Black & Decker 360 Clamp Light Review

I finally got my first digital camera so bear with me on the pic quality.
I recently bought a black & Decker 360 clamp light at Walmart. I was lucky it even had a $5 off sticker as the normal price is $25.




The Light rotates over 320 degrees and pivots about 120 degrees.



You put the 3 AA batteries in the "Tail" of the light it snaps open, it is hard to snap open so it definitely won't come lose by accident.


Here is a closeup through the optics of the LED itself, the light is rated at 130 lumens output I am not sure what LED this is for sure.


The Magnet on it is rather strong, able to hold up a 5 lb block of steel,
the clamp is strong also but unless it is clamping something thick you wont be able to keep the light from spinning to a downward position where it will hold very well.




Here are beam shots, these only show you the odd beam from tight to all the way zoomed out it can throw decently and flood big time. The last beamshot is about where I prefer it most of the time. It has a Low and High mode, High then Low then Off. 400ma High, 75ma Low on rayovac hybrid LSD cells.



One last pic of the clamp, it is rubberized and easily held up the 5 lb block of metal. The light with nimh cells weighs in around 1 lb and is very well made something that can take abuse. I highly recommend this light for working on things between the magnet and clamp and nearly infinite rotate/swivel options and flood/throw it should be able to get light where you want it for I estimat 5 hours on high and 15 hours on low using LSD nimh cells.

nice pics and review, thanks :candle:

waddup said:

nice pics and review, thanks :candle:

Click to expand...

Thanks, now I just need to figure out how to do proper beam shots with this camera

your beam shots are great,

real world shots, not some circle of light on a wall with zero to reference it to. (oh no, an artifact and a hint of green ! )

yours are much more useful to me.

waddup said:

your beam shots are great,

real world shots, not some circle of light on a wall with zero to reference it to. (oh no, an artifact and a hint of green ! )

yours are much more useful to me.

Click to expand...

The shots were the "Low" mode as the "High" mode were too bright to see the details of the beam. When I get a tripod setup I can do better I figure if someone gets interested in this light they are welcome to add better photos to this thread including beamshots.
I may do a little review on the smaller brother of this light, the 2AAA swivel light.

looks like a luxeon rebel tffc to me

csshih said:

looks like a luxeon rebel tffc to me

Click to expand...

I just googled a pic of that, I bet you are right and my "guess" is it may be a rebel 100. As soon as I get more adventurous I will take it apart. It has screws on every section of it so should be very easy to disassemble it.

Great pictures! I've seen this light at Walmart and was wondering about how bright the 130 lumen might be. Do you have any outside shots?
Can the light be clipped to your belt or is it too big?

cccpull said:

Great pictures! I've seen this light at Walmart and was wondering about how bright the 130 lumen might be. Do you have any outside shots?
Can the light be clipped to your belt or is it too big?

Click to expand...

It is definitely at least 100 lumen. I was lighting up my neighbors yard with it as he was mowing his lawn at 11 pm when it was near 100 outside in the daytime. The spot was about the size of the lawnmower and competing with a streetlight. This is not a great thrower but if you adjust it right you get nearly a perfect square block of floodlight. As soon as I figure out how to run my camera on manual I will get some more beam shots.
As for the belt, you could clip it onto a belt but the clamp is thick and may be uncomfortable. However, there is two lanyard holes near the tail end you could attack a lanyard to if wanted. This light is no lightweight, feels very solid in your hand almost tempting you to use it like a hammer weighing in at about a pound.
Here is a comparison pic of some lights I have around.

(left to right) Rayovac Roughneck 2D modded with MagLED dropin, B&D Clamp Light, Streamlight Lux Jr., Sylvania 4AA LED lantern, Energizer 1D Accent Lantern.

I finally took off the head of the light. It has 4 screws under the rubber boot you have to take off but be careful to use the right screwdriver as the heads have very fine phillips slots in them easily ruined by a loose bit.

There is a plastic shroud over the LED for some reason that requires removal of two screws and I used to small flat blade screwdrivers to pop it out.

