The Lenser uses a 1-watt Luxeon. Luxeon's are MUCH brighter than other white LED's. There are a lot of Luxeon-based flashlights. Some have electronic regulation so the light operates at constant brightness throughout battery life. (I don't think that is true of the Lenser)
The better ones cost more, of course.
If high brightness is really important, there are also some 3-watt Luxeon lights. They can actually be too bright for some tasks, like reading a map, and of course their battery life is significantly less.
I hesitate to recommend any particular model because new ones keep showing up. My personal favorite is a little 1-watt from Cosmos that uses a single CR-123 battery. I don't think those are available anymore, though I think they do have a 3-watt version.
Yes, and the spot is considerably more uniform than that from a Mini-mag.
The beam divergence is about 10 degrees, with some "spill". I think you'd find it noticably superior to a Minimag. I do. It's quite able to illuminate a housenumber from the street.
Terra-Lux makes a retrofit for Mini-Mags that converts one to a 1-watt Luxeon. It has electronic regulation. The beam uniformity is not as good as that of the Lenser and some others, but it is plenty bright.
A 3-watt Luxeon in a 2D Maglight reflector compares well with a 6-volt lantern, throws a bright spot at least 100 meters. It produces 80 lumens. The 3D maglight with krypton bulb produces 39 lumens.
Wal-Mart /just/ started carrying the Dorcy 1-watt Luxeon Metal LED lights, ($18.99) which are the same thing as the regular Dorcy Luxeon Target and Sears have had for about a year now ($24.99) with the added feature of O-rings on the front and tailcap so it's water-resistant, though the packaging does not say this. The Sears 1-watt LED is labeled as waterproof but it doesn't seem as bright as the Dorcy. The Dorcy one is quite a bit heavier, though. It's got a narrow beam, as all LED lights seem to have, even the Coast Lenser ones (which have refractory lenses to make the beam a bit wider - at the cost of some illumination). You can take the cap off and it actually serves pretty well as a wide area light, which is unusual for an LED.
The LED museum
formatting link
has a lot of good information but it's difficult to find many of the lights mentioned and it doesn't have reviews for a lot of the lights that /are/ easy to find (such as the Garrity series that Wal-Mart has).
If you don't want to spend $20 per flashlight, the Brinkman $10 models Wal-Mart has are decent, but nowhere near the brightness of a Luxeon. The lights with multiple regular bright white LEDs usually have a bit wider beam than the single Luxeon ones. Another decent one I've seen is a Mag-Lite clone at Advance Auto Parts that has 3 LED lights (seems to be similar to a Dorcy model, possibly rebranded) for $12.
If you pick up a Coast or Eddie Bauer (Target, Coast rebranded) LED light, make sure you look at what kind of batteries it takes. You don't want to have to pay $10 a battery to refill it. It's not worth buying a flashlight that takes expensive Lithium batteries when you can finda Luxeon that takes 3 AAAs now.
Ask and ye shall receive. Niteize makes/imports a conversion unit for the genuine mini-Maglites. Has three white LEDs. Ran $6 for just the conversion unit from Micro Center, the local Ace had them with a replacement end cap switch for $10. Forget the switch, it's n.g., just get the conversion unit and reflector. They've angled the LEDs just ever so slightly so that you get one spot instead of three. Supposed to give a "bulb" life of over 100K hours and 4 times the battery life(haven't checked that yet). Spot isn't focusable and you don't get a wide-area light when you remove the reflector. Seem to be the only downsides. At $6, it only takes two bulb changes to pay for the sucker. The unit just plugs into the original pin holes, you DO have to make sure of the polarity. Apparenlty there's an on-board converter to up the volatge, you still only need 2 AA batteries, unlike some of the other LED flashlights that need a couple of lithiums or at least three AAs. Seems to be a good deal for guys like me that have a bunch of these mini-Maglites scattered in various toolboxes and pouches and want them to work when needed.
I bought one of these at Bass Pro Shops for $9. It had a slight tolerance problem with a capacitor rubbing against the reflector. I had to move it a little bit with a pair of pliers.
Now it works great and turned an otherwise useless tool (my dim 2AA mini-Maglite) into something that I can actually use.
I would like to upgrade my three 2-D Maglites, but those led conversion bulbs are rather expensive.
Oops, not quite, that black photo was a little hard to see. The one I brought back has 8 LEDs on 2 AAs at 200 mA (600 mW) with 5.5" length. Another fatter style has 12 LEDs on 3 AAAs at 200 mA (900 mW) with 4 inches length, and is uncomfortably bright. (My actual measurements, not just claims.)
They're obviously going for the tactical market: the fat one has "POLICE" engraved and paint-filled right on it.
Your power cites are battery power with fresh batteries. Some of that is lost in a dropping resistor. The Lenser V^2 (model 7736) uses a single Luxeon running at about 350 mA at about 3.42 volts (nominal).
I can illuminate treetops a block away with my Maglite. It's still pretty damn bright!
Isn't 3 watts more powerful than the normal 2-D Maglite bulb? I vaguely remember the krypton bulbs being 1.4 watts, but I can't find that information online anywhere to confirm it. It might have been a rough estimate I made with a few friends while talking about flashlights.
If those are accurate figures for the Luxeon, and the beam is still pretty tight (this I've found to be the problem with most LED flashlights), I'd be interested to try one in my Maglite. Any idea what they cost?
I just got a "TerraLUX TLE-5 Mini-Star2" today and put it in my mini-mag. It's much brighter than the original bulb. It rivals, and may even be a tad easier to see with than my 3-D cell Maglite. Actually, shining it 50 to 60 feet across my backyard tonight, the TLE-5 was easier to see with than my 3-D cell Maglite. Now I'll have to upgrade my 3 cell light to the 3 watt model :-).
The light spot from the Mini-Star2 is much more even than an incandescent light.
The TLE-5 model uses the 1 Watt Luxeon LED and the TerraLux chip that helps keep the brightness higher longer. IIRC, a FAQ that I read on the TLE-5 said they use the best LEDs that they can get from Luxeon - generally S grade. There isn't as much focusing of the beam as with the original light bulb but a little focus adjustment remains.
I got it from the people at . I ordered it on Sunday night and it was delivered in the (first class) mail Wednesday. They had the best price I could find too.
$24 for the TLE-5 plus $10 for the Mini-Mag Lite and you're close to what a good flashlight would cost :-(. I like the Mini-Mag form factor and weight better than a lot of the 1 watt LED flashlights that I've seen.
PolyTech Forum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.