I just picked this up at Home Depot, I couldn't resist, I thought it was pretty cool. This is the kind of light every house should have. I just recently went through 10 days without power due to Hurricane Sandy, and witnessed how many of my neighbors didn't have a decent flashlight in the house, which amazed me. For $25 this Rayovac gives you 4 independent flashlights rolled up into one package with a total runtime of 100 hours, and it comes with alky batteries too!
I haven't had a chance to play around with it much, but the two flashlights and the panel come on and off easily, but stay well in place too. The main lantern beam is a little ringy, and way more spot than flood. The two flashlights are using a PR based (removable) led.
Worth noting - the main lantern runs on 4 D batteries, the panel runs on 3xAAA and the two flashlights run on 2xAA each. While it may seem like a pain that you need all different kinds of batteries, maybe that is a good thing for an emergency - you are likely to find at least some of those batteries somewhere, including the junk draw or even out of a TV or stereo remote for the AA or AAA.
It uses ANSI standards and they are: Lantern 110 lumens for 46 hours! Flashlights are 25 lumens for 23 hours. and the led panel is 70 lumens for 8 hours and has a nice floody beam.
I wasn't sure if I was going to get this at first because I wasn't sure where it would fit into use among all of my lights, but then it hit me - this is the perfect light to lend out if there is another power outage. And besides, any reason is a good reason to buy another flashlight! --KartRacer31
This is something that needs to be made in hobby quality. Something lantern style like an Apex 5xT6 with the handle and two UF-2100’s coming out of the back with a panel consisting of 3 XP-G2 and 3 XML U3. I’m done dreaming now 8)
I thought that the different batteries was a minus at first, but now I think it’s kinda a plus for “Joe Homeowner” who may have a few different batteries of each type laying around.
One other thing I didn’t mention before - the panel light has a fold down wire stand which can prop the panel up to stand on its own, or be used to hang it up.
I saw that too and looked it over. I wish they would make these lanterns more floody than spotty. To me the idea of a "lantern" is to light up a wide area. I do like the lantern running on D's rather than a 6V lantern battery. Nice long runtime too.
I saw that while I was in HD, too, and took a look at it. I did not like that the lantern’s “reflector” right around the LED looked to be a cheap OP deal but the rest of the reflector was nice and shiny. I could be wrong, but I would think that would not work too well. Do you have any beam shots of the lantern?
