One lantern I was particularly interested in and typifies what I am looking for is the UCO MightyLite Flip Lantern. Not too big, reasonably bright and runs on AA batteries which I usually have around. It supposedly has a 185 lumen Cree Q4. I do not know if that information is accurate. It appears to be a good lantern, but I did not want to buy it only to find out someone here would indicate a much better one that just came out or is about to come out.
I have this lantern under diffrent brand ( It sells under many brands: eGear, Eureka!, Frendo...) I bought mine something about year ago so I don't know if current models are the same.
As for the lantern it really depends how high are your standards. When I bought it I thought that it was cool, gave the same to my brother and he likes it. I took it for holidays to Venezuela and it was useful as a flashlight and as a lantern (I modded it a little) and some people were even impressed...but now when I'm little more into flashlights it doesn't impress me anymore (but I also don't think that it's junk)
- the led has cool tint - emits blueish-white light.
-the lantern is probably bigger then you think: 15.5cm long, 5.5-6cm in diameter - there is just space wasted inside, it could fit 6AAs. Still it holds comfortable if you are used to fat lights (like D maglight)
-Its regulation is not very strict - I would guess that lumens vs. runtime graph would be parabolic. The runtime is good but I never tested it fully because at some stage the light was to weak for my needs and I had to recharge batteries.
-In flashlight mode it has awful beam for flashoholic, few dark rings from lenses (but it doesn't bother normal people ;-) or me very much) It is using two lenses and no reflector. The internal one that rotates with led and radiator to lantern mode is small dome made from clear plastic. The external one is not clear, kinda like sandblasted glass to make the beam more floody and even I guess.
-In lantern mode it works quite good but because the tube is made from clear plastic it blinds little to much when you look at it - I covered it inside with semitransparent paper and plan to replace it with DCfix.
-The lantern is not really made from aluminum. It's mostly plastic. The aluminum you see on pictures is just decoration - profiled aluminum pipe, underneath it there is plastic pipe. After unscrewing few things you can throw that aluminum part away and the lantern will function without any problem. So...the threads to battery compartment are plastic too but I didn't have any problem with them
-The lumens output is hard to compare with my ZebraLight H51w. Keep in mind that for my eyes the difference between 172 lm and 86 lumens from ZebraLight is visible of course but not big. My version of UCO has bigger hotspot and weaker flood (or you could say that it has uniform beam with no hot spot + rings around) than my ZL. So the 170 lumens may be true with fresh batteries, after few hours the output is much weaker. Sorry I can't give you more specific details.
Few interesting things: it has oring under front lens and GITD plastic around it. The led is mounted to aluminum radiator which is totally enclosed in two plastic shells
The inner shell is the rotating part. The outer shell is the front lens and all the rest. I guess the heat transfer is very, very poor but somehow it works but I only used it for prolonged time (few hours) few times so I can't say anything about led lifetime. It has small blinking locator led under button. It's easy to take this light apart but hard to put it back together
As for me, for my uses the ZebraLight H51w works much better. I plan to make some container/lens cover for it to convert it to lantern when needed I'm also very interested in not yet available ZL Q50 which could be more direct and better replacement for UCO. As you can see currently I think that diffusing light from flashlight or ceiling bouncing is better and more practical solution than dedicated lantern or currently available "flashlanterns".
Still the UCO can be very good (or at last with good bang for buck ratio) light for average Joe. And for me it will be probably cool mod platform in the future. With better driver, led, lens and better - metal head it could be very interesting flashlight. If you have any questions or would like to see some pictures feel free to ask.