How many lumens do the cheap 9 LED mini torches produce?

Hi,

I got several budget end 9 Led torches that run off 3 AAA batteries, that I have always been curious to know the lumen output.

I find they are ok and quite bright but lack any real throw, however they serve well as emergency lights. I keep one at the office, in the car, at home near the fuse box.

I believe the Led's within the torch are the cheap 5mm type.

Mine puts out about 13-ish, I reckon.

~25-30L with fresh alkalines. ~15L after ~15 minutes, gradually dimming after that point.

~25-30L with charged NiMH. ~15L after ~20 minutes and it tends to hover there till the cells deplete further.

please bear in mind that alkalines will leak not a trait you want in an emergency light.

and, if its 25 lumens for the 1st 15 minutes only, you'd be much better off getting Fenix E01s, 20 lumens for 10 hours on one AAA and a further 11 hours moon mode (sub 20 lumens i suppose, have yet to run down the 1st cell that came with my E01, 2 years ago)

If you like the basic multi-5mm all-flood format and want it in a higher quality package, look at the Inova X5: http://www.brightguy.com/products/Inova_X5_LED_Flashlight.php

Flashlight reviews measured a lot less at ~6 lumens.
http://www.flashlightreviews.com/reviews/amart_ll.htm

It depends on the dropping resistor used.
No resistor, you can get up to 30 initial lumens but the LEDs burn out pretty fast under heavy use.

A lot of these cheap torches have no dropping resistor. They rely on the internal resistance of the batteries to keep current levels at a reasonable level.
Energizer L92 lithiums should be avoided. High voltage, high current.
NiMH depends. The lower current crappy Energizers & some Chinese cells are probably safer than the high current Eneloops. But the high self discharge rates of the crappy cells mean dead cells in an emergency.
Alkalines are high voltage medium current. Still the torch can not take more than 180 mA. I think fresh alkalines can produce more than that for an extended time.
IMHO the best batteries for these cheap torches are the cheapest ones. Carbon zinc 'heavy duty'. With 1/2 the energy of alkalines they have the least oomph to kill the LEDs.

I bought the 9 LED torch for $1.99 and included "heavy duty" batteries. With meter on 10A, it starts at 350ma and drops below 300ma in just a minute or so. There is no dropping resistor that I could see. LEDs are very cool white, but not nasty purple like some I've seen.

The red light is the Energizer keychain light with Nichia GS LED. It has a tighter beam with bluish center. It seems brighter, but given the tighter beam, they probably are about the same or a bit more to the 9 LED.

I'd estimate the 9 LED doing 20 lumens tops.

Just bought a 3 pack of these lights, Have had them before and found them to be good for in the car, just to light up the back seat when you drop something. Otherwise, pretty useless. Reason i picked up another 3 pack is that the 3aa battery holders are good equivalent 3aa to C sized adaptors. Which means I can run 3.6 to 4.5v using Nimh's or alky's per cell, which is cheaper than buying in adaptors, or making my own

I have a 9LED 3AA flashlight similar to the model of JohnR66's photo.
I compared it to other of my lights and got the result of somewhere around 30lm. Which very well correspond to what kramer5150 tells.

Regards, Patric

This is all good info guys. I've always wondered the same thing. I've been through about 5 of these but I even had one with the Sylvania brand, which also makes a really good 21 led. But the nine led lights always flickered, and it always turned out to be the switch. The 21 led sylvania lite works really well tho'. Lights up a 12 x 12 room, no problem. The 9 LED Garrity and Dorcy's don't have that flickering problem.

In my experience, most multi-LED problems (flickering, some LEDs not lit) are caused by poor or dry solder joints. The things are machine-soldered (dipped?) and some joints are easily missed or incomplete.

Take the torch apart - the offending LED will wiggle when touched.

The fix is easy but tedious.

You're absolutely right. And I recently took apart a Chinese (Tigerhead) that had 21 leds. The flickering as I mentioned earlier turned out to be because of the switch. I was able to pry apart this switch and clean the contacts inside with alcohol. Works great so far. This flashlight is incredibly simply constructed even the switch practically nothing to go wrong that can't be fixed by yourself.