I tried removing the two other phillips screws holding the aluminum heatsink/geared housing but something seems to be holding it from coming out easily. I almost bet you have to disassemble the other part of the light to allow the wired holding it from coming out some slack. As you can see the rebel LED is unlabeled and has two very tiny slot screws possibly holding it in. If I had more than one of these lights and some nicer more efficient LEDs I would be tempted to try and remove the two screws and see if the LED could be upgraded somehow. The focusing system is 3 parts. The aluminum heatsink is threaded for the outer lens section while there is an inner sliding plastic lense that is moved by the outer section. Looks very sturdy.

Just stopped by walmart, most of the stores didn't have any of these lights but one got a new shipment in and they all had $5 off coupons AND.... the price was lowered to $19, I could not resist and got a second one for $14 plus tax. This light is a great deal for $14 IMO.... Good hunting.
Just compared the two lights I have..... tint lottery for sure, one is pinkish purple the other (compared to it) looks green but alone it looks white enough. The beam is not crooked either but shows a slight halo around it. These lights are not made to have beautiful beams just to be useful so don't get one to whitewall hunt.

I didn't see that there was a thread on this light, so I created my own. I really am fond of it though, it's very handy. They were selling them for dirt cheap on woot a few months back, 5 bucks +5 shipping.

sol-leks said:

I didn't see that there was a thread on this light, so I created my own. I really am fond of it though, it's very handy. They were selling them for dirt cheap on woot a few months back, 5 bucks +5 shipping.

Click to expand...

If I had not already bought 2 of them I would have gotten another 2. They are $25 at walmart now I think with maybe $2 off stickers so $5 is a bargain. For a carry around light they are a bit heavy and bulky but for a hands free light they can be very useful.

Thanks for the review. I appreciate the time and effort you put into it!

Regards
Dave

darcyh said:

Thanks for the review. I appreciate the time and effort you put into it!

Regards
Dave

Click to expand...

Glad you liked the review, I have two of these stuck to a metal cabinet in the house. I used one of then during a short power outage still stuck to the cabinet I just swiveled it and pointed it at the ceiling. It runs about 5 hours off LSD nimh AAs on high.

(1) Has this been re-released as a re-branded Rayovac RNC3AA-B RoughNeck Flex360 LED Clamp Flashlight ? The pictures of it posted on amazon look identical to the pictures posted by the original poster in this thread. I looked for reviews on the internet, and so far all I can find are the reviews here for the Black & Decker 360, a review for the Rayovac Flex360 on batteryjunction.com, and some reviews on amazon for the Rayovac Flex360

(2) Does this flashlight [the Black & Decker 360 or the Rayovac Flex360] have constant output as the batteries are being drained ?

(3) Thank you Lynx_Arc for all the great information you posted !

(4) Here's a link to the review mentioned by sol-leks:
http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?320448-Black-amp-Decker-Flex-360-Clamplight

MojaveMoon07 said:

(1) Has this been re-released as a re-branded Rayovac RNC3AA-B RoughNeck Flex360 LED Clamp Flashlight ? The pictures of it posted on amazon look identical to the pictures posted by the original poster in this thread. I looked for reviews on the internet, and so far all I can find are the reviews here for the Black & Decker 360, a review for the Rayovac Flex360 on batteryjunction.com, and some reviews on amazon for the Rayovac Flex360

(2) Does this flashlight [the Black & Decker 360 or the Rayovac Flex360] have constant output as the batteries are being drained ?

(3) Thank you Lynx_Arc for all the great information you posted !

(4) Here's a link to the review mentioned by sol-leks:
http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?320448-Black-amp-Decker-Flex-360-Clamplight

Click to expand...

