Review: RayOVac "Value Bright" 10x LED 6v Floating Lantern

Howdy!

Talk about “leaning in to the strike zone & taking one for the Team”…

I was in Wally last night buying windshield wipers (yeah, it rains here sometimes) and of course I had to stop by the flashlight section.

This one jumped out and begged me to take it home:

The 10-LED reflector plate just begs for some kind of mod:
The LEDs sort-of resemble the old “P4” emitters that used to be popular, but they’re not. Closer inspection (always take your magnifying glasses to the store, Dumbo!!) reveals they seem to be some sort of giant Straw Hats with weird Anode & Cathode… Not sure they’re worth looking up, TBH.

And at a price of $5.48, with a $3.00 battery, I became weak and yielded to temptation of a $2.00 floaty, black plastic mod host.

LET ME PLEASE DISSUADE YOU FROM MAKING THE SAME MISTAKE! JUST SAY “NO!!!” TO THIS DIMLY ANNOYING LUMP!

I’m going to take it apart to see if it’s moddable at all, although it seems to be a kludge front end to a standard PR-based 6v lantern. Most likely I’d use the battery itself as a current-limiting device for a brace of XM-Ls (to keep from wasting a good driver here), but not any time soon!

I’ll not annoy you with beam shots. Not worth the bits on disk to record them, to be honest. Sorry, Ray-O-Vac, but you just completely missed the boat on this one! Up close, the fringe of the beam has a flower-petal effect, with the 10 tiny spots where the LEDs are, and this all “blends” into a ringy, dim, blue-white dot with a way-too-dim spill, at about 3-4 feet, if it even matters., It doesn’t throw worth a damn either, even with the too-tiny “hot” spot.

My POS Ultrafire 501b with a v1 Nanjg-105c (2.8A) and 3C XM-L in an OP reflector, blows this one completely out into the water, where I’d leave it floating as a back-marker to show (briefly) where we’ve been. A new 501b/XM-L/2.8A, which will Throw AND Flood better than this one, can be had for <10USD, so this one’s ~6USD price (w/taxes) is about 3x too high for the light OTF.

Speaking of “floating”, there has been no attempt to seal the threads, so I’m guessing the “float” claim has more to do with the overly-heavy 6v lantern battery weighing the back end down enough to keep the bezel joint above the waterline. If I were to mod it, I’d seal the threads with paraffin & seal the reflector plate with acrylic caulk (to avoid possible damage from silicone’s VOCs)…

Speaking of the battery, I can see where this one would give amazing battery life, as most owners would likely never turn it on after the first couple of times!

IFF I can afford the 10 XM-Ls, in a variety of tint bins (the better to ultimately achieve a reasonable facsimile of “White” light), this could be an interesting boat/trunk/shed light…

Of course, that means this $2.00 host would become a ~$30.00+ show-off, and still not be sealed against water/dust intrusion… Hopefully by then it will outperform a low-end P60…

For now, NRN as I may ultimately delete this entire thread for lack of interest (on my part); but I wouldn’t want to see any of my friends here get fooled like I was!

Thanks for reading!

Dim

I’m guessing the idea is to trick people with its size.
Its big. It must be bright-ish. It has 10 leds each with a reflector. It has to be bright-ish. Right? Right?

If it was smaller and dim, well ok.

It was $5.48? It makes you wonder. Its really worth it to manufacture this weak thing, ship big boxes of this light to who knows how many stores, take up room on shelves & employee time…. For what? To trick customers into paying $5, customers who in the end think to themselves “Wow, RayOVac sucks.” and I need to watch what I buy from that store. To everyone who was involved in that light… Good job, I guess?

if you mod this light with 10 5mm 30lumens leds, you will get 300 lumens with this.
But may not worth the mod, because these leds will cost you about $1.5x10=$15, excluding shipping.

That’s what I thought, anyway.

Just goes to show you, about a fool and his money.

The LED mount is brainlessly simple:

with a net 60 ohms Rlim (in 4 parts to share the massive current) and the obligatory Cold Solder Joint which must act as a circuit breaker if the powerful LEDs go into “Thermal Runaway”:
and of course you can see the trash leftover from the manufacturing process… Pride in Craftsmanship? Not a chance!

I didn’t get it photographed, but the base of the PR adaptation is broken too, so only a tiny point of contact there.

I’m quite blind, of course, but I would almost swear those resistors have rust on them, but I’m sure it’s just flux… Right? I plan on adapting the “next-mode memory pencil fix” trick to lower Rlim some… Maybe I’ll just jumper them for awesome Direct Drive!

