Worst LED flashlight ever

$1 dollar store flashlight. Made of aluminum, 3AAA, 3 LEDs. I figured I'd give it a shot. I put the batteries in and with no resistor, the LEDs came on a lovely shade of angry overdriven blue. Needless to say I pitched that sucker.

hope you took the batteries out first :thinking::thumbsup:

Well... you said it.

$1. What were you expecting?

The worst one I ever had was the AA RiverRock, the beam was horrible, tint was more than horrible and the switch button broke in a few weeks. The body design was rather nice though and might make a nice host someday if I could find a switch button cover/activator.

I hope you take it back and get a refund.

Actually, the worst I ever dealt with was a group of 5 Romisen RC-G2's They lasted only 1 day. I bought these straight from KD. They flickered and never really were dependable. Battery life was about 5 minutes. Maybe I got a bad batch?

Now the ones with the upgraded emitter from shiningbeam are 1000% better.

Worst one for me came from Big Lots a few years ago. It also had 3 angry blue LEDs. It had a 1 LED mode which was nice. The big problem was it never completely turned off. There would still be a very dim glow even when switched off. Not acceptable. Unfortunately I didn't notice this when I tested it in the car before leaving the parking lot. It went back the next day.

Geoff

My worst flashlight was this "taschenlampe" I bought at Ollies It was very poor quality. I ended up taking it back.

If the batteries alone cost more than the flashlight itself, I think that says a lot about the flashlight and should be avoided like the plague, IMHO.

These crank-charge lights get my vote. The gears inside are way too soft plastic and they wore out quicker than a solitaire eats through a generic AAA alkaline (less than ~15 crank recharges of about 90 seconds each). They are complete crap... even by craptacular crank/shake light standards.

Highly UN-recommended.

i wasted money on the coleman maxx cree 3xaaa

it's not even worth it to mod.

The pig from DX ?

Worst light I've ever had is a SF E1B with the elsewhere reported brownish green tint. I should beg Surefire for another one but somehow I've lost interest. Maybe I can mod it...

I have an LED light my mother gave me that has a butane lighter on it. The lighter is much brighter than the light. I always felt like the room got a little darker when I turn the light on

Barrie said:

hope you took the batteries out first :thinking::thumbsup:

Click to expand...

Is it worth ? Those batteries are junk stuff, they could easily leak, in fact the light and the included batteries are 1$

I bought a 4 pack of cheap lighters (4 for £1) without paying any attention to what i grabbed off the shelf.

Well, i get them home and it turns out they have an LED in them. Cool i thought, then i turned it on and found out where the rejected LEDs from the 47c DX fauxtons go.

JohnR66 said:

$1 dollar store flashlight. Made of aluminum, 3AAA, 3 LEDs. I figured I'd give it a shot. I put the batteries in and with no resistor, the LEDs came on a lovely shade of angry overdriven blue. Needless to say I pitched that sucker.

Click to expand...

For next time...

Rip the guts out of it and create a work of art you can be proud of.

It had to have a switch and shell that were reusable. Sounds like it has a battery caddy/holder that gave you 4.5 volts. Dude you had a great start to a cool light.

Even cheap lights sometime have a usable shell especially if it was aluminum. The shell is the hard thing to make if you dont have a metal shop. Use you imagination and create something out of nothing.

Buy some cheap lux leds, and some resistors and have a ball.

Bud

For me its the 3rd Generation Inova X1. Enough said....:thumbsdow

I actually bought the $1 3xAAA 3 LED light mentioned in the OP. I wanted to see how the absolute bare minimum for an aluminum LED light was made.

No resistor, the positive legs of the LED's are soldered in the center to form the positive battery contact, the negative legs are all bent to wedge the pill to the side of the body. The body BTW is the thinnest AL walled light I've ever seen. I don't know how they put threads in it. It is litterally just a thin sleeve, with a plastic window and pill wedged into one end in a friction fit.

Surprisingly enough, the switch is a very positive feedback.

Two of my LED's were cool, one was actually quite warm. They are cut down 5mm's, so I'll probably pirate them for some other tinker mod at some point.

I bought a couple of "5W Police" 1xAA flashlights off the street somewhere. They were $1.50 each including battery. They were actually not too bad. The switches were loud, but had pretty good feel. The LEDs were the kind that look like a tiny bucket suspended by a lead on either side. They were a little on the cool side, but I've seen worse. The bodies were black painted and pretty light weight. All in all, they seemed like a pretty reasonable flashlight. I don't know where they are now because I just threw the whole bunch into the lab and they were promptly eaten by the crocs that live in there.