Brinkmann LED Flashlight Review

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Posting from my older blog a couple months ago – still relevant:

I have a severe flashlight fetish. Over the past couple of years LED illuminated flashlight’s have dropped in price and increased in performance. Here I will review an inexpensive LED bulb system from Brinkmann.

Brinkmann 6 LED Compact Flashlight:
First off – this is a small, light, and compact flashlight. Holding 3 AAA batteries. The flashlight comes with handy lanyard that can be used to secure the light to your wrist, backpack, belt, etc. The light is made from a rubberized material that feels very good in the hand and has some good non-slip properties. The light is turned on/off with a simple push button on the back of the flashlight. Clicking on keeps it on and vice-versa.

The flashlight comes with 3 heavy duty AAA batteries bearing the Brinkmann brand. I decided for this review to install new alkaline batteries as that is common practice for all my lights. Disassembly and installation of batteries was easy enough. I decided to go into an enclosed room with the lights off to see how well the Brinkmann illuminated.

Above you can see the light with brand new batteries powering the 6 bright-white LED’s against a wall that is colored a medium-dark blue. Honestly – it was brighter than I thought it would be. Having has some of the early generation LED lights with a single LED – the amount of light was surprising.

Below you can see a comparison against a Maglite 2 AA Flashlight (non-LED). Since the Maglite has been around for so long and has been considered standard equipment in many households – I thought why not see how the inexpensive Brinkmann compares to the standard. You can see the Maglite has a smaller more concentrated beam (adjustable of course). The light emitted from the Brinkmann is more widespread and consistent. The ability to light up a room,hallway, or walking trail could easily be accomplished. I believe both would do the same job – the difference is in how long the batteries will last. More on that later.

The photo below is provided to show a size comparison between the Brinkmann LED flashlight and a typical AA Maglite. The Brinkmann is smaller and lighter.

One of the huge advantages of LED lights are the lower energy consumption – thus much longer lasting batteries. The bulbs also last tens of thousands of hours. To get an indication as to how long the batteries would last I took the light pictures with new AA alkaline batteries and turned it on at 8:20PM this past Friday night. I left it on all night. At around 11:00pm I took a look at it and it did not appear the light had dimmed at all – which is what my experience with LED’s had me predicting. The next morning at 8:30am I retrieved the light and took it in the same enclosed room and took the photo below. I would have to say the amount of light being emitted from the Brinkmann had been reduced by approx 50%. It reminded me of the older original single LED flashlight I bought long ago. Again – still enough light to read by or search thru a house (not too good for outside at night use). So – 24 hours later and the flashlight is still shining. I did not do a comparison with the Maglite – however I would fully have expected the Maglite to cease operation well before the 24 hour mark.

Below: Another size comparison between the Maglite and the Brinkmann.

I performed a final test to check and see how water resistant it was. I could find no information as to whether it was waterproof so I simply stuck it in a glass of water with the bulb-end facing down. I left the light on and in this position for approx 1-1.5 hours. I then reversed the position of the light. I checked the light about 2 hours later and it was still on. The next morning – 36 hours after the light was originally turned on – the flashlight was emitting no light. Upon drying it off and opening it up I found the light did have water in it. So – waterproof it is not – however I would consider it highly water resistant.

Well – in summary I would say this is a pretty good light especially for such a low price (less than $4.00). You can order it here.

If you use promo code “deal15″ you will get 15% off all ordered items.

Take care all -

Rourke