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People are gonna pillory me for this, but flashlights.
First off, you want something that runs off two AAAs, regardless of price. If you can't walk into any gas station, or any grocery store, or what have you, and buy batteries for your flashlight when it dies, it's not gonna matter how bright it was before it died. You also don't want anything brighter than ~200 lumens at the very most, unless you actually need one brighter, for some reason; they drain batteries way faster. You want something thin enough that you're able to clip it inside your pocket and forget it's there. You also want one that has an end switch that toggles between two modes: "full power" and "turned off." If you have one that toggles between low and high settings, you will only use the high setting. If you have one that toggles between low and high settings, and strobe and SoS, you will only use the high setting. Every additional step in between "all the way off" and "all the way on" is just friction you don't need, that will do nothing but piss you off every time you use the damned thing.
The features that make big, fancy flashlights expensive, are anti-features.
Down vote for AAA, the one battery size nobody ever seems to have laying around.
I use rechargeable flashlights. Hell, I use rechargeable everything. I'm not sure when I last bought AA or AAA batteries for anything.
I read this entire thread thinking we were talking about fleshlights and not flashlights.
AAA's seem really common in my neck of the woods.
I got a Coast headlamp a couple years back that has a rechargeable battery pack, but can also take regular AAA's, which is a handy feature if I happen to need an immediate recharge.
For outdoor survival stuff (like my avalanche beacon) they say you should only use the disposable ones. It's probably got to do with cold tolerance or lifetime.
For Avalanche beacons you're supposed to replace the battery after it gets below 95% charge.
I'd say it depends. For safety-critical stuff maybe, but for a headlamp or something I prefer rechargeable as I can easily recharge it from a power bank or a portable solar panel if needed. If you run out of a disposable battery for whatever reason, you're screwed.
Do you have to replace things with broken, End of Life or dying cells often?
I notices a lot of things falling into planned obsolesence because "it's rechargable" and you can't replace the battery.
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My flashlights use replaceable chargeables. I want to say "16550" but I'm not sure of the numbers. They're larger than AAs, longer than Cs but not quite as thick.
Close, it's 18650 cells which are super common. Even stuff like laptop and EV batteries may be composed of them.
Fun fact, the numbers indicate the physical size - 18mm diameter 65.0mm length. The same applies to those button cell batteries - CR2032 is 20mm diameter by 3.2mm thickness.
Right. 18650! Thanks!
And TIL what the numbers mean. Cool!
You can almost always replace the battery, even when the manufacturer doesn't want you to. As for flashlights, they typically come with easily user-replaceable ones, often even sold separately. Worst-case, you can get a AA or AAA flashlight and use rechargeable AA/AAAs.
I've paid quite a lot for my second headlamp for hiking, but I am really happy with the purchase as it's very light (35 g) compared to my first cheapo one (~120 g), while being the same 200 lm max. It doesn't sound like much, but it's enough for me to not even notice it, while the heavy one was getting annoying after a while.