Keychain Lights

Hey guys whats happening? Anyways, so the hunt is always on and this time the rational flashlight mind says I should get a keychain light. So what exactly is makes a good keychain light and what exactly would be a good keychain light? I am looking for something good and small, and with a price tag under or around $25. I am broke so it needs to be cheap... Anyways, fellow flerds, help me find a good light!

m16a

Well, all the talk right now is about the new Fenix E01 at $15 shipped. It uses the latest and greatest Nichia GS with awesome runtime.
https://www.fenix-store.com/index.php?cPath=22_69_49

At that price range, you might also want to look at the Photon Microlight 1, 2, and Freedom. Also, there is the basic Fauxton at $4.68 for 10 of them.

What Marduke said,
The Fenix E01 is about your only choice for under $25. Peak makes some for $30 and up and Arc at $40 and up.

I've always thought the Arc AAA to be a great little light. Not the highest output of the 1xAAAs, but extremely well-made.

The Matterhorn from Peak LED Solutions is also a great light. Specify the keychain body - a tailcap attaches to the keyring, and the flashlight body to the tailcap. The body can be easily unscrewed from the tailcap in a couple of seconds, allowing you to stand it on end in sort of a candle mode, clip it to the brim of a hat or cap for a head light, etc. I carried one of these on my keyring for a couple of years, and really liked it.

Both of these are about $5 more than the price you mentioned, though.

Another strong candidate may be the Streamlight MicroStream. It's very bright for this size - shows a couple CP more on the meter than my Fenix L0D Q4. It has a nice clip, and a ring through that clip would probably be the basis for a keychain attachment. The clip faces the wrong way, though, for attachment to the bill of a cap, it that's important to you. It's also the only 1xAAA I've seen with a tail click switch (although there could be others). It takes a pretty good push to click, but it's probably designed that way to keep it from turing on during normal pocket carry with a bunch of keys. Since it only has one level - bright - runtime would be less than the others, and is advertised at about an hour and a half. On sale at several dealers for $16 to $17, so right in your price range. In my limited experience with it, it seems like a great light for the money if it fits your needs.

Hope this helps...

BentheadTX said:

What Marduke said,
The Fenix E01 is about your only choice for under $25. Peak makes some for $30 and up and Arc at $40 and up.

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__________________

not quite.
http://www.arcflashlight.com/arc-aaa.shtml

the previous Arc AAA-P is only 30 these days, and the construction of the Arcs are second to none as far as AAAs are concerned.

http://www.arcflashlight.com/accessories.shtml

the Arc Camo is only 25. Great little light, I gave one to my fiance's Dad and it survived many washing machine and dryer cycles.

Thanks for all the responses guys!

My mind told me the same thing just a few days ago. I decided to go with the Fenix E01. Looking forward to receiving it

If you are absolutely after the cheapest, you can't the 45 cent fauxtons sold in bags of 10.

I have a microstream and I was very impressed by its performance for being so inexpensive.

For $25 you have a good number of options:

As a few have mentioned, Fenix is coming out with the E01 for $15. If you want something smaller in size, you may want to try the Photon Keychain lights. I carried Photon Keychain lights for many years ... from their Photon II to Photon III to Photon Freedom. The Photon Freedom spits out a good amount of lights for small size, and the recent model is 100% brighter than my older model. Photon also has the Rex light, which is bigger than the Freedom model, but comes with 4 super bright LEDs and here's the cool part ... it comes with Li-ION rechargable batteries. You could use standard batteries to recharge it. You could buy Photon directly from their website, or google it and find cheaper price elsewhere. (I think I got mine at batteryjunction).

Side notes on the Photon Rex ....
* It's many times brighter than the photon freedom, and as a backup light, it's pretty darn bright.
* I tested out the runtime and at fully charged, the batteries last for about an hour before going bye bye
* Charging time is about 2-3 hours

What I don't like about the Rex:
* The glow in the dark button make it look and feel cheap. I'm not a big fan of it
* It's bulkier than the Photon Freedom (that's why I haven't jumped to switching it)
* The charger is simply two wires with rare earth magnets on the ends. It's small, and you could easily lose it, hence it's best to keep it with your Rex. This adds the bulk, and also I think it will raise an eyebrow if you ever go through security at the airport with it.

Good Luck

Wow, I just went to dealextreme and typed "Keychain light" and found a Photon Lookalike for $4.68 for a pack of 10. I don't know how good they are, but heck, if one breaks, you still have 9. I may buy it for gift lights and for the batteries.

xcel730, yes, those are what we call "fauxtons" (fake photons). Usually one or two out of every bag of 10 will be duds but the rest work fine. A connoisseur can tell that they're not quite as good as real photons in terms of construction, the led, etc. But they are well made, practical, functional lights, always appreciated as non-flashaholic gifts among other things.

I wouldn't expect them to be high quality, but if even 5/10 works, it's still a pretty good deal. How DX makes money charging $4.68 with free shipping is beyond me :thinking:

paulr said:

xcel730, yes, those are what we call "fauxtons" (fake photons). Usually one or two out of every bag of 10 will be duds but the rest work fine. A connoisseur can tell that they're not quite as good as real photons in terms of construction, the led, etc. But they are well made, practical, functional lights, always appreciated as non-flashaholic gifts among other things.

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Before I became a flashaholic, my wife (of all people) gave me a fauxton. I never thought about it and never used it until I was stuck inside a building that had a total and complete blackout. The building had very few windows (and hence pitch dark) and I ended up helping myself and a bunch of people with that tiny fauxton. Even a lit match would have been awesome in that environment

I got myself out of a blackout with my photon freedom ... hence, I will never replace it. It's a great backup for my EDC light ... and somestimes it serves as a backup of a backup when I'm carrying two lights. :twothumbs

I think the "fauxtons" are amazing for the price. More than adequate for most tasks you would need to use a key chain light for. The only reason I'm opting for the E01 over them is ease of use,battery life,.....and I just wanted to buy another flashlight

I think we need a sticky on good keychain lights. This is like the 1000000'th time I've seen this type of thread.

That being said, I think the Fenix E01 is a winner too. It's not out just yet, but people should be reviewing them in a few days. Looks like a winner at <$15 shipped!

I EDC an L0D CE (around $40+) but also carry a fauxton (<$1) as a spare! Great backup!

gunga said:

I think we need a sticky on good keychain lights. This is like the 1000000'th time I've seen this type of thread.

That being said, I think the Fenix E01 is a winner too. It's not out just yet, but people should be reviewing them in a few days. Looks like a winner at <$15 shipped!

I EDC an L0D CE (around $40+) but also carry a fauxton (<$1) as a spare! Great backup!

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I think a sticky would be useless. Flashlight product offering is always changing. For example the E01 you mentioned was only intoduced last week.

A sticky would give the reader the wrong impression.

The sticky has to be updated like any post. So no it would not be misleading.

If you post the sticky and leave it, then yes it's misleading.

How many times do you want to see someone ask for an x$ flashlight and see people responding the same way (arc aaa, Fenix L0D CE, etc...)

You start with a baseline then update it as needed. WHC had started a thread last year on all the Cree/Seoul flashlights available. I'm sure that one is out of control and likely too hard to maintain now, but the number of great keychainlights has not increased at such an alarming rate, so it's easier to maintain.

If we created about 10 stickies, we could probably cover 90% of all the posts here. But then what fun would it be to log into CPF?