I picked up a Brunton Lamplight LED light and am pretty impressed with it.



It has a nice bright spot with pretty good throw to 30-50 feet. I haven't tried reading with the lamp mode yet, but I think it would be effective if suspended overhead as you would be looking at the bulb if it were on the table in candle mode. But it was the 200 hour runtime on three AAA's that really got me to buy it to throw in my backpack to buddy up with my Petzl Tikka XP headlamp and my new Surefire L2 which will replace my current Inova XO3.

That's a lot of light. Maximum run times of 200 hours for the Brunton, 120 hours for the Tikka XP and 18 hours for the L2. That's up to two weeks of continuous burn (in a perfect world). Maybe more with lithium batteries.

To me, that is very acceptable for a hiking/camping backpack/BOB.

Of course, that doesn't include the Fenix LoP on my keychain, nor the Inova Microlight with red LED and Arc AAA-P in the PSK.

What do you guys and gals carry?

Funny you post this now... I was just going to post some praise for the venerable 2AA MiniMaglite.

I've been supplementing (not really replacing) my collection of MiniMags with the newer led flashlights. I have a tough time giving up the MiniMags because, to me, a flashlight is supposed to be stupidly simple: a bulb, couple batteries, and a switch. The led lights worth having all have electronic regulator circuitry.

Anyway, I was reminded this morning of a feature I had forgotten about with the Maglite: candle mode. You know, unscrewing the lens assembly and using it for a base with the incandescent bulb throwing light in all directions. I'm not sure how many led flashlights you can do this with 'cause leds cast a narrow beam of light.

Power went out this morning at the house just as I was getting up, and of course it was still dark. I grabbed my 2AA MiniMag and headed for the bathroom (first things first). The lens-as-base is stable enough for setting on the sink surround. I then stumbled off to the kitchen, carrying my electric candle, to dig out a real candle and make some coffee (where the hell did I put that teapot). The light from the MiniMag really made everything no big deal.

*edit* Just a mention: after getting my morning dose of caffeine, the only thing I was missing from a typical morning was being able to listen to the news. So I dug into my BOB and pulled out the Grundig FR200. There have been some unkind words about this radio, but I must say it was able to pick up a relatively weak public radio station that I have trouble getting with other, more expensive, receivers. Hell, I even used it generator mode until sufficiently caffinated to dig out the 3 AA batts to put in it (I don't store it with batteries inside).

Those battery runtimes are not remotely realistic. Many manufacturers, including Petzl and apparently Brunton, are blatantly dishonest about their runtimes when describing LEDs. This is because unregulated LEDs will produce a noticable output for many, many hours, but only a fraction of that will be useful light. So after 200 or 120 hours, you will be able to detect a small amount of light coming from the LED in a dark room, but that light will be essentially useless.

Other manufacturers, such as streamlight and sure-fire, are honest about their runtimes and will usually list the hours of near-full brightness and sometimes the hours of declining but still useful light, or simply the hours of useful light for unregulated lights.

If you want a ballpark figure of the realistic battery life, compare the light to a flashlight with a similar battery configuration and same type of LED(s) made by an honest company. A flashlight isn't going to pull extra power out of thin air, if 2 lights use the same batteries and LEDs, their power will be similar(although circiutry can alter the ratio of runtime to output). Or read an independant review (flashlightreview.com is pretty good). Or better yet, test the light yourself.

Just don't beleive those stated runtimes, or you may end up in the dark.