What is the lamest flashlight you own?

I'm not talking about a light that's actually higher quality but you don't like on a personal level. I'm talking about a light so lame and wimpy that even normal people think it's a joke.

This is that light for me







If you look it has two sets of LEDs and it is designed so you can have one light source pointing ahead and another illuminating your foot path. I use the word "designed" very loosely but it seemed like it would be a decent little novelty light.

It's trash. Absolute trash. The LEDs are garbage even by the lamest of standards and the angle of the beams don't even illuminate where it's supposed to illuminate.

The packaging showed an old woman walking her dog in the dark and having a great time. But when I turned it on all I could think of was this old woman getting lost and falling off a cliff in the darkness.

This was at the start of my flashlight collecting so I wasn't that picky and have learned from my mistakes. But this one still remains the lamest light I own.

None. Every one I own is great. If it puts out light in darkness it's a keeper.

What is the lamest flashlight you own? One man's trash is another man's treasure. What I think is junk/a scam, someone else will happily use for average working material.

When I think I have scraped the bottom of the barrel, along comes a lower barrel.

When I think I found a budget flashlight that cost one cent to make, along comes a flashlight that cost one tenth of a cent to make.

I own some lame flashlights that sometimes turn on, because I bought them to give them away/loan them out, but I changed my mind and decided to not embarrass myself, and I have not given them away/not loaned them out.

Anything under $USD<insert your number here>.

To me the most lamest torch I have is the sunwayman t25c. The light works fine, it's the battery tube that is the worst of its kind. It's hard to find the right battery size that will fit. I tried all types of unprotected batteries and brands. Only one of all the 6 types I have will fit. If I install the wrong one, good luck getting it out since it doesn't unscrew from the head.

bdogps said:

To me the most lamest torch I have is the sunwayman t25c. The light works fine, it's the battery tube that is the worst of its kind. It's hard to find the right battery size that will fit. I tried all types of unprotected batteries and brands. Only one of all the 6 types I have will fit. If I install the wrong one, good luck getting it out since it doesn't unscrew from the head.

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I have a random 18650 that is too short for most lights. It a total pain

I have an old yellow dynamo squeeze flashlight. Light uses a bulb as it predates l.e.d.s. Has no battery to charge. Squeezing it gives you a second or two of light. The act of squeezing it moves the light out of the area you need it. Trying to keep the light where you need it while squeezing it gets your fingers pinched.

I also have an old plastic Brinkmann 2 AA l.e.d. flashlight that's nearly 20 years old. I think it runs on a first or second generation Nichia 5 mm l.e.d. (Nichia BS l.e.d.) Puts out about maybe 3 lumens with a bullseye pattern tight beam (very ringy beam). It's the size of a light that uses a 26650 lithium ion battery. I think it was one of the first lights that used 2 cells instead of three. It was state of the art then, now it's from the stone age of l.e.d. technology.

Anything that lights the things I need to see could not be lame

Streamlight Tasklight 1AA and 2AA

I bought 2 of those cheap aluminum 100 led shower-head monstrosities years ago and they have never been used.

John.

My brother bought me a draper aluminium torch from the £1 store. He thought it was a joke but it's the go to light for attending to the kids when the decide to wake me up in the middle of the flippin night! Always on moonlight, because thats it's one and only mode

6 LED flashlight from Harbor Freight is the lamest one I have. Funny thing is, it's my wife's favorite. It has a simple on and off clicky.thats it

Some years back, I bought a couple of 2D cell, plastic, PR2 bulb flashlights to convert for use in an astronomy lecture I was attending. I had to make them dim and red, so I put about 5 layers of stop light repair tape over them -only to find more light was coming out behind the reflector than through the red tape - so I had to wrap the whole head in electrician's tape. Later I turned one back into a white-light flashlight. It's now my standard of lameness - no matter how low-power a modern LED light is, it always blows away the brownish spotlight produced by these things. Two for $6, I think - arguably the wrong tool for the job.

