Coleman Micropacker - Awesome compact mini lantern!

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Old thread, I know, but I just picked one of these up. I'm also giving it right back.

It's got two 8 or 10mm LEDs hooked up just to wire, driven by a resistor. I'm OK with resistor driven battery vampires, but it's bright enough that I worry it could be over-driving them, and I would be leery about running it on NIMH or Lithium. A resistor-driven power LED at the base of the diffuser rod, mounted to a couple grams of metal, or large MCPCB, would have, IMO, made for a nice household or road-side emergency lantern. I've had several made like this one burn out LEDs during actual use. If the electronics had been as well-designed as the case, like one of the older models was, it would be a nice lantern to have around.

Just to be clear, are you saying that the older model Coleman Micropacker had good electronics behind the LED or some other Coleman lantern?

EscapeVelocity said:

Just to be clear, are you saying that the older model Coleman Micropacker had good electronics behind the LED or some other Coleman lantern?

Click to expand...

Depending on your definition of good, yes. It had a Cree XR-C, properly mounted. This has two indicator-type LEDs, hooked up by small bare wires (they might be the leads, but I couldn't tell, with the sloppy soldering), that also act as posts, not only making me think twice about heatsinking, but also shock resistance of the solder joints (same with the contacts to the battery caddy).

They still have the product page for the old one up:
http://www.coleman.com/product/2000000132
It was actually alright, and was on shelves for well under MSRP.

I hate it when companies cheapen down their product with little indication that they have done so, and continue selling the product. It's bad enough when they move production to Red China or Mexico or some such, from the US or Japan or Korea or even Taiwan.

They have these Micropacker lights at Walmart, I suppose they are the newer cheapened down even further lights. And these were always about $15 retail street price, I believe.

Thanks for the heads up on this.

Im going for the Cree Warm Light Favourlight myself.

There was also the Coleman Exponent version of this lantern but didnt have the highly desirable frosted plastic globe, and instead had a clear plastic globe, which means lots of artifacts.