Wanted: 5 lumen warm color temp AA or AAA

The med-lights put out a very tight beam, btw, not at all like we’re used to with typical small reflectors. Best for very up-close viewing.

Try Walmart.
They will have some AA and AAA lights with very low lumens.

I used the very light you’re looking for tonight. 2xAAA incandescent maglight. Mine with eneloop is quite warm 2300-2500CCT maybe. Only one mode and right around the lumens you want. 100CRI to boot!

I have DC-FIX on my to smooth out the beam.

C01 3400K still available on AE

Wurkkos WK02 penlight. 2*AAA, moonlight mode and 4000k SST-20 95 CRI.
Maybe they have them on their site if you don’t like AliExpress.
There’s also. WK01 that’s a single AAA but the warm version is sold out.

Nah. I have a Lumintop iyp 365 which is very nice if you like MLH mode order. I use the Ultratac A3 at work for its LMH mode order and it’s very very decent. 219C but very good tint.

Both have beam patterns like every other AAA sized reflector led out there.

Neither of those are like the medical lights…

The nice thing about one that I linked is that it has modes but always comes on in the lowest so you never flash a patient accidentally. They’re specialty lights, though, not really at all like most pen lights or our regular small cell lights.

EDIT: Forgot to say "Welome to the Forum" to new member S2000.

With the large variety of lights I have purchased, it is somewhat disconcerting to admit that the lights I use the most are my reverse clicky tail switch "UltraTac A3" Pen Lights with two NiMH AAA batteries.

I prefer the longer thinner 2-cell AAA form factor with a tail switch compared to shorter single-cell AAA or thicker AA lights because they are easier for me to handle without fumbling around and they carry discretely in either a shirt or pants pocket when using a clip (and sometimes I carry an extra or two as emergency spares).

UltraTac lists the Lumens as "2 for Low", "30 for "Medium", "220 for High" and the LED as a >90 CRI Neutral White Nichia 219CT.

The "UltraTac A3" has "no memory" and defaults to "Low" brightness when turned ON if it has been OFF for at least 2 seconds, otherwise it cycles through the modes (Low, Medium, High) and repeats this cycle with full ON & OFF presses of the tail switch which occur faster than two seconds. While ON, half presses of the tail switch at any speed will cycle through the modes (Low, Medium, High) and repeat.

I am not sure what actually qualifies as a "Medical Light" and I do not need a medical light, but in their Amazon listing, UltraTac states the "A3" is a "Medical Pen Light", "Designed for Medical Personnel" and "Suitable for pupil inspection" but the beam from my "UltraTac A3" lights is rather floody and not tight and that is the beam pattern I prefer for my use cases.

This was the Amazon Listing for the "UltraTac A3", but unfortunately the "UltraTac A3" now shows as "Currently unavailable" (they were a great BudgetLight Buy at $10 each and I purchased 5 of them last year):

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0746CD4VC/?coliid=ID7S5S4WYI4BQ&colid=1CL6JB47UP1YF&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

I would be curious to see how the $32 "Nitecore MT06MD with Nichia 219B LED" mentioned by Correllux compares to the the "UltraTac A3 with Nichia 219CT" and I may have to purchase one to find out since I have not experienced the "legendary" Nichia 219B LED which I have read so much about.

You said warm but also red. Do you want a warm white, or just straight up red? If you want it to be red, besides the C01/C01R, your best bet might be to just put some red film on the lens.

Or if you mean warm as in orangey, I agree with an incandescent maglite. Take a look at this: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00002N9ET/
Dim (only 2 lumens claimed) and low color temp because incandescent.

I hope UltraTac is still a thing. The last 2-3 years they seem to be really under the radar and without stock to sell (or not much)…no response to customer service or amazon messages, either. I have a couple of their small lights and they have a good thing going. I hope they don’t disappear for good (like Rofis and so many others).

“Medical” light…some specific purposes and desired qualities but it does depend a little…not written in stone. I’m no expert here so what I know comes from some PA, nursing, and EMT friends, but that very low 5 lumen range in a warm temp is apparently the best for eye examination and doing “the check”, which I guess is more than just pupil reaction and size. It’s dim enough not to blind or cause any flinching and blinking, which can be important. For other uses like skin tone (lips, gums, nailbeds, etc) then brighter and higher temp seems acceptable, and high CRI certainly preferable (this is one reason why they have stuck with incandescent bulbs for so long). I think that matters more to them with black/brown skin pigmentation where it’s easy to miss or misjudge signs. That said, I hear that some people want an even lower lumen output like 3 lumens for eyes…maybe it depends on what they’re doing. And 50 or 100 lumens seems like it would be fine for general close work and skin tone but possibly harmful to the patients for eye checks, especially if they are not conscious/responsive. Like a lot of things there aren’t rules about labels and marketing terms, so anyone can call anything an X-type light I guess. I’m not sure if OP was looking for a light for medical use or not but they described it to a tee, being quite specific about 5 lumens and a single mode. There are many very good and excellent pen lights these days but the low-lumen med types are still kind of unique. One of my PA friends got by with some cheapie ribbed stainless incandescent model for most of her career (and she worked for a neurosurgeon)…one ER nurse friend had cheapie plastic jobs and a Welch Allen one that she thought was terrible and kept in her car instead. I would imagine that Welch cost a mint, knowing them…my old HID bike lights used parts from them and the price on dinky ballasts and fragile bulbs was bordering on criminal.

