One 2 star review complained about needing a screwdriver to change the batteries. This could be a downside. Better from the construction perspective, but maybe not very good if you are in the dark with no tools… Is this true?
I don’t have a recommendation for an ideal “dummy proof” light.
Being defined as elderly does not make one incapable of handling a flashlight in a dark place. I do that every night. Some would lump me into the catchall ‘eldery’ category. At age 76 I admit to being older than many, but not incapable of negotiating safe passage from room to room, between car and garage, etc in a power outage. I know people half my age who should probably not be trusted with candles or fuel burning lights.
Physical health and mobility and dexterity would be a better criteria to use than age.
For the large 4D version here are two of the old style, use a quarter (or screwdriver) to unscrew for the battery replacement, the smaller one you just unscrew the base with your hand.
Surely your parents won’t be doing things in the dark, will they?
I have little AAA lights that I hang in places where I might need a little extra light, or at stations for blackouts.
For blackouts, I save the lanterns for if people are over or when doing something like cooking or repairing something, and when by myself I hang a AAA light from my neck and wear a 1-AA headlamp.
For a sustained blackout, I put rechargeable batteries in these and set them around the house, and in the morning set them in a southern window to recharge.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01ETHG0JO/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Another lepro option here. These hanging bulbs/lanterns are great because you can clip them just about anywhere and are simple to use. These do require AAA batteries. However in an outage, you may want to be using a primary cell lantern anyways. Your usual USB charger may not be available. 10+ hours of run time.
PN: lepro 330030-4
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B083TXB5QY/ref=emc_b_5_i
my favorite energizer lantern:
- a 1000 lumen spotlight with a 3D printed diffuser.
It’s an interesting topic for me that I hadn’t considered. Of course, not all elderly are decrepit, but my late grandmother was one of those types who refused to have caretakers, but realistically couldn’t take care of herself. She loved those giant floating Eveready dolphin lights, but would always drop them, the further she aged. Her attempts to pick lights up would eventually lead her to taking a fall a couple of times and injuring herself. She passed many years ago, and we lived in a rural area at the time and didn’t have access to or even know about motion/timer activated lanterns or lights.
A couple of those can’t hurt, a flashlight by the bed and in the kitchen drawer and a lantern or two and a few of those lepros should cover the bases.
The simplest of all would be those lights that look like a light switch and operate like one.
Most old people can move around their house pretty well, so a simple flashlight should enable them to set up the lanterns and such as they like, for me the biggest deal of all is a headlamp to read a book by because blackouts can get boring.
Keeping the batteries and lamps in a rarely used closet with a motion sensor battery light (or one of those light switch lights) would be useful also.
I probably shouldn’t have mentioned elderly at all - and just posted my lantern wish list.
During a power outage, especially here in rural Australia, there are usually plenty of other things going on (trees down, flooding etc), so I was hoping to simplify the lighting situation as much as possible.
My parents are still running chainsaws and driving tractors, so they’re not quite ready for the nursing home.
They have headlamps (TH20s) and heaps of other flashlights - just not a decent lantern.
After all that, I’ll probably just get them an LT1S when they come on sale in November.
And print out a cheat sheet for the UI and stick it on the base. If they hate it, I’ll try something else and pocket the LT1S.
Anyway, thanks for the suggestions, and the animated discussion. Good to see that many of the BLF crew are 60/70+ and still fired up.
I showed my 78 year old mum this thread and she gave me the very serious I’m not elderly look.
I’d have them try an LT1S or even even an LT1 with a plate affixed to the base to add stability. I like the long run tomes of 4 of the 18650 cells.
It is not something that I need for MY parents. I am not the OP. But surely we all know that Murphy’s Laws will apply. Surely if the batteries can fail at night during a power failure, they will.
So a design that requires some kind of tool and manual dexterity to change batteries is not ideal for the stated purpose.
I have a couple of D cell lanterns where the entire base unscrews for battery changes. They too are a bit of a PIA. Getting those threads started against spring pressure can be a challenge.
Whether either is doable in what might be a stressful situation, is dependent on the capabilities of the person doing it, I guess.
Hi everyone! Did anyone ever used something like this? 淘宝网 - 淘！我喜欢 Seller stands for 5000-5600 mAH and 300 Lm max. Battery capacity looks real as he sent me this image of internals. I like the super simple UI and battery life, but what’s with usability? Is this bright enough to light a room? Is it comfortable to use on table during cooking, or LT1S will be better? Although I can get two of them for the price of LT1
Could it light a room? Depends on personal interpretation.
