Brightest Smallest Keychain LED

What is the brightest small coin battery keychain LED light out there?

I always thought my Gerber keychain LED was great and always had 1 in my pocket......UNTIL I received an order from Lighthound and got a really small one for free from them. This little thing blows my Gerber away in light AND size. It has no name on it, but is only 99 cents from lighthound. Makes me wonder what else I am missing in the keychain LED department!!!! 99 Cents:huh2:

well, at the expense of run time, the Fenix L0P is pretty darn bright. Alot of people complain about the run time, but it has never been a problem for me. It is a great bright utility keychain light, not a wilderness survival light. 1.5 hours is plenty of run time for that.

I like the Photon Freedom Micro. It's slightly less bright than the Photon clone from Lighthound, but it is more durable and capable. The Fenix L0P is a good call, too.

Limiting it to coin cell lights, all you can really do is use the latest, most efficient leds, and make sure the batteries are very fresh, which means replacing them after 1/2 hour or so of use, maybe even less than that. IMO it's wasteful to do that since the batteries are good for 6+ hours and useable (but feeble) for a lot longer than that. If brightness is your thing, you're better off with an L0P as people have mentioned, or something similar like a Peak Pacific or maybe a CR2 Ion. Those Lighthound fauxtons do seem to use very bright leds; you can also try some of KevinL's 40k leds, the Nichia CS, etc. I think some people have also tried the multicore ISP leds but they'd be limited by the internal resistance of the coin cells.

Like what Carrot said regarding the Photon Freedom. There's also the Vortex PL1 PolarLite. Princeton Tec has one too, but don't know the name.

I am keenly anticipating that this position will be filled by the Fenix P1

...man I like the looks of that light

For a coin-cell light, my Nichia CS modded SL KeyMate is amazingly bright.
If you're open to other cell types, there's a bunch of others (most of them are slightly larger tho than the smallest coin-based ones) like the Jil, CR2 Ion, Fenix P1, Jetbeam Jet1, Fenix L0P, FF3, Orb Raw and Raw NS, and all the custom N-sized, CR2-sized, etc.-sized cell lights.

I kind of liked the Photon Freedom, so I ordered one of them to check out.

I have a very similar to the OP's Lighthound Keychain LED, and I am impressed by it as well.

I have a Turbolight from lambda on my keychain found here:

http://home.mchsi.com/~lambda_lights/smjled.htm

The special reflector really focuses the smjled nicely. It blows away my Nichia CS modded Solitare runing a 10440 Li-ion direct drive as well as all my keychain lights that run off single 5mm led's (kevinL, inovamicrolight, etc.)

It's currently out of stock, but he still has a nanomate available.

I like the Inova Microlight for $6. It has 2 brightness levels and a flashing mode. It's every bit as bright and doesn't have a terrible over bearing blue tint, although the tint is still much worst than any Luxeon such as in the L0P. Plus the fact that the Microlight doesn't stress the leads of the LED like the Photon clone does. I've had 3 Photon clones just stop working on me and it was because the LED died! I believe it was either because the 2 Lithium coin batteries DD it too hard or the flexing of the leads caused the bond wire to break inside the LED

I'm pretty sure that the Photon Freedom is the sturdiest coin-cell light there is. You'll like it, hivoltage!

I just remembered another one -- Streamlight Keymate. Pretty bright, but it uses a bunch of those funny hearing aid batteries.

Don't forget the ASP LED lights.

The free one I got from Lighthound blows my ASP lights away.!!!!

hivoltage said:

The free one I got from Lighthound blows my ASP lights away.!!!!

Click to expand...

I have the freebie from lighthound and a Mag Solitaire side by side on my key ring. The freebie is a much more usable light...

CR2 Ion..no doubt about it (maybe excpet a JIL)

What Garageboy just said!! I have both lights and the CR ION is a minature tank and is very precision made with two useful beams, a high & low. Can you tell that I like this light?

Inova makes the best one of this type of light. EVERY other type of coin battery flashlight including the photon and non branded units have always disentegrated on me except the inova units. Recently (within the last year or so) they have been updated to be more like the photon in terms of pressing the button and having things happen. The inova's are cheap at target. A whole lot cheaper than the photons.

If you really want a light that will endure there really is one choice and that is the arc AAA or the peak variant. These lights can withstand the harshest abuse and worst conditions over a long period and still work when needed. My only issue with them is the white beam is not white it is a light purple at least it is on the ARC version. For the size and heavy duty factor the arc is great. For coin lights go for the inova. Now if you want to have some fun finding one then go get yourself a nano. these are fantastic lights lithium powered, 3 levels, same size as an ARC AAA, rechargable. in a word...incredible. now just try to find one.
BTW if you really want a WOW factor then get an ORB son of raw, or NS. It is tiny and blisteringly bright!!

Yaesumofo

The smallest coin cell keychain light is KevinL's picolight. It is about 1/3 the size of a regular Photon microlight. Pictures are available in KevinL's sales thread over here (http://candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?t=106040). The picolight isn't as bright as a Photon microlight (or clone) with a 26K mcd or more LED (like the new Photon freedom, or a KevinL 35K Turnkey), but when modded with an 18K mcd white 3mm LED, the tiny picolight puts out an impressive flood of light for something the size of a large vitamin pill.

Hay Carrot,

Don't know but I thought they took 1.5 volt alkaline cells, like LR44, A76 etc.
let me know if I'm wrong. If anyone needs odd batteries I sometimes sell some
in my store. Enjoy your posts.

Regards, Gordon (Pathlight)