Quechua BL 40 Lantern

I recently bought a lantern from Decathlon for 7.5$, goes by the name Quechua BL 40 LUMENS CAMPING/HIKING LAMP . I bought the orange variant , they also had lime and blue color options available.

The lantern came without any retail packaging at all, :expressionless: strange. To make matters worse when I opened the parcel the light was ON and was warm to touch. Don’t know if they shipped them in on mode or whether the courier guy accidentally squished the package and the button got pressed. Anyways it must have drained the included batteries enough.

Basically it’s single function lantern that works on 3xAA cells. Advertised brightness of 40 lumens with a 60 hour runtime. Weight and Dimension according to the website is 152 gram and H 8.1cm x D 8.1cm.



The translucent diffuser seems to be a very good quality material since it’s neither too opaque nor too transparent. Just perfect . Also the build quality of the diffuser is very sturdy.
I did not like the shape but it’s ok I guess because sometimes we need a change from all those generic ones out there. It’s a single piece cup so water splashes from the top side would pose no immediate threat. Button is on the side and has a good clicky feel.



Unscrew the base and the battery bay is revealed. 3xAA batteries go in there and is not too tight or too loose. Perfect fit. Connectors are of clip type and not spring type.
The carabiner hook can be folded and the unit can stand on the table. There is a snap action to this movement so it wont jump out unnecessarily when not expecting.
However the hinges for the carabiner hook is of plastic and I don’t think it can withstand any punishment. The bottom also has some cool patterns but it’s just for visual and does not help in improving grip or friction.


Inside the cover there is an rubbery gasket but I don’t think it’s very effective. I may be wrong. Best guess is this thing might withstand some minor splashes or wet hands. The button has a rubber cap but I do not know whether it seals the unit effectively or not.


Here is the most interesting part, Originally I bought this lantern so that I could mod it and replace the cool white default led with a Neutral white led. What happened was that this light came with a nice cozy Neutral white led. Quite unexpected :sunglasses: . seems like about 4500K.
Light is bright enough for my purpose so I decided not to replace the default led. Since this is a tent light I believe it is more than bright enough for use inside a tent. I don’t know whether it’s 40 lumens or not but it does have a decent brightness. I have a no name 1W 3xAA collapsible camping lantern cool white but that one is brighter than this Quechua one, partly due to the fact that it has no diffuser + it consumes more power + cool white leds have usually more brightness than warm white and neutral white ones…
Diffuser does a pretty good job of not wasting too much light unlike some of my USB lights which has thick and nearly opaque diffuser which eats up most of the lumens.

Current draw is about 107.5mA when measured with my multimeter. Voltage on included batteries at the time of reading current draw was 4.3V. I did not try it with eneloop NiMH but it will probably work fine. This means that the light consumes 0.46W of power. Which means the light should run for about 20 hours or so. The advertised claims seems to be double the actual possible runtime.

I have seen chinese variants on Aliexpress with multiple brightness modes and even with red flasher mode and even seen rechargeable variants (I will post links to those when I find them again). Decathlon also sells a dynamo hand crank variant of this.

Conclusion - I like this lantern very much, Two most important factors I like is the diffuser material and the light color temperature. One thing I did not like is that it has only a single mode. A low and a high mode would have been much appreciated. :+1:

Update: - I’m adding internals photo

The unit is secured by 3 snap close mechanism that can easily be pried open. The matte diffuser material is good, you can clearly see the pattern behind it when placed close to that surface but not when placed a bit away. :blush:


Looks like a transistor + mosfet based current regulation (components read J3Y transistor and A1SHB mosfet) on a 5630 led? I did not take the time to measure the size, anyways it’s a single smd led setup which can easily be replaced.
Solder jobs from the battery connectors looks flimsy.

looks nice!

Thanks for review.
It i nice to find NW light for that money.
I will buy one.

As long as you don’t expect stellar brightness from this lantern. :slight_smile:

Also if you have a Decathlon store nearby you can try the lantern in there before you buy.

Looks like I found those Chinese clones

The first on looks like it’s exactly identical. 3 Modes LED Portable Lantern 4.6$

Maybe same manufacturer that makes the lantern for Quechua decided to sell it in a different name.
They have Orange and a Dark Blue variant only. Cannot confirm the light color temperature but looks like it also includes a red led and red flashing mode in addition.
Dimensions seems to differ from the quechua model since this is smaller due to to 7.5cm HxD.
They do have a product working video and funny thing is that they do have a product packaging. :question:

The second one is not so similar.High Quality Emergency Lamp Tent Light Lantern 3$

Diffuser looks real crappy. Battery connectors are spring type. Has a magnetic base. Has multiple color options.
Don’t know about lighting modes or color temperature.

Here is mine:

Pretty good for this money.

Nice. :+1:

Can you confirm the color temperature of your unit. Is it cool white or neutral white?

I have updated the post with internals photo.

Looks like NW, but can not say exact color temperature.
Decathlon offers other models and they has same NW tint. Which is actually very good.

Good to hear that. :+1: It’ not true Neutral white but it is somewhere in between cool and warm whites.