I have to express my disappointment, nay anger at the fact that the cheap, poorly designed, tasteless Vont lantern is the first result that shows up when you search for “lantern” on Amazon and that it is so highly rated (4.7 with 9051 reviews as of this post). I’m not even going to give a link this lantern since it’s unworthy of even that.
The fact that this crappy lantern has such high ratings points to very good marketing on Vont’s part. If only the lantern itself was even half as good.
If you search for “lantern” in Google the Vont lantern makes it into various 10 top lantern lists or if you search for it on YouTube there are lots of reviews giving it 5 stars or whatever. And the reason is pretty clear - it’s because these “reviewers” are really shills that want to make a buck off of the affiliate program so of course sing songs of praise on this junk lantern in hopes to get consumers who don’t know a lumen from a lux to buy the crappy thing using their provided link. I’ve never seen so many “giveaway contests” for a lantern before.
These paid “reviewers” give sales to this Vont lantern and since these unsuspecting consumers have been told ahead of time how great this cheap lantern is, they end up giving high reviews for the lantern themselves on amazon saying things like “it’s so bright!” without even knowing what a lumen is. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if a large number of the reviews on Amazon were paid as well.
Let’s go over the bad qualities of this lantern:
- The glass isn’t diffused at all, it’s just 30 leds shining outwards to give the maximum amount of blinding eye glare. “It’s so bright!” indeed.
- The tint of the leds can only be described as a cold blue
- You “dim” the lantern by collapsing it which just makes the shell block the leds. Of course this won’t increase the runtime whatsoever.
- The light pattern is just light shining outwards. To get the most out of the brightness you would have to have it at eye level which would give the most eye straining blinding glare
- It’s made from cheap plastic
- It runs off of 3 AA batteries so most of the advertised “up to 12 hours of runtime” will be far from the advertised 170 lumens
Fine, to be fair these things are inexpensive, 2 for $16 or 4 for $30 has got to be appealing to the average customer who knows jack shit about a quality light. I’m sure when looking at a better light they think “but I can get so many of these other lanterns for the same price, and look how highly rated they are!” Yeah, thanks shills. But you absolutely get what you pay for and if it’s cheaply priced then the lantern is cheaply designed too, and oh boy is it.
If I sound irrationally angry about the large number of positive reviews and shills pushing this crappy product it’s because I am. It’s like praising a McDonald’s hamburger like it’s this healthy, great tasting food. It brings us as humans down culturally to think this cheap thing passes as a good lantern.