BRIGHT! This thing is definitely good enough for any scenario I could imagine. Tried it out in our dark basement, and this thing lit the place up.
I read all the "bad" reviews and these are the two biggest complaints... Battery cover and "easy find" blinking LED that slowly drains batteries.
Battery cover - not bad at all if you line up the RED ARROWS!... although changing in the dark would be tricky, I don't think it would be impossible.
Blinking LED (that's only really visible if you're looking directly straight on at the front of the light, so I don't really see it being that useful anyway - Easy solution if you don't mind taking it apart and voiding the warranty, which at this price I was willing to take a shot. There are 3 screws in the battery compartment that you have to unscrew to separate the battery and light assembly from the outer case. Once I took this out I used a pair of needle nose pliers to GENTLY twist and break the blinking LED off of the circuit board. No LED = no completed circuit to drain the batteries. Put it back together and the light works same as it did before, and now I can confidently leave the batteries in and know that I'll have a working light a month or two from now. Problem solved. I'm sure the manufacturer wouldn't recommend this, but I'm a problems solver and I couldn't help myself.
So in conclusion... this is a compact and super bright lantern that is built to last. The only flaw is the (barely visible) blinking light, but as you can see... it can be remedied. For the price... you can't go wrong.
Update 5/21/2010: Took this thing camping for the first time last weekend in the Shenandoah National Park, VA. I was very excited to try it out, and was not disappointed! First night there were some strong T-storms coming through, but we managed to get tents up and a small fire started before they hit. I ended up using the lantern in the tent to get stuff situated, and used the tent hook on the bottom of the lantern(some reviewers are skeptical about the sturdiness of this) to hang in the tent. Well, it didn't rain much, so we stood out by the fire in our ponchos to enjoy what was left of the fire. The wind was the worst part of the storm (I'd say 15-20mph)and bounced the tent around quite a bit. That lantern was swinging around inside but never fell, and was so bright it made our tent this glowing pod that cast plenty of light that we could see perfectly out by a now smoldering fire. It was actually pretty enjoyable to watching the top of the tent dance around in the wind with the light swinging around inside. So after that, I feel very confident and pleased with the design of the tent hook on the bottom of the lantern... it comes in very handy.
Carbon emissions from the lifecycle of this product were measured, reduced and offset.
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ClimatePartner certified
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Certification Number
IUV8HJ