(1)It hasn't been "re released" the Rayovac was out there on amazon etc when I found this. Apparently some Black & Decker lights are made by the same manufacturer as some Rayovac lights. If you look at the 2AA LED (drop ins now) rubberize lights for about 8-10 dollars or so Rayovac had the same ones (without the LED dropins) in yellow in some stores.
(2)I don't think so, I think the circuit in it is a simple resistor so unless you use nimh it will follow battery voltage as they deplete.
(3)I'm glad you enjoyed it. I have two of these lights stuck to a metal cabinet in my living room in the middle of the house and find myself grabbing one when I need a blast of light to work on something. They are very versatile lights and the circuit is not electronic so no vampiric drain to them I would say you could probably change the resistors in the board to make it brighter but IMO the two levels are well chosen from the start for both output and runtime.
(4)so now they are linked back to each as I put a link in that thread to this earlier

For awhile Walmart had them at lower prices but in the last 6 months or so they are now stuck at a little under $25 and a few of them have $2 off stickers on them but even at that price they are nice lights as they are heavy enough to stay in one place while you adjust the swivel and pivot to point the light where you need it. I used one to fix my fridge awhile back I had to replace the thermostat sensor in the freezer section which wasn't the problem then the cold control in the fridge section. With the zoom/flood I was able to get a decent amount of light inside of it.

Thank you for your thoughts!

After hearing how you use it, if my present needs called for running it for a short period of time like maybe up to five to ten minutes then it sounds like a great light to acquire.

For the time being, what I would almost solely need it for is running it for at least a half hour to an hour while sorting through things in an outdoor storage unit.

Regarding long use at a time, you replied: "I don't think so, I think the circuit in it is a simple resistor so unless you use nimh it will follow battery voltage as they deplete."

I don't have the knowledge about this subject to understand what behavior you're explaining I should expect if running this light on rechargeable batteries such as sanyo eneloops. May I ask you to opine in the scenario I'm proposing if this light would have steady enough output on eneloops ?

I've spent some time reading customer reviews on amazon for various cordless work lights (both LED and fluorescent), and this one is about the only one that sounds promising enough that I wouldn't feel like I'm throwing money away. The rest of them seem to be made with disposable quality parts such that the other products seem to have a lifespan of six months to a year at best.

MojaveMoon07 said:

Thank you for your thoughts!

After hearing how you use it, if my present needs called for running it for a short period of time like maybe up to five to ten minutes then it sounds like a great light to acquire.

Click to expand...

This light will run fine for hours at a time I estimate runtime in the 4-5 hour range with eneloops and longer with alkalines but it will be brighter at start and a lot dimmer at the end.

For the time being, what I would almost solely need it for is running it for at least a half hour to an hour while sorting through things in an outdoor storage unit.

Click to expand...

If you have a flat metal surface (the door or a metal shelf) or something to clamp it onto or a flat surface to lay it upon the light can be directed in almost any angle and you can zoom out so it floods an area widely at a distance of but a few feet or focus it as a thrower for up to 50 feet away. The beam is square which is good and bad but I found it more useful than round beams when in flood mode.

Regarding long use at a time, you replied: "I don't think so, I think the circuit in it is a simple resistor so unless you use nimh it will follow battery voltage as they deplete."

I don't have the knowledge about this subject to understand what behavior you're explaining I should expect if running this light on rechargeable batteries such as sanyo eneloops. May I ask you to opine in the scenario I'm proposing if this light would have steady enough output on eneloops ?

Click to expand...

The output should be great on eneloops they are a little better than the hybrids I used (which are also LSD nimh) and I ran it for several hours working on a car one time. You probably won't notice the output declining much till the cells are almost depleted. I recommend estimating use and recharging it after you use it for more than 2 hours worth when not in use as that will make sure you get at least 2 hours of use each time out.

I've spent some time reading customer reviews on amazon for various cordless work lights (both LED and fluorescent), and this one is about the only one that sounds promising enough that I wouldn't feel like I'm throwing money away. The rest of them seem to be made with disposable quality parts such that the other products seem to have a lifespan of six months to a year at best.

Click to expand...

I would recommend this light for a worklight for anyone. I don't recommend it to carry around all the time as a normal flashlight it is rather bulky and heavy but the versatility of it to put the light where you want it in several ways makes it on par with a headlamp for use in places that you need light where a headlamp won't direct it correctly. I would call this an ultimate tool box light. Get a metal toolbox and then you can attach the light to it and point it where you need it. Unless you really torture it the light should last a lifetime. The only issue I can see with it is the battery door latch wearing out after a few hundred changes.. but I would just drill a hole and put in a screw to fix that I think.

I'm very appreciative of all your time; you've thoroughly explained every aspect of this light