Not long ago I lent a mate a wind-up lantern for a family camping trip and as with all things lent to friends, his family broke off the wind-up arm.
As I am going on a camping trip at the end of May I am serious need of a lantern to help guide a glass of wine from my table to mouth while under canvas.
Early on this week I noticed a banner on this site advertising a Trinity Lantern at £18. It looked cheap enough and the spec looked ok, so I took a punt and bought one.
My torch/lantern arrived yesterday and like all small children I could not wait till bedtime to play with it. It just so happened that I had come home from watching Star Trek in 3D in total darkness and could not wait to play with my new toy.
Its a sturdy looking little bit of kit. Yes a torch is a torch, is a torch. However this one throws out an awful lot of light for its small size, especially when you think it is only powered by 4 AAA batteries. The on/off button is hidden under the chimney/hood and easily slides up and down with deft wrist action.
The torch easily lit my entire garden which is about 20 meters across. I did not test how far the beam went, when the chimney/hood bit was closed down but it easily lit up the end of my garden.
In the house, in total darkness the torch threw out so much light it was almost as if I had switched on one of my free standing lamps.
As you would expect for a simple bit of kit, the torch did not come with any instructions. And why should there, except for the fact that the website says that the torch can be run on full power and low power to get the best out of the batteries but makes no mention of how to do this. After playing I discovered that once you pressed the button to turn the torch on and then let go of the button, you simply press the button again and hold the button. This allowed the light to gradually dim down. If you pressed the button and held it again then the light's power would go back up to full brightness.
I have no idea what kind of bulb is used but it looks remarkably similar to the cree bulb in my Frogman torch which has a beam that easily travels 200 meters. My Frogman torch is rated at 150 lumen while the Alpkit torch throws out 190 lumen.
Its not waterproof, and is not advertised as such but it will happily do its job stood out in the rain.
trust me, its feking bright!
After buying the torch I then discovered that Alpkit do a cheaper model at £12-50. Do I regret not buying that one?
Not really. On paper the cheaper torch gives you 170 lumen, which is enough to burn the back of your retina, and has a working time of 65 hours on low power. The trinity model with four batteries is 20 lumen brighter and does 190 hours on low power.
I'd say that the £5-50 extra is worth it, but I would not complain if I was given the other one to use.
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