Husky 3-color LED 5-pack for $10

Another smelly set of flashlights from Home Depot! But they do work and the Chinese rubber smell on these wasn't too overpowering.

These lights use 2xAAA batteries each and have 1 white, 1 yellow and 1 red LED. A four-way switch cycles through the 3 colors and off.
These LED's, especially the white one looks somewhat like the emitter that's in the River Rock 2xAAA light but it's not quite that bright. The triple reflector is similar to the $1 lights that Dollar Tree had a few weeks back, except the Dollar Tree reflectors were much smoother and had fewer artifacts.
The white LED is sufficiently bright for task lighting and general low-level illumination out to 15-20 feet. These lights are pretty large for their batteries and light output, but are comfortable to hold.
The red is fairly intense and makes an artifact-filled spot. The yellow makes a heavily artifacted moderate flood. The white is pretty smooth.
I believe you could remove the AAA tube and mod these lights for AA use but you might have to rework the lower battery contact.
The set comes with 10 Rayovac Maximum Plus alkalines, which I immediately threw away since many of the packs in the store were showing frosty residue or worse and I've seen this many times with this brand.
If you need a 5-pack of cheap rubberized lights with the addition of red and yellow lighting that's dead simple, this is a good candidate. Just don't expect more than task-lighting brightness for the white or night-vision use with yellow or red.

Interesting. I'll be checking them out tomorrow. Thanks.

Geoff

RebelXTNC said:

I believe you could remove the AAA tube and mod these lights for AA use but you might have to rework the lower battery contact.

Click to expand...

On the white-LED-only version, the adapter tube just slides out, allowing a pair of AAs to fit with no modifications.

Why did they use AAA cells in the first place? My guess is that they had a bunch of semi-dead cells laying around, and decided to build adapter tubes to get rid of them...

That is certainly possible about the batteries, because the year dates on the batts were all mixed up. They ran from 2010 to 2013, even in the loose pairs.
You're also correct about the AAA battery tube coming out. That first one I tried must have been stuck. The second one slid right out but you do have to watch about snagging the excess wiring that goes to the 3 contact points on a ring inside the body.
I'm going to try this one with AA batts and see if it's brighter and doesn't supply too much current.

Ok, some more information. Like I said these lights do work but I'm probably going to downgrade them to "really cheap lights". I think it's the reflector artifacts that really hurt their performance. Also 2 out of the 5 had "white" LED's that were so blue-green that they were noticeably less bright and useful.
As for AA use, they fit the body so tightly that it takes a ramrod to seat them and it requires pounding the open end of the light on a padded but firm surface to remove the AA batteries. If you put them in too far, the body holds them in position against the lower spring and may keep them too far down to make contact at the head. Plus there is the excess wiring to worry about. It's ok if you're "into" flashlights, but not for the average person. The AAA's are trouble-free and the AA's seemed no brighter.
You can change the starting order of the color sequence. Simply rotate the module inside the head until the color you want to start with is just to the left of the switch if you're holding the light normally but tilted up and looking into the reflector. Some of the switches sequence clockwise, others counter-clockwise. Some heads have the LED's in a different order, but they all seem to start in that same spot.
It's also possible to end up with the 3 contact points of the head just hitting the gaps between the 3 contact pads in the body. Just rotate the module slightly to hit the middle of the pads when the head is tight.
The rubber cover on the head will come off and will slip on a Dorcy Metal Gear but not securely. It could be useful for a light that's slightly larger.
The 2xAAA battery adapter tubes are also useful.
I guess I'll conclude by saying these are a cheap set of "beater" or kids lights that are simple to operate once you've taken a few minutes to make sure it's setup correctly.

Just mentioned this in another thread, but these lights have been reduced to $7.98 starting today through Dec.

Geoff

I wonder what the switch on the 3 color LED lights are like. I may get a set if I can swap out the switches and perhaps mod another light with them for multiple output.

I have no doubt you can get the switch out, although it's not very big so remounting it securely might be a problem. It appears to just be "supported" in the plastic body and held in place by the rubber outer cover. I'm looking at it from the inside of the open head-end, but I didn't take the rubber body cover off the light.
It feels like the typical hard, short clicky of a rubber-covered light with a raised button.