Bill

I have a Sunwayman T16R that I don't even list because I never use it, it would be my lame light. Not that it is awful, but because it just isn't my personality. I don't really have a use for a 100% IMAX wall of pure flood light the size of my thumb. It feels odd in my hand due to its size, it has a rechargeable CR123 battery that irritates me every time I think if it...I loathe CR123 batteries with every fibre of my flashlight being.

Otherwise I use everything on my list and none are lame.

TinderBox (UK) said:

I bought 2 of those cheap aluminum 100 led shower-head monstrosities years ago and they have never been used.

John.

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Mod it with a hundred xhp70's and you have a keeper...or if you want to be a gentleman and light a cigarette for a lady, say on the moon...

For me, it'd be this old 2AA Mini Maglite. About the only nice things I can say about it, were that it always worked when I needed it, and the bronze finish was very pretty, when the light was new. It actually still looks halfway decent today, only because I always stored it in its sheath, when carrying it. It saw a good amount of use, before I got educated in what was available in decent flashlights.

That little Nitecore MT21a blows away the Maglite, in every possible sense.

Maglite's anodizing is very low quality, so the finish on these lights scuffs off way too easily. They're also not fully waterproof, which, by my standards, is unacceptable for any kind of EDC flashlight, in this day and age. I'm also not a fan of twisty interfaces, or lights with only one mode.


It's the one on the left.

Louzy output (about 15 lumens), from the stock incandescent bulb; hideous beam pattern (focused, or flood), awful run times. I never got around to upgrading this to an LED drop-in - and probably never will. I run it on Eneloops, on those rare occasions when I use it. It, pretty much serves as a reminder, to me, of how far we've come, in Flashlight World. At one time, this was considered quite the powerful little flashlight.

DIPSTIX said:

6 LED flashlight from Harbor Freight is the lamest one I have. Funny thing is, it's my wife's favorite. It has a simple on and off clicky.thats it

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Those HF LEDs are not that bad if you get them for free with one of their coupons. They are fairly bright for up close, or at least bright enough for most close up tasks, though they don't have much throw and eat up batteries pretty fast (especially the cheapo no name heavy duty zinc batteries they come with). I find them to work fairly well and are not bad to have around as loaners or beaters.

I got two USB Hard drive cases, the actively led was so bright it lit up the wall 10ft away, I had to put a black sticker over them to calm them down.

John

Hooked on Fenix said:

I have an old yellow dynamo squeeze flashlight. Light uses a bulb as it predates l.e.d.s. Has no battery to charge. Squeezing it gives you a second or two of light. The act of squeezing it moves the light out of the area you need it. Trying to keep the light where you need it while squeezing it gets your fingers pinched.

I also have an old plastic Brinkmann 2 AA l.e.d. flashlight that's nearly 20 years old. I think it runs on a first or second generation Nichia 5 mm l.e.d. (Nichia BS l.e.d.) Puts out about maybe 3 lumens with a bullseye pattern tight beam (very ringy beam). It's the size of a light that uses a 26650 lithium ion battery. I think it was one of the first lights that used 2 cells instead of three. It was state of the art then, now it's from the stone age of l.e.d. technology.

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Holy crap. I'm pretty sure I had the dynamo squeeze thing when I was a kid. It was crap. And so loud

DIPSTIX said:

6 LED flashlight from Harbor Freight is the lamest one I have. Funny thing is, it's my wife's favorite. It has a simple on and off clicky.thats it

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I think everyone has one like this laying around. Mine is stamped Harley Davidson but it's probably made in the same Chinese factory. The light flickers, the click switch is intermittent and angry blue doesn't even begin to describe the led tint. I had it in my motorcycle bag for years as an emergency flashlight. It is being replaced by a Surefire Titan A thanks to this forum. (longtime lurker, new poster).
Flashlights are like pizza though; no such thing as bad pizza.:twothumbs

bykfixer said:

None. Every one I own is great. If it puts out light in darkness it's a keeper.

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This.