Surprised I haven’t seen u/ rngwn mentioned. Loving the high CRI 5mm LEDs they shipped me, been throwing them in every cheap light I can get my hands on.

This is a ~$5 host from walmart, boost driven single AAA. Very warm 1900k emitter. Swapped in a TIR lens from kaidomain to replace the cheap plastic reflector and lens that was there. The throw is unexpectedly impressive for what it is. Great learners project for anyone new to modding. Just use a battery inserted backwards to push all the guts straight out the head of the light and away you go!


!!

Generic 2 AA penlight with a #222 hotwire bulb.

Not the most efficient, but prefocused, very warm (especially with half-spent cells :laughing: ), and not terribly bright, but incredibly cheap.

Thanks for all the info. I ended up getting the Maglite solitaire incandescent 1 AAA as well as the 2 AA. The 2 AA did not work out, the battery life is horrible. I was getting around 1 hour of run time. The color temp was what I wanted and I liked the 10 lumens brightness level but the battery life made it unusable for my application. The 1 AAA has been working out. The batter life is better but not great, I swap in a rechargeable battery every few days. The 2 lumen output works but I would not mind a tiny bit more around 5 would be good. I wish it was button activated instead of twisting. I want to try the Sofirn C01 but other than aliexpress I can’t find it anywhere, according to aliexpress it won’t shit for a few months.

You could post a WTB for such a light. There must be someone in the US. I have lots of those lights but shipping from Germany is terribly expensive.

Or build one yourself. When Sofirn ran out of Yuji-LEDs, people took eg. the Sunwayman R01A and soldered rngwn’s HCRI 5mm LEDs into them:

There are lots of other hosts, some don’t even require soldering.

Wow, talk about constipated…

mcgizmo sapphire maxes out at 5 lumens; its a pretty nice light…

My version of aliex says delivery by Aug 21…

less than 4 weeks, and imo the light is perfect for you.

according to this zeroair review, runtime is 10 hours

a few years ago i got a 3000K BLF-A6

it;s very warm

and you can set many light levels on it

pretty sure number 2 can be about 5 lumens

i don;t even like it at low lumen levels, almost rather have a coolish light for that dim

wle

Only light I have that uses multiple AAA batteries and has both high cri / low linens and red led is a black and decker 2xaaa light that had a red 5mm led / a green 5 mm led and an Xpe ?
Stock it was red as low light .. green at about double the brightness (8 lumens?) and main Chinese? Emitter at about 30lumens but has throw.
I ended up sacrificing the green LED for one of the high color rendering 5 mm LEDs

A simple easy swap that made the light much nicer.

Black & Decker LED Pocket Flex Flashlight – 2 Pack $4.99< proving that it pays to be a BLF member:)

I also just put diffuser film over a 2X a a mag light for the first time. Wondering why I never did it before. Amazingly mag lights got away with selling lights with such a horrible beam .. all to be able to focus such an oddly artifacts pattern .

not perfect but 100 times better

i also have a 3$ plastic piece of junky headlamp that has a 5 mm red and had two 5mm cool white leds that got replaced with two of rngwn’s high cri 5mm leds .
Great little POS light headlamp with the bonus being > it runs on one AA battery. Has a great color weighs nothing ,costs nothing and ends up a great place to put half used alkaline batteries. There is some odd twisted pleasure of running a cell to nothing before tossing it.

Truth of the matter is I find red LEDs it’s not very useful and rarely use them. same with UV lights. Very gimmicky and hardly practical.

I see the same estimated delivery date of August 21 for the United States if I order today, for both the 3400K warm white and the 670nm deep red versions.

It should do better than that. Maglite rates the 2xAA mini for over 5 hours per the ANSI FL1 standard. It should gradually dim to about 10% of original brightness over that time.

By the way, I have an old Maglite Mini incandescent that I put a Yuji 5mm LED in (no longer available, but the rngwn LED’s mentioned in this thread are comparable). For this light and LED combo, it’s almost as easy as replacing a burned out bulb:

(1) Enlarge the hole in the base of the reflector with a 1/4” drill bit (or 13/64” if you have that size and want the closer fit)
(2) Sand a tiny little tab off the legs to make them smooth.
(3) Bend the legs to match the spacing of the incandescent bulb pins, then trim to the same length.

If you put it in backwards, it won’t turn on, but there’s no harm done. Just pull the LED out and rotate it 180 degrees.

It will theoretically run for days, starting out at maybe 10 lumens on fresh batteries, and just very gradually dimming.