Showdown of the Emergency Flashlights

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Imagine you finally get to go out on a date with your spouse and you're on your way back
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to pick up your very, very young, around a year old son from the babysitter when you're driving
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down the road and the wind starts to pick up like you've never seen before. To keep it from getting
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too crazy, I want to tell you there were literally trees falling onto the road as we're driving
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through. I watched a deer get blown like a tumbleweed across the road. So we were a little bit
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nervous and we headed back and we picked up our son. This is a very rural area in southwestern Virginia
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when this happened. And we picked up our son, we made it there safely, and then we headed back
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toward our house. And when we got home, there was no power anywhere. We couldn't see lights on
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in any homes anywhere. And it's getting to be dark. This is an actual situation that happened with
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my wife and I several years ago. And it had a huge impact on how I think about preparedness and what I do
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to stay prepared. Not just because we got home and the power was out. Power had to just
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happen all the time, but because of what came as a result of that storm. I'll tell you more about
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that story in another video, another time, because there were a lot of really cool lessons
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learned from that experience. But one of the lessons that, and kind of cool situations that happened
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was that we got home, it's completely dark, we get inside of our house. This is before the days
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when everybody had a smartphone on them that had a pretty decent flashlight, and it was pitch dark
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inside. But you know what had just happened? I had just gone through and pulled out all of the
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flashlights that we owned to make sure that the batteries were good and I had just replaced all the
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batteries. They were literally sitting on the kitchen table. I kid you not. Today I want to talk to
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you a little bit about flashlights for emergency preparedness. Now again, because we live in the days of
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everybody has a smartphone, you may think, I'm not that worried about having flashlights for
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emergency preparedness. I want to help dispel you of that myth right now, right off the bat
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There are three major reasons why I'm not going to rely on a cell phone to be my flashlight
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The first one is they're not that bright. Yes, it works when you're looking around for something
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dark in your bedroom. That's fine. And honestly, like, that's probably going to be enough in a lot
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of emergency situations like the power went out. We need to find some resources and get things set up
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so that we don't freeze to death tonight. But it's not going to be sufficient. to give you very much light in a lot of different scenarios where you're going to want more than that
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The second reason is that this is kind of an awkward thing to carry around
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And in a lot of situations where I want to be able to point it at something, like even with a normal
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flashlight, I could at least put it in my mouth and free up my hands to do something
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With my phone, like, I don't have that option, right? So it's like, how do I do this
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And so then you find yourself like trying to lean it up against something. just to point it in the direction you want, it's not as useful in a lot of different situations
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The last reason is that cell phone batteries don't last nearly as long as flashlight
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Because in a flashlight, it's only powering the light. Most of them are LEDs now, which lasts a super long time
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But also, the battery's not running down all day long. It's only running down while you're using the light
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So the batteries you put in a flashlight can last for days and days and days. Your cell phones probably get any to be charged about every day
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Maybe two. And because we're potentially going to be using our phone for a lot of different reasons
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we're going to want to make sure that we have it available to us for all of those things, right
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We can have tons of information stored in our phone. There's some great apps that are just full of survival information that you can just keep on hand
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A whole library right there at your fingertips. I want to have that information available to me
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I want to have the communication abilities available to me in an emergency. I don't want to be running the battery down even faster by using the flashlight a whole bunch
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We're not using the cell phone as our primary flashlight. It's an okay backup
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It's an okay thing to have on hand. Absolutely. But it's just not going to be my primary
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So let's talk a little bit about flashlights. This video is not intended to be a review of specific models of flashlights
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I do have a whole bunch of different kinds of flashlights here. These are literally ones that are like in my bags that are here
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Right now, I didn't even go through and pick out a whole bunch of them that I have in the drawers at home
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which you may have seen in another video here. My goal here, though, is to point out some very different features in different flashlights
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So you can kind of decide what you want to have on hand. And maybe there's a couple different kinds of flashlights that you'd want
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So the first thing I want to show you is just this basic short little flashlight
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This one, the brand written on it is Let My. I think this came into two pack
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Someone gave it to me. Like kind of like as a birthday present or a stocking stuff or kind of thing I can remember exactly Probably as a birthday present I love flashlight So that was fantastic I like these styles They made out of this is probably like a cast aluminum It pretty lightweight but also really hard