300 lumens is something like a 25 watt incandescent bulb. As well there is the question of how accurate is the sellers description of 300 lumens? Your guess is as good as mine. Often there is “no free lunch”.
They claim 6 hours run time from 5600 mAh. Looks like about 200-300 Lm indeed.
Only blackout I’ve experienced since the Great Eastern Seaboard Blackout was an overnighter when a tree keeled over and took out the powerlines up’n’down the block, which fried and had to be replaced.
My ol’ Zanflare lantern, the T1 or whatever, lasted all night on medium-ish power, a nice warm-white.
My AA-fed Wuben E03 (??) with diffuser lit up the catbox.
In fact, aside from ceiling-bounce, any decent flashlight with diffuser could double as a lantern in a pinch.
If it doesn’t have a decent simple UI out of the box, but has andy1 or andy2, you can set manual memory to always start on level X regardless how it might be (mis)adjusted while in use. Just off then on would reset it.
Alternatives could be those teeny little USB lights that you just stick into a powerbank, etc.
In my opinion, the most important feature for this use is an automatic turn on. Get at leas one of this simple emergency lights in every room.
It sits in a spare wall outlet and turn on automatically during power outage.
in my country you can get them for less than 10 USD in "dollar stors"
https://rechargeables.co.za/products/eurolux-6w-plug-in-3-7v-600ah-rechargeable-led-emergency-light
It is not very bright and not last many hours but you never find yourself in the dark so you can easily find your good lentern
I have three like that and have had them for years. A few years ago I noticed the actual run time of one had become very poor. I was able to open it and found it used NiMH cells, which I replaced. I swapped all three eventually.
For years I’ve considered building a light specifically for this purpose, with 4P 18650 (or 21700, nowadays), USB charging, single mode driver and a pair of 4000K emitters on passive heatsinks. I’ve never had time to find all the bits on eBay, but I don’t believe it would be challenging to solder/glue/bolt together- hardest part is probably finding a single mode, efficient driver with LVP.
How about an Olight swivel? I just gave one to my mother. She wanted to know how to charge it when it runs out and I told her it’s a usb-c cable. She sez “like my phone?” And pulled out the charger and that’s exactly right. It attaches to her walker and she walks around the house with it. Like a moped. She has it on the fridge at the moment along with the other magnets, so i see they’re getting along.
Wellp, one thing that’s overlooked are those solar-powered motion-lights. I got one downstairs by the catbox that turns on when it detects motion (me or the cats) and lights up a nice warm-white. If I turn on the overhead light, the motion-light turns off to conserve power. When it runs down (no sun to recharge it, obviously), all I do is hit it from a powerbank until it’s charged, then that last me another week or so.
I probably wouldn’t recommend keeping it hooked up to an AC-powered usb adapter, but once a week is fine, especially with the cats going there several times per day each.
And you can carry them like a regular lantern, as they just pop on the hard-mount, and can otherwise sit flat on any surface.
My parents are elderly, on the verge of needing assisted living facilities. As such, they insisted that they ride out Hurricane Ian on Fort Myers Beach and refused to go to the mainland. We’ve always had a hurricane plan and they’ve successfully went through many hurricanes, including Cat 4s with the plan. The plan specifies to GTFO for Cat 5. Unfortunately, Ian’s storm surge was clearly a Cat 5 at their location, 25+ ft waves. Those took out the 3 generators, by either flooding them or the propane tanks floating away.
Here’s my notes/advice from riding out many hurricanes on a barrier island:
1) Skip rechargeables. They’re not going to keep up with them and they’ll be dead/failed when they do need them. The plug-in power failure lights will fail over time.
2) Simple is better. Remember, this is emergency lighting, not for fun. While all of us here appreciate high-CRI and varying color temperatures, flashes, configurable elements, our elderly parents are just wanting “light”.
3) Long run-times and low self-discharge will keep everyone happy. This is not a time for a lumen drag-race. Your parents WILL put the light to its highest setting then complain that it doesn’t last long. Mine also refuse to change batteries and toss the lights when they “stopped working”.
4) Cheap, but not too cheap. No need for anodized aluminium nor IP ratings here. They’re just going to throw them out anyway.
5) Primary alkaline cells rule. There’s no questioning how much power is in a sealed pack of AA or D-cell batteries. If I know I can get an evening out of 3 AA batteries and I have a 48 pack, I know there’s 16 days of power there. How many mAh are left in your 18650s, especially since they’re no longer new and haven’t seen a charger in awhile?
6) Label the lights with intensity / runtime charts. I put P-touch labels of this info on the lights and it helped encourage my parents to use the lower power settings. This is also reassuring because they can check the battery box and calculate how much power they have left on-hand.
With that out of the way, here’s what they found helpful, and we still find helpful some 9 weeks after the hurricane since we don’t have power in the building yet:
1) Mr. Beams MB530. (3x C-Cells) Constant glow mode at night, which is actually bright when there’s no power for miles. This is greatly underappreciated until you need it. Power goes out, these will be glowing. The motion sensor will kick them up to high when needed. I normally have them set to 20 seconds, but come hurricane time I push them up to 60 seconds to be more useful as room lights. These guys are still ticking strong. Before the hurricane we kept most of these on the floor, underneath the bed, in the toe-kick areas of the bathroom cabinets, and sometimes on shelves. In the event of a longer power outage, they’d carry one of these to the lantern cabinet and break out the lanterns. Now I have them temporarily hanging by doors, stairwells, bathrooms and other places people might need a light but forget to shut it off or need to be hands-free. In my normal use they last about 1-2 years. In hurricane use, we still haven’t killed them yet. C-Cells seem to be easier to find after a hurricane.
2) Mr. Beams MB500. (2x AAA cells). These put out the constant glow of the MB500 and not much else. Basically guide lights in normal times. When power’s out for miles they do light up a room enough to move around, but not enough to read by. Lasts about 6 months between battery changes normally.
3) Costco “Duracell” lanterns. (8D & 4D models) These were the true workhorses during the hurricane and now during the cleanup. Warm-enough tints, very long-lasting, very bright, simple interface, cheap, uses regular D-cells. Battery insertion in the 8D cell one’s a pain, but it lasts so long that you won’t likely be changing them often, even when using them daily. The 4D/rechargeable one is garbage with a terrible color tint.
4) Nitecore LA10 (single AA). These use AAs and work as both a flashlight and a lantern. The magnetic end is nice to stick on things. We have the high-CRI models.
5) Fenix CL20, non-R version. (2xAA or 1x CR123) These have been great in the stairwells. Bright, uses AAs or CR123s, magnetic so it sticks right to the stairs. Fantastic neutral-white light with good CRI. I wish they still made these. I only have 6 left and I guard them. The rechargeable ones are completely useless to me since we haven’t had power in weeks.
6) Fenix CL23, non-R version. (1-3 AAs). Similar to the CL20, but uses 1-3 AAs. Slightly cooler tint, but okay. The front-only setting was useful at saving batteries yet providing light. If this had the same color tint as the CL20, it’d probably be my favorite lantern.
7) Sofirn SC31Pro (1x18650). I bought a pile of these cheap off Alibaba awhile back. Best feature: the illuminated power button. I have it in the nerf’d mode. Problem: they’re rechargeable, so of limited use for a long outage. USB-rechargeable and uses the same connector as their phones, so they do sometimes charge them. They used these mainly when needing to look longer distances outdoors at night.
as for my personal hurricane stash, add in all of the above plus:
A) Haven Ridgelight USB. Far more efficient than the Luminoodle, better color temperature, good product overall. I have a few magnetic hooks I use with this. It’s a shame they didn’t put sliding magnets on this like the real Luminoodle has. I do have the color Luminoodles, but they draw 3x+ more power than the Ridgelight and their fake white color is…meh. I save the Luminoodles for parties & such when I’m near power. Not for extended outages.
B) Brighttech USB string lights. They are surprisingly bright and do seem to last quite awhile on a USB battery pack. I know there are now other brands of these, but I’ve not tried them. Lately I’ve been using them to light up one of the stairwells, as it’ll do 3 stories per string.
C) BLF LT1. I have 4 of these and they truly are awesome. They’re rechargeable and charge slow, so not ideal for long-term use.
D) An LED traffic barricade blinkie. Set to steady illumination, it makes a great nightlight and you know it’ll run forever.
E) Various USB packs & solar panels. Gotta keep the USB stuff going somehow for long outages. The INIU 10,000 mah paw-print ones are more than happy to power miniscule loads, whereas my big beefy Anker 26.8k packs will shut off.
F) Various headlamps. Some cheap, some nice. Cheap ones use AAAs which usually can be found after storms since everyone’s using D-cells.