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Which LED Flashlight Do You Use?
An anonymous reader asks: "There are now a LOT of LED flashlights on the market. A quick Google turns up 59,000 hits. Some of these flashlights are pretty ballsy. The LightWave 4000 contains 10 LEDs and offers one month of continuous light output. The Photon MicroLight is bright as all getout and goes on your keychain. The EverLED will go in a MagLight or any other high quality existing flashlight. There is even an entire web forum devoted to modifying existing flashlights to use LEDs. What experiences have Slashdot readers had with LED flashlights, and what recommendations would you make to a choosey buyer?"
Does it run Linux?
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
Imagine a beowol....ahhhh forget it.
:-)
If you really wanted a cool flashlight you'd get one of these from thinkgeek and support OSDN!
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
I'm blind... you insensitive clod!
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
I love my Turtlelite II. It's got everything you'd expect from an traditional flashlite minus the terrible battery life, yellow light, and fragile bulb. The 2 LEDs and the reflector make it perform quite similarly to a regular flashlight. The best part: I haven't changed the batteries in 18 months since I got it. You can stand it on it's back and light an entire room decently when the power goes out, and it'll last all night and through the next night. It's fairly compact, but not so small as to be unusable for long periods like the little squeezy flashlights, and to top it all off, it floats!
They're a little pricy at $28, but I think it's well worth it. Also, if you have a regular flashlight that you particularly like, they'll sell you a 2 LED "bulb' and a reflector so that you can convert your favorite flashlight...
I've got the Trek 4 4 led flashlight. Working great and still on its orignal set of batteries after 8 months.
Go to Dan's Data.
For working around the house, pearing into dark corners, etc, I use an Opalec NewBeam drop in for my MiniMag. It is voltage regulated, so you get 10 hours of constant brightness, and it has a low a battery indicator LED. It is driven with 3 bright white LEDs. Nice, tight focused beam. Not quite as bright as the Maglight with the incadescent bulb and fresh batteries, but perfectly usable. And not too bright to annoying when using it to read in the dark, work up close to yuor face, etc.
For backpacking, I use a Black Diamond Moonlight headlamp, with 4 LEDs. Runs on 4AAAs, supposed to go for 70 hours, and is as bright as the NewBeam.
I like both very much. Probably THE best place for information like this on the web is Candle Power Forums, and the LED Museum. At CPF you'll find all sorts of user experiences with most everything out there, and some home grown "pill" style ultra bright MagLight dropins. These are guys who collet $100+ flashlights! And LED Museum has a ton of technical information and reviews.
_sig_ is away
I found these guys a REI.com on sale for $7 bucks a peice, I bought three of them about two years ago and am still on my first one. I put it on my keychain and use it at least once a day for finding stuff in my car at night, plugging and unplugging cables behind dark desks, and pushing it really hard into the palm of my hand so i can see my veins.
Pretty cool stuff...
Cloud City Digital: DVD Production at its cheapest/finest
Key features:
1. Lightweight.
2. Very bright, 7 LEDs. (Brighter than my big Mag-Lite.)
3. Soft diffuse glow over an area, good for reading.
4. Runs for 155 hours on 4 AA cells.
5. Waterproof to several meters.
6. Floats in water.
7. Rubber and polycarbonate construction, can easily survive a 2m drop onto solid concrete.
8. Push-button rubber-sealed switch on the end.
9. Available in black or safety yellow.
10. Fits in a coat pocket.
Got it for my significant other after she had a bad experience with a Mag Lite and a puddle in some dark woods.
Apparently Streamlight is the brand of choice for rescue workers.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
They are pretty hard to find, but if you want the ultimate battery life, look for an LED flashlight with a driver. We're talking about... like 4-10 times the battery life of a resistor run (no-driver) LED here. The EverLED is one such product, but the driver is somehow contained inside the bulb, so it can be used to replace normal incandescent bulbs (it's the same form factor as the normal drop in flashlight bulbs). Pretty cool.
My specific use is that I hike the lava fields at night here in hawaii... On moonless or cloudy nights it can be pretty dangerous because of the huge cracks (some of them 30 ft or deeper) and very very uneven ground (you regularly go up and down 15 ft as you clambor over tumulous (lava tubes)).
We use super bright flashlights so we can see distances as well as illuminate the area to find the best paths around obstacles. Since we're 20 miles from any services and any lights (hawaii is VERY dark at night) we often bring 3 or 4 flashlights and plenty of batteries.
We prefer to use flashlights that have a fairly wide field so that it illuminates as much as possible in front of us (and a bit to the sides) without blinding others in the party.
Any recommendations specific to these needs would be GREATLY appreciated since I feel that LED, if bright enough, would be great as it would be lighter and have infinatly better shelf life and battery life.
Anything that is lighter than my 2 million candle power 6 volt rechargable would be a blessing ;))
(btw, before you say it, yes, we do use nightvision too but that is very dangerous to wear and walk at the same time, plus it doesn't do that great a job of showing the cracks in the ground which are often in shadow... though it DOES do great for finding where the flowing lava is ahead of you - the NightOwl M is batteryless and uses squeeze pizeo for power - very neat).
If you buy an extra LED flashlight and some ultra-violet LEDs on ebay, you can make a nice *very* bright portable blacklight cheap. Great for rockhounding in the desert, finding bark scorpions (they glow), etc...Just don't shine it in your eyes...
I bought the LightWave 2100 flashlight a couple of months back to keep in my 72 hour emergency kit. In a nutshell, I'm disappointed.
Here are some of the things that bug me about it:
* Light is blue, not white. I was expecting a crisp white light, not a dull blue one.
* No reflector. The LED's are nested in a black plastic dish.
* No lense. Not only can you not focus the beam, but the LED's themselves have no protection.
Ultimately I didn't do my homework when I bought this thing. I hope there are some better ones out there that address some of the shortcomings that I mentioned.
I would like to get an LED flashlight that has both a bright white led and also a red led to keep night vision. Has anyone seen one like that?
No, I don't trust in god. He'll have to pay up front, like everybody else.
Check out the EverLED. It uses a single LED, but it's a 1 watt Luxeon LED. Plus because it's a side-emitter LED, you can still focus your Maglight's beam. Try that with any other LED Maglight bulb.
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
While I'm here riding on the coattails of a +5 ... my pick is the Princeton Tec Aurora headband light. Three LED's, three brightness settings, useless blink settings, comfortable headband, and the lamp tilts away from the headband. The absolute best for doing work with line-of-sight light hands-free.
--- Jason Olshefsky
Karma: Poser (mostly affected by adding this line long after everyone else did)