MAGLITE 3Watt LED Upgrade Module: Nice

My dad got me a gift cert. from The Home Depot for Christmas. When I got home yesterday, I was so tired I gave my Darling Wife the choice of having me go to sleep immediately (rest makes me feel better when I'm tired) or stepping out (walking/exercise moves my blood, makes me feel better when I'm tired).

#2 and #3 were bundled up and sent out with me. We hit up Home Depot and walked a couple of miles of aisles. I ended up picking up a MAGLITE brand MAG-LED Technology LED Upgrade Module 3 Watt LED for 3 Cell mag-lites (SH33DCW6J), and some fresh D cells. When we got home, I showed #2 the difference. First, a set of old batteries on the old (MAGLITE Krypton brighter-than-stock upgrade bulb) lamp. Dim yellowish-bordering-on-orange circle. With the fresh batteries (#3 was narrowly prevented from trying to eat one of the old ones) the circle got closer to white, sort of a pale yellow, and much brighter. That used to be quite satisfactory for a flashlight. It has served me well for several years. Then I installed the LED module. The circle went bright white, no trace of yellow, and there was a halo around it from the focusing ring in the flashlight that had been absent with the incandescent bulb. Additionally, the odd shape of the circle was replaced with a more-uniform glow (there are no offset filaments creating strange shapes in the illumination with an LED).

I was pretty happy about the brightness of the light. I was pleasantly surprised, however, to see that either a) I had lucked out or b) MAG-LITE has been charging a premium for their LED modules because they are picking the higher-quality bins. The light is free of any trace of coloration like some other LED lights. It is not blue, green, pink, or yellow. It is white. Excellent. Then I gave an inner sigh and prepared myself mentally to face the loss of one of the best thing about my MAG flashlight: focusing of the light beam. It has been a tremendous help over the years to be able to spread a broad field of illumination or else have a bright SPOT, or anything in between. Most of the LED flashlights out there have the sort of LED that just shines straight out and you get what you get with the focus of the light. I gave the focusing ring a turn.

The beam spread out into an exaggeratedly white, brighter example of the same beam patterns I was used to! Hooray!

Flashlight junkies will not be surprised by this, but I was.

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History of my Mag-Lite:

I bought this torch in the late 1990s when I was with VQ-2 in Rota, Spain. I spent most of my time there on the nights and mids shifts, and a flashlight of some sort was almost a necessity when stepping outside the hangar. The flashlights in the tool kits had 2 disadvantages. 1) they were dim 2) they required checking-out with a tool tag and 3) they were dim. Anyhow, I bought myself a black-anodized finished 3-D cell flashlight at the NEX for whatever it was they were asking for it. MAG had a reputation for building a good, tough light, and that's what I needed. I bummed some white reflective tape from the PR shop and put a half-dozen 1/4" wide strips around the battery housing so if it ever was lost in the dark, it would shine under ambient light or (ironically) someone else's flashlight beam. This light has been rained on. It has been stepped on. It has been dropped from waist and shoulder height. It has been dropped out of an airplane (13 feet from the top of the ladder). The only problem is that the anodizing has a few nicks in it, and there is one spot in the rotation of the focusing ring that the light switches off. Otherwise, it has never failed me except when I failed it (batteries) and the spare bulb storage compartment in the end cap has come in handy more than once. I fully expect that this light will live at least as long as me, and that is after a decade or so of use.

Color me a happy camper.