I’m off to throw the I Ching to decide whether or not to put it all back together & take it back to Wally for a refund. That’s the only way Ray-O-Vac will get any feedback, but it’s hardly worth the gas money. I guess the least I can do is repair their bad solder joint & try to get some decent light out of it first…

After Easter Dinner with the in-laws, of course!! TTFN!

pure garbage

Like you said I'd assume the only goal is to get old parts out of the building .

It floats .....

reminds me of the scene in " Caddy shack" when someone dropped a Baby Ruth into the pool

I'm actually fumbling through modding the 4AA Rayovac lantern (has one of those LEDs). My plan was a single NW XM-L run off 2x7135's for 700mA for my daughters use. I spent about 5 hours on it Saturday and as much as I wanted to abandon it I couldn't! I just HAD to find a way to make it work! 5 hours so far and I'm probably just a little over half done!

Sometimes you do need to run away before you get sucked into a light that's just gonna waste your time and turn out like crap! By the way, if I do get my mod to work, I will post up a build thread.

-Garry

Except even I would eat a Baby Ruth like that! In this case it would be what the old hater woman believed it was…

It’s really just a challenge to my mad modding skills!

Hey! I heard you snickering out there! It isn’t funny, so stop that!

It's the retro design. It makes me nostalgic, but I can't see how this body style can be updated and be good and practical.

Next time I go to Wally World, you can come with me. I’ll let you carry my baseball bat (unless you’d rather wield a Massaranduba Jō stick) so you can help me get past “that” aisle. Swing for the fences, because I’m widely known for having a hard head.

I’d pay you for that!

I will bet this thing has 25 lumens or less, those 5mm LEDs are not known for being bright, they are just very cheap, and did i mention cheap, junk.
If you had told us they match the output of an XM-L getting 1 watt i would call you a bald face liar, these exist to sell to people who have no inclination to look for actual lighting

Thanks for taking one for the team. I've looked at that lantern a couple times. I probably would have bought it by now if I didn't already have several plastic spotlight mods underway. Each is killing me on the heat sinking. That reflector looks like it might be worth the $6 though. How does it look to you and what is the OD?

Ditto, my brother!

Except the old ones were brighter, even for beaming that dull brown tint.

I guess the point is the lovely flower-petal beam shape up close… I may shoot that one, just so you won’t think I’m sniffing glue. But that means I’d have to put it back together, so it may be awhile.

I don’t think they match the output of a match!

Even I couldn’t spin a whopper like that! Thanks for thinking of me, though.

Actually, I see a lot of people asking for low light and long runtimes… It certainly makes half the grade, and the sticker claims 45 hrs. I don’t think I could stand to look at it that long, but it seems plausible. Maybe this is Manufacturer Support for that crowd. I know not what moves them, just that all flashlights become far too dim, far too soon with the miserable batteries we’re forced to endure.

I figured the wee dot of blue-white light meant it should be a thrower… It won’t even throw to the pine tree in the yard (a lot less than the 400’ the sticker claims), in which my POS 501b will show me birds roosting at night. I’d love to know what good that would do in a disaster.

If I wanted to make more light, I’d use the match to burn that clown. Then you could get some sleep! :bigsmile:

I think if incandescents are bad enough to be banned so are these things

Are you sure you haven’t been into my glue? :smiley:

This can only be useful with a lot of low-current, high lumens-per-watt emitters which can run cool enough and still put out some useful light.

Think spec currents (.75A for XM-L, .35A for XR-E, e.g.) or lower for relatively low heat, and extended runtime is the gravy.

This one gives me 10 reflectors that are all ~30mm (only the center one is fully formed) with 5mm LED holes; and the overall reflector plate is 112mm. Looking down into the reflectors you can see distinct rings in the shine.

XM-Ls are still over $4.00 apiece where I can buy them. That puts this, when fixed, into Fenix price category! The canonical “Lose-Lose Scenario”.

Yes, I’m the one who advocates we all live by “Caveat Emptor”… Well, my Emptor just got Caveated, big time!

Do as I say, not as I do, unless you enjoy pain and humiliation.

That’s why I started this thread! Thanks for helping!

You pessimistic negative Nancys. It has no blinky modes., thats a plus.

I’m embarrassed to admit I didn’t even think to check for modes before now!

Of course you’re right. And the battery should last an incroyable time, even if I do turn it on. My Mother used to say, “If you can’t say something good about it, don’t say anything at all.” If I’d followed that advice, look what a fun thread we would all have missed.

Thanks for your help!

Bet you cant scratch the colour off the body either… thats like HA11ty billion