3 watt LED

I  bought 5 LED flashlights in the last year for me and my family and feel I may help someone in the market for an extremely small / extremely bright flashlight. These lights are rated by the manufacturers as 3 watt, 5 watt and 8 watt. These are not to be confused with single or multiple ordinary LED bulbs. (actually, not a bulb, but a light emitting diode). They use one LED bulb (or emitter), either Luxeon, made by Lumileds, a division of Phillips (an American company) or Lumleds, an Asian company, recently acquired by Phillips, as I understand it. Either way, they are both very bright. They were all manufactured in and shipped from China or Taiwan.  I ordered from three different vendors and would recommend any of them.  Just pay with Paypal and there should not be a problem.

3 watt LED

The 3 watt light is machined aluminum, and has an anodized coating, like paint only much harder.  It is brighter than a two cell C or D battery flashlight, but is much smaller. It measures 1.1875 inch X 4.25 inch  The 3 watt lights I have use 3 AAA batteries. The only complaint I have is that it is hard to keep the batteries in contact.  The springs holding the batteries seem to not have enough tension, thus you have to stretch them occasionally to get a good contact point.

The 5 watt and 8 watt lights are almost identical with the 3 watt except they are 1.3125 inch X 5.5 inch, use 2 RCR123A LI-ION batteries and come with a charger. The 5 watt and the 8 watt LED lights are very dependable and are a joy to use.

          8 WATT LED ON TOP, MAKITA ON BOTTOM
                                                            WHICH ONE WOULD YOU RATHER CARRY?

The 8 watt LED is about twice as bright as the 3 watt and 5 times as bright as my Makita 7.2 volt flashlight (which measures 2.5 inch X 10.5 inch).  Measured with a light meter, the 8 watt puts out 35 foot candles while the Makita puts out 7 foot candles at the same distance. (about 12 feet). The 8 watt is awsome for it's size.

Beam of 8 watt LED

The pieces of the light screw together and are sealed with O-rings and are advertised as submersible.  The O-rings are metric and available at any well stocked hardware store.

One word of caution----Don't shine these in any one's eyes. I accidentally shined the 5 watt in my eyes and it was like an arc welder burn.  I had a retina burn for two hours.

I hope this helps.   If it does, check yes below.   It will let me know if it was worthwhile to write this.