauer P320’s, Sig Sauer P365 X-Macro’s, and, if you’re not afraid of a little brand-clashing, the full-size 9mm Glocks (note: the hyperlinks are for right-handed holsters, if you’re a lefty, simply use our holster finder). While running a Sig light on a Glock might feel weird at first, I can assure you that the 2R fits up perfectly on the Glocks and these holsters are some of our finest.

If you’re convinced that the FOXTROT2R is the weaponlight for you, but can’t find a holster for it, click here to submit a request for us to build a holster compatible with your setup. If we get enough feedback from our customers, we’ll spend the time to develop a precision-fit holster for that gun and light combination.

What do you think? Are you content with your 7-Sub? Any other features that I should’ve considered in my comparison? Let me know in the comments below!