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The head of it right in front of the lens kind of has these ridges on it
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which is kind of a nice, like I could use that to potentially break glass or something
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I like that about a flashlight. There are a lot of good things about this. Now, it's a fairly inexpensive flashlight
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It's not super bright and it doesn't illuminate a very big area
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In fact, I did some testing. At nine feet away from the wall with the lights off, it illuminated about five inches when
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zoomed all the way in. Like that was the radius, so 10 inches across a circle, all the way up to about three and
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a half feet when it was all the way out. So a three and a half foot, seven foot wide circle
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A little wider than my arm's span, maybe another foot or so
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And for those of you, not using the Imperial system, that would be about a meter in radius or about two meters wide. And frankly, it just
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isn't that bright. And it's very basic. You know, I go from zoomed out to zoom in and that's all
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the features that this kind of flashlight has. But it's very inexpensive and very easy to keep
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a whole bunch of these around. This one in particular is powered by a single double A battery
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which is also pretty handy. But next I have this one. This one was given to me as a gift several
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years ago. I've had this thing for probably about 10 years. This is the Phoenix LD20. It was a
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expensive flashlight at the time has some of those same features, right? It has kind of this
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hard metal, probably a cast aluminum frame. It has the ridges here on the end that I could use
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again to break something if I needed to. It has a clip, which both of these have, which is kind of
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handy if I'm like throwing it in my pocket or something. I can clip it there. This one I remember
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being incredibly bright when I first got it, which was, which is awesome. But again, it was
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also if I remember, quite expensive. And I know it was expensive because I looked into it
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it because I needed to replace it. I thought I was going to replace it at one point because
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believe it or not, the batteries in it totally like blew up and I got all sorts of battery acid
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all through it and it ruined the flashlight. And it did not work at all for quite some time until I finally got around to cleaning it up and getting it to work once again, but just never
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quite the same. So right now it illuminates about a one foot radius and it has a strobe light feature
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You're going to see that like in reality, even though this was a really nice
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flashlight for its time. Nowadays, like, we just have some really high functioning
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flashlights that are so much less expensive. So here's another example of one that
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you know, it says right on it, Blue Max high performance flashlights. This is the one that
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was in my wife's 72 hour kit that we hadn't opened for about a decade. And it was
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probably put together about two decades ago. This was a good flashlight in it today
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It's LED. That wasn't super common at that time. It does have two settings, a brighter
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and a dimmer setting. But once again, it doesn't really hold up to these newer flashlights. I mean, this one illuminated at, again, nine feet away
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a little under three meters. It illuminated a space on the wall that was only about a foot in radius
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to one foot nine inches, up to about half a meter in radius, or so about a meter diameter. And it just
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wasn't super bright. It does have a strobe feature, which I don't really ever use. I guess if you
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were dealing with like an intruder, you could strobe it at them, or if you were trying to get somebody's attention. The next one I'll talk about here is this one's by Nibo. This is the
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Bumbo 150. This one's pretty cool. I got this one from, I believe, Santa Claus. It was in my
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stalking this last Christmas. So it's a much newer one. This is kind of what I'm talking about
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This one uses two AAA batteries. It's a single LED and it does have this zoom feature. So I can
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literally make it a bigger or a smaller circle. Looking at my numbers here, this one illuminated
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again, from the same distance, a space on the wall about one feet nine inches, up to a seven
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foot radius. We're talking about two full meters radius. So a four meter diameter space
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which is substantially more than any of these ones that came before it. And it was able to do it
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like pretty dang bright. It also then has a second setting that will make it lighter so that you
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don't have to have it on super high power all the time, making, you know, blinding somebody. And it also
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has a strobe setting. So you're starting to get more and more of those different features in these
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newer flashlights that are costing substantially less than they used to cost. Basically what I'm
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saying is you don't have to spend a lot of money to get a pretty decent flashlight. It has a clip
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It doesn't have like the ridges and stuff. So using it to smash into glass or something like
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that's maybe not going to be as likely, but some good things with these kinds of flashlights
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This is another one that was given to me as a gift. I'm noticing a trend here. People must think I like
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preparedness stuff Flashlights is one of those things I guess that I get a lot Flashlights and knives slash axes Those have been some of my biggest gifts This one here is Mov lit It does have the ridges It a little bit bigger
