Painful light shopping experience

I was shopping with the family today. We have a camping trip coming up next weekend and my wife is wanting to get some type of lanterns for our kids (7, 7, and 9) to use. We were in Wally World looking at some of the camping gear since we need another air mattress and the kids need new sleeping bags as well. Anyways, we went back out through the lights and my wife wanted to stop and buy a lantern for our kids.

Now, she is not a flashaholic and probalby never will be. Though I'm working on at least getting her to have an appreciation for a good light. She started looking at a couple of the lanterns and asking my opinion on them. When I say that looking at these cheap, low quality lights was literally almost painful, I kid you not. I was just sorta, "Yeah, I guess that would be okay." *wince*

She did buy one cheap light for our cubmaster. It was a little $5 Pirates of the Caribbean light that she wanted to get her for the Pirate theme. I agreed but decided immediately that I needed to come on here and find a good drop-in to replace the bulb. As far as I can tell, I uses the same standard incandescent bulb (Krypton?) that most of your cheapie lights use and that should be easily replaced and runs off 2 AA batts. It's an Energizer branded light if that makes a difference. Anyone know of a not too expensive drop-in replacement I can use?

It's all your fault, you know. If you weren't all hanging out here talking about how great the latest lights are and convincing me to buy a real light, I might never have known what I was missing. I would have been blissfully happy with a cheap LED light and never known better. Now I look at the selection there and cringe. Thankfully we're going to Target probably tomorrow. They have a slightly better selection of decent lights; I MIGHT be able to convince her to get something a little less cheapy, maybe a River Rock or something. Of course I don't know that I should spend a whole lot of money on lights they are liable to break and I'm sure they'd be just as happy with that cheap $5-10 kids lantern cause, well, it's kiddish. So I may have to just cringe inside and suck it up. But if I do, I will know it's y'all's fault for showing me the light (no pun intended).

The NiteIze is a cheap PR base dropin for 2-6 cells, and is available at both Target and Walmart. I like it with some of the very cheap PR based lights that are typical. If there is time, you may want to look at the SMJLED for $7, but you can only use that one with 2-cell lights. One of my favorite uses for the NiteIze is the Dorcy 4D lantern available at Walmart for $5. It's usually near the battery station at a small flashlight station in the front of the store by the checkout aisles. It would run continuously for probably your entire camping trip on one set of batteries.

Marduke said:

The NiteIze is a cheap PR base dropin for 2-6 cells, and is available at both Target and Walmart. I like it with some of the very cheap PR based lights that are typical. If there is time, you may want to look at the SMJLED for $7, but you can only use that one with 2-cell lights. One of my favorite uses for the NiteIze is the Dorcy 4D lantern available at Walmart for $5. It's usually near the battery station at a small flashlight station in the front of the store by the checkout aisles. It would run continuously for probably your entire camping trip on one set of batteries.

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Yeah, I've seen that lantern. Pointed it out to the wife tonight in fact. I bought one used at a Yard Sale. Got home and tried to turn it on and it won't run. Looks like it's probably toast. I only paid a buck for it though so I probably need to just throw it away (the bulb looks to be intact).

Of the two lights, the NiteIze and the SMJ, which would you go with? The NiteIze I'm guessing is either direct drive or uses a buck circuit of some sort and the SMJ says it's regulated so I'm guessing that it will give constant output. Oh, what is the output like on that SMJLED compared to the NiteIze? And what LED does each of them use? If you haven't guessed, I'm leaning towards the SMJLED but shipping is almost as much as the upgrade would be.

Keep in mind that the SMJLED is only for 2 cells, and the NiteIze is for 2-6.

And yes, the NiteIze uses only a buck circuit, no boost. It will run on even 1 cell, but is best used with at least 3, since it's designed to run at 4.5 volts. It uses a 10mm LED of unknown origin. Neither is extraordinarily bright, but both provides a very flat output curve and will run forever, and the SMJLED is probably a bit whiter. For 2-cell lights, I would go with the SMJLED, and just order 5 of them to offset shipping. They can turn any regular cheap light into a halfway decent one for little cost. I would recommend the NiteIze be used with a diffuser, variable focus light, or faceted reflector, as the beam pattern can be :sick2: unless you can clean it up with one of those three methods.

Or.....
If you feel adventurous, you could build your own dropins without too much trouble if you can use a soldering iron.
http://www.flashlightreviews.com/mods/prbulbs.html

just curious but walmart did you hit up?

the target at newshackle island has a great light selection.

Just to let you know I remember there being a product recall on one brand of pirate flashlight because of high lead levels in the paint? I think it was Energizer, but i'm not sure. Probably not the torch you bought, but I thought i'd mention it just in case...

Were you limited to the $5 light because of price? I was thinking that a Magled would have made a good light although there quite a bit more money.

mossyoak said:

just curious but walmart did you hit up?

the target at newshackle island has a great light selection.

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It was the Walmart Supercenter in Hermitage, which is actually one of the bigger ones on the city. Go figure. It's not to say that they didn't have several lights, just that I think most of them were crap and some were out of stock besides.

Patriot36 said:

Were you limited to the $5 light because of price? I was thinking that a Magled would have made a good light although there quite a bit more money.

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If you're talking about the pirate light, no, it was more because it was the whole pirate motif. Our cubmaster has a thing about pirates and that was the theme for the cub scout day camp this summer so my wife wanted to get it for her. I just feel that if we're going to give her a light it should at least be a halfway decent one.

Marduke, I'm not feeling all THAT adventurous. Would it be safe to say that the SMJLED has more output than the stock Krypton bulb at least? The time isn't too much of an issue yet since Priority Mail should have it here by Wed or Thursday at the latest. I will just have to convince my wife to wait until the camping trip to present it to her.

You could use the PR based Luxeon 1w drop in sold at sears. I put one in a "Cars the movie" flashlight /lantern that the GF gave me as a joke.

Beer said:

You could use the PR based Luxeon 1w drop in sold at sears. I put one in a "Cars the movie" flashlight /lantern that the GF gave me as a joke.

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How much was that one and do you know if it is regulated like the SMJLED one is supposed to be? I haven't ordered those yet, but probably will by Monday. The advice to buy several is right on the nose. I have already found at least a couple more lights around the house that I could go ahead and upgrade with those. Probably a lot more, actually. My wife got the kids each a REALLY cheap Halloween themed light from the dollar spot at Target (what IS it with wives and wanting to buy crappy lights?). I had one apart earlier and noticed that they too seemed to have a PR bulb too. I figure that if nothing else, I will install the LED upgrade for Halloween (it's got to be in improvement, those things are WEAK) and take it out afterwards to save for something else.