Mini Maglite LED > Reviews > Pocket sized Power

Author's product rating:   

Durability	Excellent
Style	Excellent
Comfort	Excellent
Value for Money	Excellent

Advantages:	Pocket sized, UNBELIEVABLE POWERFUL, pure white light
Disadvantages:	None

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Has some of you may have noticed, I have wrote several reviews on various different Maglite's that I own. But the Mini Maglite LED AA was the newest of the additions to my Maglite's.

Previous to me owning this one, I had owned the standard Mini Maglite AA, for this torch I purchased the optional Niteize LED upgrade, while this upgrade was more than adequate, it was only 1 watt, whereas the Mini Maglite LED AA is 3 watts and the difference is out of this world. But I will get to this later in my review.

The Maglite range of torches are arguable the best and most robust torches in the world and as such are still used my various Police and security services across the globe. All the torches in the Maglite range are made of Aluminium and as such are very very strong and robust and very well made, this is why all Maglite's come with a lifetime warranty.

The main reason for me purchasing the Mini Maglite LED AA even though I already had a Mini Maglite with the LED upgrade was:

1: I sometimes found that my old Mini Maglite did on rare occasions, just did not provide just enough light, but I will hasten to add that most of the time it was more than adequate.

2: I had heard many good things about the Mini Maglite LED AA, and I thought it would be better for me to have that bit of extra pocket torch power (and boy was it way way more than the bit of extra power I was expecting)

3: I was lucky enough to pick one up brand new on a well known auction site for around £25, so for that price I just had to have one.

The Mini Maglite LED AA is similar to the standard Mini Maglite apart from the Mini Maglite LED AA obviously has an LED, whereas the standard Mini Maglite doesn't. The Mini Maglite LED AA is around 1.5 inch longer than the standard Mini Maglite; this is due to the fact that the light/LED bowl is longer/deeper to allow for the correct focusing to take place. The Mini Maglite LED AA has a much greater battery life than the standard mini Maglite, due to the fact that the LED is more energy efficient than the standard Mini Maglite's incandescent bulb, I cannot comment on how long the battery life is on the Mini Maglite LED AA but I would hazard a guess that it will be around 5 times longer than the standard Mini Maglite.

A word of warning though, due to the energy efficiency of the Mini Maglite LED AA, you will get the same or very near the same amount of light for the life of the batteries, but all of a sudden the light may go out with very little warning, so it may be a good idea to carry a couple of AA batteries with you. Another advantage of the Mini Maglite LED AA is the fact that the LED has a much greater life than a normal incandescent torch bulb and also the LED provides a very white light, very much whiter in fact than the standard Mini Maglite.

Now on to using the torch. To turn the light on you turn the bulb/LED end of the torch clockwise, this puts the torch into its "FLOOD LIGHT MODE" this mode basically gives you a wide beam of light, which is extremely useful for walking along very dark paths (which is what I mainly do) as it lights the full width of the path. If you continue turning the bulb/LED end of the torch clockwise you will begin to notice that the light beam begins to narrow; the torch is now in "SPOT MODE" this basically means that the torch now has a longer reaching beam of light and in this mode I found that is possible to spotlight something that is around 250 feet or so away. It really is unbelievable just how powerful the Mini Maglite LED AA is. An anti clockwise turn of the bulb/LED end of the torch will turn the torch off.

Working along the torch, you next come to the machined grip section. Has I have mentioned in other reviews of my various other Maglite's, this grip provides excellent grip even when caught in the heaviest of downpours, also you need not fear about the Maglite getting wet as they are water resistant, I know that I have never had any problems with mine getting wet.

Next thing you come to is the screw off battery cap, but unlike other Maglite torches, the Mini Maglite LED AA does not have a spare bulb in this screw off cap, but I think this could be for a couple of reasons,

1: The LED has a VERY VERY long life.

2: The LED is may be not user replaceable.

It may be possible to replace the LED with a standard Mini Maglite bulb, but I have not tried this, if I do try it I will update this review accordingly.

Well that's all I can really mention about the features of the torch, so I will now mention about how the torch performs.

I use my torch mainly for this reason. Me and the girlfriend on route home, have to walk around a mile in near pitch black darkness, this is due to the fact that it is a rural location and as such is not covered by street lighting, so as you can imagine it is very dark. So the Mini Maglite LED AA is an ideal pocket sized torch to just shove in my pocket.

I took the Mini Maglite LED AA out last night on our walk, and boy was I TOTALLY BLOWN AWAY with the power of this little thing. On the flood mode, the torch easily lit the full width of the path and also a very considerable distance in front of me as well. If I turn the torch on to spot mode I can now spotlight something in a field that is around 250 feet away, I really was not expecting to be able to do this with the Mini Maglite LED AA, I was expecting at most around 100 feet at maximum. The amazing performance is down to the superb design and quality of the LED that is fitted. I would go as far as saying that there is not going to be many occasions when you would need to take a bigger D cell sized Maglite with you as the Mini Maglite LED AA performs almost as
good.

Well that's about all I can think of apart from, if you want a POWERFUL pocket sized torch, then I defy anyone not to be impressed with the power of the Mini Maglite LED AA. Buy it you will simply be amazed at its performance.