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It comes with this little sheath to hold it. But there's a couple things I really like about this one
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First of all, yes, it's a little bigger, which does mean it's a little more substantial
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a little bit you could use it for self-defense. It does allow you to zoom in and out quite a bit actually
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It has quite a range there, which is pretty nice. When zoomed super focused, right
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I get only about a four inch radius or eight inches across
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Pretty small focused light beam. But if I zoom all the way out
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I get about a seven foot or two meter radius, so a four meter diameter circle on the wall
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Very similar to that Colombo. So very similar and also very similar in brightness
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This one also has a lighter setting. In fact, I think it had several different step downs
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of lightness, but then it also had a stroll, and it had an SOS feature
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So you can just like set it to SOS. A lot of times you might think like
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what is the purpose of that, right? I can do that. I can signal it SOS to somebody if I needed to
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Like no big deal. But the reason I like the default setting is literally I could turn on the SOS
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point it toward a direction where maybe I know there's a road over there, but people aren't driving by super regularly
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I could point it there. I could set it on a log or a branch or something like that
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and I could just let it run for a while if I'm trying to get somebody's attention
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and I could do some other things. then I could start creating my signal fire or something like that. The other cool thing I liked about this type of flashlight
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Inside of this right now is a little battery pack with three AAAs. But it also has this rechargeable lithium battery that I can use instead
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It's a dual power situation. I really like that. There's a couple reasons why
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One is these batteries are not going to blow up the same way that our normal alkali batteries are going to do
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Keeping one of these batteries, a lithium battery stored inside there, is going to prevent the battery from being destroyed the way so many of my flashlights have been
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destroyed in the past. But if the time comes that I'm using this thing and it turns out
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oh, your batteries are dead and I need the flashlight right now. I don't have to sit and wait for
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it to be charged. I can just throw in some AAA batteries and call it good. So I like the dual power
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feature. Next up on my list, this one here is by Coast. This is the XPH 27R. The reason I give you
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the specific model number is there's another one that looks just like this that's actually
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quite a bit brighter, but it does cost more. This one I thought was pretty cool. First of all
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zoomed like super tight. I was able to get about a foot and a half, almost half a meter radius
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The circle that I got up to nine feet, almost three meters, nine foot radius. So a pretty
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pretty dang wide space that I'm able to illuminate just with this little, like how little that is
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It's nice little headlamp. I also like that it's a headlamp, meaning it's hands free
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Headlamps are my go-to for a flashlight. In fact, even at home in the junk drawer
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I keep headlamps because if I need to go out back to go do something in the dark
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I would much rather use a headlamp so that my hands are free. More often than not
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if I'm venturing into the dark, it's because I need to do something
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not just because I'm walking. So I prefer to keep my hands free. Even if I was walking on an uneven terrain
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I prefer to have my hands available to catch myself if, you know, I stumbled on something
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A couple more things about this one. When I turn it on, it starts with the medium brightness setting
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which is kind of cool. When I'm using a flashlight, typically I don't always need like the brightest bright setting
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but I also don't want it on the super dim setting. So it starts on the medium one
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and then it goes to bright, and then it goes to dim. But this one doesn't have a strobe or an SOS
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which to me isn't a deal breaker. For most things, I'm going to be perfectly happy
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with everything that this has to offer. But there's one more cool thing I really like about this designed by Coast, and that's this
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First of all, yes, this can tilt up and down. Actually, I said there's one more cool thing
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There's two. It can tilt up and down and just come right out, just pulls right off
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When it pulls off, get this. One side of this has a pretty dang strong magnet
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You can literally just like attach that to something metal and set it up and use it kind of as a lamp to illuminate a space that you
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you need illuminated without it necessarily having to be on your head. Meaning it works great as a little
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work light. You could literally put it under the hood of your car and work on your car right there
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Pretty cool. I can see myself using that a lot. I did just get this. It came in a two
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pack. So I actually have two of them. So I just got this and haven't had a chance to use it a whole lot. But I think this is probably going to be a go-to for me. The other thing I really like
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about this for emergency preparedness. And one of the main reasons I wanted to make this video
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was because like the Movelet it dual power Right there on the side I can loosen this up right And right there on the side there a little port right there And I can literally just charge it
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It's got a battery inside. I can open up the other side and I can take out this rechargeable battery
