Odd little Energizer light from Target

Lately I've been looking into the literal wall of cheapie lights at Target. For a while now I've always raised an eyebrow at these Energizer 2-in-1 lights that come in three different sizes. The cheapest one is LED, use Nichias oddly enough, but the design of these things is just something else. You pull on the bezel and there's a clear section around the LED turning it into a functioning lantern, then pop it back down into the shuttered reflector and you have a tight-beamed handheld light. I got the smallest version which runs on 4 AAAs in a round battery holder, the package lists this thing with...an 80 hour runtime. Talk about hopeful thinking, but what the heck, it looked like a fun little light.

It's a relatively solid plastic, a bit big for my palm with the four cells in there. It has a tailcap reverse clickie that seems reliable enough for the price. In 'Lantern' mode, it casts a surprisngly decent area light considering it's just a ring of clear plastic around a Nichia.

When pushed down into stubby flashlight mode, you can tell from a mile away that they used a moonbeam lens to turn it into a makeshift spotlight. It has a little spill, but the beam is a perfectly round circle that throws across a basement easily. I'd complain about the lack of spill, but when I popped it out into lantern mode and held it like a glowstick, the flood was good enough to warrant this little guy as a good power outage light pendng the runtime it even half what the package says. Probably not water-resistant, would scratch up pretty bad if I dropped it on concrete, but for twelve bucks it's a functional novelty light. Considering I already have two of the infamous Energizer LED Lanterns that run for a couple hundred hours, this thing is nothing special, but I saw they also versions of this light done up in Cinderalla and Buzz Lightyear for the kids. Now this is something worth giving to the kids in a blackout, supposedly long-running and with a fun little shadow puppet beam if the very nice area lighting isn't enough to keep them busy.

No sign of it on the Energizer site, was thick-headed enough to throw the package out before I could get the name of the thing. If anyone has ever played around with this light or its larger cousins, I'm wondering if these things ever made it with the serious flashlight crowd. And if anyone has ever reviewed this thing, I want to know just how serious they were about the 80 hours off 4 AAAs statement.

I have that light, and I liked it so much that I got another. I did an endurance test, but stopped at 40 hours because it was the last light (in that test) still lit and it was still going strong. Energizer is generally conservative with their on-package run time estimates.(Though I haven't tested recent, unrealistic seeming claims for their improved 2AAA penlight - 100+ hours!) The Compact4AA cled4aa-e and DoubleBright/Trailfinder cfl420 both list times of 100 hours and do about *double* that. Their original 2AAA penlight pled23a listed a run time of 18 hours and ran more than 24. I would suspect that the 2 in 1 LED light LED4AAA1, prod # 104-49082 will do 80 hours or more. The bad news is you can't find it because it's in the "Obsolete Flashlights" category. So get 'em while you can. There's a data sheet here:
http://data.energizer.com/PDFs/led4aaa1.pdf

The led4aa1 4AA compact folding lantern is also listed in the "Obsolete Flashlights" category. Though it has a page in "Outdoor Flashlights" too: http://www.energizer.com/products/flashlights/flashlight.asp?cat=4&id=9

Which is a shame, those are two of their better lights. Maybe if there's enough demand they'll bring them back.

What are the other battery sizes? They only have the AAA where I live

I hate the fact that 2 of the batteries go in -ve to the spring, and the other 2 go in +ve to the spring. Have to have enough light to see the labels on the battery carrier when changing batteries.

I covered the lens with Press 'n' Seal. This got rid of the yellow blob with blue ring around it beam pattern. Blurry hotspot in spill light slowly fading to nothing now.

Mine has a 2X sticker on it so probably has a Nichia CS led. Not using it much as my other 2 in 1s are brighter. One has a Tectite LPR2 1W and the other has a SMJLED PR2 in them.

-----

They were available in the far east last year. KevinL donated 2 in last year's Christmas giveaway.
http://www.batteriesdirect.co.uk/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=25_42&products_id=333

I've got on of these, too. It makes a great little lantern and does indeed run as stated. Surprisingly bright, too.

LED Ninja, the light in question is only available in 4AAA. The folding mini lantern is a 4AA. And yeah, the way you have to load batteries could be troublesome. The spring terminal should *always* be negative.

Wait, so the runtime is for real?

...Hm...if these go on closeout, I may buy a few more. The runtime alone is nice, the area lighting bonus is just icing on the cake. And agreed, the battery career is a tad of a village idiot.

Was in Target this evening looking at this light. Off to its side I noticed a Buzz Lightyear 2-in-1 that was essentially the same light, but with a tacky paint job. These were on sale for $5.99, half the other's cost. I resisted, but there's always tomorrow.

Geoff

i guess i am going to target tomorrow.....you guys are killin me:laughing: