In a survival situation, there are a few essentials you should never forget – shelter, water, food and rescue. However, in order to be capable to do that 24/7, what includes nighttime, you should never omit one thing – the light. Candles are cool, but there’s nothing to beat a good flashlight.
For me, ideal flashlight has to fulfill these specs:
- very common battery type (either AA or AAA)
- long runtime
- waterproof and shockproof
- medium beam distance with good spill
- affordable
There were 2 that fit to my AAA specs category, Fenix E01 and Klarus Mi10 (review to come) .
So, let’s have a look at Fenix E01 first :
- aluminum body
- Nichia white GS LED with 10 lumens
- 21 hour runtime ( 11 hours “sun”mode, 10 hours “moon”mode )
- waterproof IPX-8
Body: From what I can say, this flashlight is a little tank. It’s very sturdy, waterproof, it’s lacking reflector glass (what I think is more positive than negative thing = no glass to break) and it’s tiny! Not much bigger than single AAA battery. There are a few color variations you can choose from ( black, olive, gold, blue, purple ) – I own two golds. In fact, it’s more orange with yellow tint, than gold – that’s why I chose it, they are very easy to find. Fenix E01 is virtually indestructible - there were a few tests where it was frozen to the block of ice and the light was still running!
LED: Fenix chose Nichia GS LED for their E01 line – I can say, there are many better and brighter LEDs, like CREE XP-E, XM-L or newer XP-G Gen 2, but light output is not what I was looking for. In a crisis, there will be lack or resources and batteries are among the first things to go. I choose AAA, because you can find it literally everywhere, just have a look around: clock, remote control, mouse, RC model, almost everywhere. Fenix E01’s Nichia GS LED gives constant output of 10 lumens, which is electronically regulated, so there’s nothing like continuously fading light while battery drains – it gives constant, steady output. Battery capacity decrease was solved by two automatic modes which Fenix calls SUN (10 lumen) and MOON mode ( less than 10 ). Advertised runtime is 21 hours, which depends on battery used. Overall, 10 lumens is just enough for the tasks, I was a little surprised by the beam distance – in a dark, I’m able to light up objects up to 35 meters! That’s fantastic for such a little light. The light is white with a little blue/violet in the middle – what I consider a little drawback.
Oh, and I forgot one detail: this little tank costs around 14$ ! Definitely very affordable..
RATING:
LIGHT OUTPUT: 5/10
BUILT QUALITY: 9/10
VALUE: 10/10
LIKABILITY – total rating: 8/10 - recommended
Wait for comparison shots! 
