Those of you who have been here awhile might recall that, unlike some, I was never very thrilled with my Windmill lighter. It's lightweight, and windproof... but it's expensive, the gaskets don't seem to do anything (mine's been immersed twice, and I had to disassemble it and dry it both times, not trivial) and doesn't hold much fuel. Mine won't light the first time if I push the button too fast, it seems that it sparks before fuel has reached the sparker. The lid hinge seems sort of flimsy and wobbly when it's open.

I was reviewing the lighters on colibri.com, and had gotten interested in their "Seal" model, that's supposed to be waterproof to 3 atmospheres, has a metal latch to dog the lid down against a gasket, and has a compass in the base, a feature I like. I found one for about a third of list price on eBay and ordered it.

Well, it's a lot bigger and heavier than the Windmill, but I guess I could live with that. There's a big, thick gasket, but for some reason the latching mechanism on the lid barely puts any pressure on the gasket at all- I'm not confident that it would resist any immersion for long, despite the impressively solid hardware and heft- and extra motions necessary to open it, which would probably make it a bad choice for smokers that would be doing it several times a day.

The real bummer was the compass. It didn't work. It showed some slight tendency to point North, but anywhere within about 90 degrees to each side seemed to satisfy it just as well. So far, we have a heavy lighter who's main features are waterproofness and a compass. The waterproofness is doubtful, and the compass doesn't work at all. Not good.

I've sent the lighter back (the dealer seems to be vacillating on whether he's going to refund my money), but in the meantime I swung by a local Davidus Cigars store just to see if they had the same model. They had two of them... and the compasses were actually worse. They showed no inclination to point North at all, seeming perfectly happy with whatever direction they happened to be pointing in at the moment. One already had a small bubble. The dealer seemed to think it was silly to expect them to actually work- he kept saying "it's a lighter", as though that explained it. These were on sale for the list price of $70. I pointed out that for $70, you'd think the $2 compass would at least work.

I'm really surprised that it seems so difficult to find a solid, waterproof, windproof lighter, at any price. The compass would be a nice feature, and it's not exactly rocket science to bother to buy one wholesale that actually points North.