If you're looking to buy a flashlight and you're tired of buying the plastic variety that barely illuminate the ground a few feet in front of you, there are a few things that you should know.
The light that a flashlight puts out is measured in "lumens". A lumen is a measure of how much light is produced by a light source.
To give you some perspective:
A 50 watt light bulb has about 540 lumens.
A 60 watt light bulb has about 850 lumens.
The typical cheap flashlight that you can buy at any corner store only has in the area of 30-60 lumens. They're not very powerful and if it's truly dark out, they're not going to help you much at all.
Need to see what's rattling around in the garbage cans outside your house? A drugstore flashlight with its weak pale beam is not going to help you until you're already outside and practically right on top of those garbage cans.
Want to take a walk at night? If you want to be able to see more than a few feet in front of you, a cheap flashlight will, pardon the expression, leave you in the dark - and likely to trip. You certainly won't know what's out there in the dark until you've walked right up to it.
So how bright is the brightest flashlight in the world?
One of the top contenders is the Vector Power on Board HID Spotlight, which has a blazing 3,500 lumens, marketed by Black & Decker. In fact, it may be one of the brightest HID (which stands for High Intensity Discharge) flashlights in the world.
The Polarion Flashlight has 5,200 lumens - but it costs more than ,000. That's a lot of money for a flashlight. Most people will never need that much illumination from a flashlight!
At under 0, the Vector Power on Board may be the brightest flashlight for the price anywhere.
It has 70 minutes of run-time after being charged up for just two hours. It can be plugged into a typical wall outlet or into a car's cigarette lighter, using an adapter, which makes it perfect for camping trips, and it is rechargable. And with the power of its beam, it can light up the darkness in a way you would have to see to believe.
It also has a white light, unlike traditional halogen lights which have a yellow tinge to them. The light is so bright that if necessary you could shine it in the eyes of an approaching, unfriendly animal - or person! - and temporarily blind them. It's also an ideal light to bring on a camping trip, where you may want to walk around at night in the woods and won't want to trip over tree roots or run into any startled, defensive wildlife.
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