Our power went out for a few hours last week in the storm and I realised my old flashlight was dead. Batteries gone, phone light dying, the whole house dark. I do not want to be caught like that again this winter, so I am finally getting a proper one before the next storm.
I have been reading reviews the last few days, and two keep coming up:
Olight Baton 4 Pro
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GJCRMQLH?
Fenix PD36R Pro
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BJNYFWQY?
I keep going back and forth. The Olight is smaller and lighter, it fits in a pocket, and the low mode runs for days. But the Fenix is brighter and throws a lot farther, and I can swap in a spare battery instead of waiting for it to charge. Has anyone here used either of these in a real outage? Is the pocket one enough when the power is out for days, or should I go with the brighter one and keep a spare battery in the drawer? I would love to hear what you would pick before I order.
1 Thank
“how long is a piece of string?” Kinda question.
Yes moonlight for weeks is great, but it’s a miserable existence and not practical for daily tasks (washing, meal prep/cooking, inspection of the outside of your house etc.).
What specifically do you like about these lights? We need to know so as to provide suggestions which would suit you.
If I were to start over from scratch for lights for my house in case of storm-related power outages (or any other kind of power outage, for that matter), I’d go for 3 lights, 1x Lantern, 1x headlamp, 1x “thrower”.
21700 sucks for a headlamp as it’s heavy, but I’d reccomend staying with the same cell type for all 3 lights so you can swap cells between them
I’d reccomend the Wurkkos CL1 (c.US$25), Convoy H4 with XHP50.2 LED and a cell (US$c.35) and a Convoy M21A with a more “throwy” LED, and optional cell (c.US$35ish).
Reason for separate lights is primarily that a single light doesnt do everything well, and secondly for redundancy should one light fail.
If get a 2 or 4 slot charger, and 2 extra cells (5x 21700 in total). For more runtime, you could add more spare cells if you want.
2 Thanks
Multiply that by like 20 and throw in a bunch of lanterns and powerbanks.
Announcements about heavy snow, high winds, monsoon rains, zombie virus outbreaks, etc., and I top off all my goodies from phones to lights to batteries to powerbanks. Everything.
Then I sit and enjoy the nothing that happens, knowing that if anything were to happen, I’d be set.
Lost power for about a day when a tree collapsed on powerlines, and my Zanflare lantern kept the living room fairly well lit the entire time. Was probably almost spent, but I had plenty of extra batteries. Got a DC7 and coupla Q8s that would have plenty more light via ceiling bounce if I needed it.
1 Thank
I feel this.
At a bare minimum I would want a large flood light that could be bounced off the ceiling or a lantern.
A medium sized 18650 or 21700 light and a small 14500 or 18350 pocket light for small tasks. Preferably one that could pull double duty as a headlamp. A cr123 light with extra cells would suffice.
On top of the regular usb recharable power banks, I recently got into refillable power banks.
I have an old one that takes 18650 and 2 newer ones that take 21700 cells.
It’s nice being able to top them off with fresh cells.
