Brightest Microlight?

I'm upgrading my EDC (every day carry) light and am looking for the brightest burst beam possible from a 'pill' (photon etc) sized LED light. The light in question needs to have push button activation though an always on function would be useful. Any advice would be most welcome.

I don't know if it is the absolute brightest, but the Photon II meets your other criteria. It is as bright as an ARC AAA when it has fresh batteries.

Hi Bunnymonster,



There are multiple keychain lights, so maybe a good way to go would be to check out some review sites, like:

FlashlightReviews.com
The LED Museum
The Torch Review Site

The brightest coin cell light that I have had was my blue inova microlight. It did have kind of a ringy beam though. I have had inovas and photons, but I have yet to try a pulsar so I dont know how they compare. But blue is the brightest color you can get becuase the human eye picks up blue light better.

I doubt there's going to be much systematic difference in brightness between different coin cell lights. They mostly just direct drive an LED from the coin cells, so brightness is determined by random variations between LED's, and the amount of power you can get out of the coin cells. Even the regulated ones are still limited by the power available from the cells. The only way to get more brightness is use bigger batteries or more of them. Some LED optics do have a narrower beam so you'd get a smaller, brighter hotspot, but total output is still about the same.

All that said, I have a bunch of the $1.00 squeeze lights from Countycomm and find them to be impressively bright.

Check out the review pages as Bart suggested, though as PaulR said, there isn't much difference from one manufacturer to another, since they all pretty much use the same LED and direct drive them.

There will be some minor differences when it comes to using 3 LR44 (which are alkaline chemistry 1.5V button cells) versus 2 CR2016 (which are lithium chemistry 3V coin cells) since lithium chemistry can sustain a higher current. But with coin/button cells, the difference isn't all that much.

The main thing is to stay away from "made in China" type knockoffs. You aren't ever sure of the quality of the LEDs and that, in this type of light, is the over-riding criteria.

I've had good experiences with Photon II and Princeton-Tec. These both use 2 lithium cells direct driving the latest brightest LED (the batch I bought only had 5600mCd white LEDs). I believe the latest 5mm white LEDs have hit 10,000mCd, though the 6400mCd will probably still be in use as manufacturers use up stock.

If you are not partial to white, there is a grade of green LED (turquoise, I think) that is heaps brighter. But I'm not sure about that point.

The green Inova microlight is pretty bright. I have tried all the colors and green seems to be the brightest. Followed by the blue, white and last place goes to the red.

Slightly larger in size, but very bright are the StreamLight
KeyMate at http://www.streamlight.com/keymate_info.htm

The Streamlight KeyMates are brighter than all small sized lights mentioned here. Uses 4 LR44.

Welcome to CPF, Bunnymonster!

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Bunnymonster said:
looking for the brightest burst beam possible from a 'pill' (photon etc) sized LED light.

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Just a comment.

Sometimes there is a difference between what appears the brightest and what one may see better by.

Let me try to explain (but please bear in mind YMMV and colors are sometimes an individual preference)

Green (and Blue-Green) often appears bright because the human eye is most sensitive to that wavelength.

However outdoors among trees and grass - there is very little contrast between white and green stuff under green (or blue-green) light. So things like white paper and markers do not stand out as one would expect. So in this case is the brighter Green actually the better to see by?

Blue again is very bright as the LEDs are that way - however blue is a short wavelength that is not focussed well by the human eye (eg: blue-blocking sunglasses) and some people find the color annoying/noticable (police flashing lights), some people simply do not see well under blue even though blue may measure brighter.

Red is the traditional color to preserve true night (scotopic) vision - but it also has to be dim - one that is too bright will flood the cones (even if the rods are relatively unaffected) and leave after-images in the eye - which affects the dark adaption and the eye will require time to recover.

Lots of people have problems focussing under Red - even bright red - probably because it is at the extreme end of the visible spectrum.

So unfortunately that really doesn't leave you too many color choices -

White is what we are used to and gives the best color rendition - so it is general purpose. But for close quarters work in dark environments white tends to dazzle the eyes and affect one's dark adaption.

Yellow LEDs tend to be dimmer - but I seem to see well under yellow light. Yellow is the color traditionally chosen not to dazzle (eg: yellow fog lights, and anti-glare yellow paper pads) - it gives good definition and constrast (yellow and black is supposed to give one of the highest visible contrast, hence the use on caution and warning road signs). So even under a dimmer yellow - people seem to see better than a brighter green, blue or red.


here's an informal experiment I did:
LED Colors and Vision (pics)