Longest running on AA or AAA - LED light in low mode on the market in 2022 ?

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enolaniaga

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Need something for tornado shelter. Would prefer 1 AA or 1 AAA setup , but would consider 2 AA or 2 AAA configuration. Probably something that outputs 20 lumens or less for maximum amount of time ....would like to stay under $30 if possible. Ty
 
Anyone ? I asked the same question in budget forum, but wanted to see opinions on this forum. Ty
 
fulee9999 said:
you also posted this here as well yesterday too:

Longest runtime for budget single AA or AAA led light on low setting to be used in tornado shelter

Looking for a reliable budget AA- or AAA led light with longest runtime on low setting...doesnt need to have super bright capabilities. Probably 30 lumens or less. 1 or 2 lumens may be a bit to weak to see in the tornado shelter. Ty
www.candlepowerforums.com www.candlepowerforums.com
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which I clearly mentioned in the post above yours ? Ty
 
oh so you gather a different set of people will read the post in this section than in the other one...?
 
There are some who frequent the LED section but not the budget section, sure. But things have been kinda dull around here lately so any post anywhere in any of the flashlight child forums may be read by more than say two years ago when lumen wars were still raging.
 
Something to consider: What kind of batteries will be available during a disaster? I'm thinking Cs, 9v, CR123 (or something like that), and photo-batteries.

If that's not an issue and AA/AAA is still on the table; I would take $30 and spend it multiple cheap eBay flashlights using AA or AAA and test to see which one has the longest run time with the brightness you need; then buy a bunch of the same. Many of them cost $1 - $5. It's kind of a crap shoot but ... well that's my advice.
 
The old Gerber Infinity were good/cheap battery vampires that used AA, but also worked on AAA. I have a couple normal, a red one, and one of the Recon that is similar.
 
dlong said:
Something to consider: What kind of batteries will be available during a disaster? I'm thinking Cs, 9v, CR123 (or something like that), and photo-batteries.

If that's not an issue and AA/AAA is still on the table; I would take $30 and spend it multiple cheap eBay flashlights using AA or AAA and test to see which one has the longest run time with the brightness you need; then buy a bunch of the same. Many of them cost $1 - $5. It's kind of a crap shoot but ... well that's my advice.
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When I was younger anytime a storm was knocking out power C and D cells were gone from store shelves. Back then nearly every flashlight used C or D batteries. Either that or 6 volt lanterns. Plenty of double a batteries could be had because the double a flashlight was practically non existent.

I suppose these days double a and triple a batteries are in just as much demand due to LED technology allowing the output brightness of a big ole triple D light from a keychain sized flashlight.

My parents always kept a supply of D cells in a closet and as kids we knew not to raid their stash.
 
A Fenix e01 v.2 is $13. It is 25 lumens on medium for close to 5 hours (4.83). Runs 25 hours on 5 lumen low on 1 AAA. Has a 100 lumen high if needed.

A Fenix E12 v.2 is $30. It is 30 lumens on medium for 13 hours. It lasts 70 hours on the 5 lumen low. It has a 160 lumen high if needed. Takes 1 AA.

These are the same lights I suggested for you in the budget forum. For emergencies, don't go super cheap, but there are decent affordable lights. You don't want to buy tools that will fail and get you killed, but you aren't going to die if don't buy an Elzetta. Get something in your budget that won't fall apart the first time you use it.
 
dlong said:
Do you think they are way over priced?
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Eh. There aren't many competitors in the market as such, although you can find 9v flashlights on Amazon - experiences may vary about product quality.
 
If you are handy, you could buy a kit for a Joule Thief circuit. They will run on an AA or AAA battery that is considered to be dead and too weak to run anything else, lighting up a few LEDS for many many hours. I've not ever run a fully charged battery through mine, but I would assume you should be able to get many hundreds (if not thousands) of hours of runtime from a new battery. I've seen many people mount the circuit board, LEDs and battery in an Altoids tin.
 
I should also point out that extended power outages are still fairly rare - the horror stories of Katrina in New Orleans and Sandy in New York are still reasonably uncommon. Having some redundancy is good; having tools for both common and uncommon battery types is good. But at some point it's a matter of "eh, this is good enough" because you're not going to be able to cover all possible scenarios and this year's best will be eclipsed by next year's best, and so on.

TL;DR: don't overthink it. You've got a couple of options - they use overlapping batteries; working in the AAA format means you can fuel the one and two cell flashlights, as well as headlamps. For all of that, most headlamps are unregulated, which means they'll run longer at much lower levels.

My only real caveat to that is: a "larger" light in AA or bigger cell might be a good idea for use outside, but even then a lot of light will go a long way during a blackout.
 
I lived through the Witch Creek Fire in southern CA in '07. We had five days basically living in our cars running from the fire and when we got home, much of town was without power for two weeks.

Not long ago we had a regional power failure for about 36 hours that knocked out power to all of southern CA.

Last year, we had record high temps. that caused rolling blackouts. The fire risks also triggered "public safety" power outages as well.

Maybe you'll remember the Texas ice storm that knocked out their entire state's power grid recently.

This year, they are expecting Lake Mead (Hoover Dam) to go into partial shutdown of the hydroelectric plant as early as October. The lake has 12 feet of water left before it drops below the first row of turbines. Each foot of water the lake drops, it loses 6 megawatts of power generation. Then you have Lake Powell upstream which is 33 feet from having to shut off power to 5 million people (They can also cut off water downstream at any time now and speed up the water loss at Lake Mead). But it's okay because we can just use more natural gas to make up the loss right? Oh right, there's a worldwide fuel shortage because of what's going on in Europe. Maybe those extended power outages aren't so rare after all and it's a good idea to be prepared.
 
This is a recurring topic I think; "which batteries could I still get during a disaster?"

But it never made much sense to me, to be honest.

I mean, say there's a disaster, caused by a storm, flood, other natural disaster, war, or something else entirely.

Going out to get those batteries, is pretty much the last thing I'd want to do. Weather might be prohibitive, roads might be dangerous, I might suddenly have a large number of more important tasks to tend to at home, etc.

And the question start half way through the evaluation in a way. It starts with "I need more batteries in the middle of recovering from the disaster". Why not simply avoid getting to that point?

For anything of a reasonable duration, you can - and should - simply have those batteries at home. Even a few packs of cheap alkalines would do, right?

So what I'd really recommend is to plan for not getting any batteries at all. Rather evaluate your inventory of 18650s, 21700s, AA/AAA, stock on up L92s, low self-discharge "NiMH2"-type rechargeables (Ikea's are cheap and more than acceptable) and so on. And also chargers. Make sure you can charge from mains, car and solar (USB covers the last two, if you have a few extra bits)

It doesn't take a lot of money, doesn't take a lot of storage, why wouldn't you?
 
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