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and literally just replace it with one of these non-rechargeable regular batteries. But anyway
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you just put in another battery and you're good to go. If you needed to use this at the last second
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and you didn't have time to charge it and it's dead, just throw in a battery. And you're
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fine. But because the rechargeable batteries, a lithium battery, once again, I'm not as worried
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about the battery leaking out and ruining my flashlight. So this is a huge one for me. I think I'm
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going to be using this a lot. This has until now also been my go-to. It's also a headlamp, as you can
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see. It's got a rechargeable battery pack. Once again, I do like that. You can see, though
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that it's big and heavy. The reason I like it, though, is because it's got a lot of power, so this can be very bright
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Zoomed all the way in, it has a pattern about six inches in radius or 12 inches across up to about seven feet
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So very similar to like the Nibo. The brightest setting definitely is brighter
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As you can see, I'm looking at when I illuminated it here
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It also has a dimmer setting and I actually really like this. When I click through to this next setting that's dimmer, it automatically, no matter how zoomed in or how zoomed out I am, it goes ultra wide
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So it goes like twice as wide even as the... even as the coast does, but it's dim
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And so what I get is instead of like this beam of light that's concentrated somewhere
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and that blinds whoever I'm looking at, I get this very wide light pattern that just
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kind of illuminates the space in front of me just a bit, giving me plenty of light for my eyes
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to adjust, kind of like if you had a really bright moonlit night, it just illuminates the
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things in front of you enough and you're good. At least for me, I'm good
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And so I actually really like that setting and use it the most. and then it has a strobe setting
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So it does hold a lot of power so it can run for a long time
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Now, what it is exactly brand-wise? I don't know. This says C-Biz on it
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but I can't even find that same one again because this is one of those products
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that just gets sold, rebranded and sold on Amazon like crazy, like tons of other products these days
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So this brings me kind of to the discussion of what kind of flashlights
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do you want for emergency preparedness? I could see keeping lots of little flashlights
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like this. around the house in different places. In fact, I have several
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Like I said, I got two of these just for my last birthday and I already had a couple more
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I have one of these in my car in the center console. Just super easy, pretty inexpensive to just keep on hand
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if I needed to break a windshield to get out of my car or something after a car accident
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But yeah, so it is very handy, but also it works good as a flashlight. For a lot of emergency preparedness situations
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including in my 72 hour kit or a bugout bag, I'm probably gonna be keeping this
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Because I can have a non-alcoline battery in there, that doesn't ruin the flashlight, but that's ready to go
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The only thing with rechargeable, well, with any batteries, but definitely with rechargeable batteries
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is that the battery is gonna dissipate a little bit over time. So you do need to make sure you pull it out
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every so often and recharge it. For that reason, I do like the idea of having it
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in the 72 hour kit, so it's ready to go, but making sure that it's in a very accessible place
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like in one of the pockets, so I can pull it out to use on a regular basis, maybe for camping and stuff
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so I don't forget. Or you could just set a reminder on your phone every six months to check your food and the batteries in your flashlights
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maybe at the same time that you check the smoke detectors. Flashlights like this can be super handy
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This one I often keep like just in my work bag, just the backpack that I take to work that has
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my laptop and other things in it. I like to have a flashlight. Again, I don't use it very often for anything, but if I came home in the dark with the power
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out and there was stuff going on or, you know, heaven forbid somebody's knocked out the power
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and invaded my home. I like to be able to have flashlights very close at hand, especially ones that are quite bright
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And for that purpose, you know, something like this is great too. And that's another reason to potentially have a strobe like on this one
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So think about what features you want in a flashlight. Look for those features. But what we've discovered is you just don't have to spend a fortune anymore to be able to have really good flashlights
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I will try to figure out what most of these are and link to them in the description of this video
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If any of them happen to be particularly interesting to you, make sure you go check. those out but other than that I just want you to be prepared and to just have what
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you need in whatever situations arise in your life. Flashlights one of those
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things that we should just definitely make sure that we have on hand and make sure
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that they're totally ready. I love preparedness. I hope you love preparedness and if
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you do I hope that you'll consider watching the other videos on this channel because
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that is what we do here at pantry preparedness. We talk about how to be prepared
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Thank you

Up next in 10

Showdown of the Emergency Flashlights

Pantry Preparedness