eBay: Another Cheap-Ass LED Flashlight
By Chuck Cage
TM reader John writes: “I’m a stagehand, so I like to always have a small, bright flashlight on me tucked in my hip pocket. But I was tired of losing my preferred (and expensive) Surefire Executive. I took a chance on the Cree on eBay and it ROCKS. Smaller, brighter than the Surefire, LED, and CHEAP — $23 instead of $80! Construction is excellent - already dropped it a few times, no problem.”
I’ll admit that I’m skeptical — you gotta love when eBay sellers keep their IDs private. Maybe it’s coated in lead-based black paint. Anyway, while I’ve been happy with numerous cheap LED flashlights, I’ve yet to find a really bright one under the $40 mark. But I’m a sucker for stuff like this. Do any of you have experience with it?
Cree Cheap-Ass LED Flashlight [eBay]
August 14th, 2007 at 10:34 am
Go to dealextreme.com and search for cree. You will find many different models, some under $10 with free shipping. I’ve been ordering miscellaneous crap from them about a year now. All of it has decent. They have some really cheap precision screwdriver sets too. If you don’t use them often, but want them around, you can beat the price.
August 14th, 2007 at 10:36 am
Looks pretty good, but the thing that raises a flag in my book is where it is coming from. Hong Kong is a long ways away to ship a small flashlight from. They do have a lot of positive feedback, however if you search the feedback and look for the negative ones, they read “took over a month to arrive” or some did not even recieve it. Others say that the seller does not respond to e-mails or questions. Other negative feedbacks are in foreign languages and I don’t have the patience to decode them to english… If it were me I would find a light from a seller closer to home.
For what it is worth: I bought a cheap ($2.50) LED flashlight off the counter at my local Advance Auto parts. It is about 3″ long, has 3 AAA batteries in it, a push button switch on the butt of the light, and has 9 bright LED’s in it. Says Performance Tool on the case. I have had it for a couple of months, and haven’t even had to put in new batteries in it yet, and it gets used and abused in my tool box…
August 14th, 2007 at 12:03 pm
I wouldn’t touch an ebay flashlight with a ten-foot pole made of 5-dollar lithium batteries. If you go to Amazon, you can find plenty of Cree-powered LED lights. I just picked up a Fenix P1D-CE with a 5-watt Cree for $75.00 shipped second day. Not cheap by any measure, but certainly more economical than a Surefire by a long shot. If you do get a 123-cell powered light, be sure to pick up a rechargeable battery. It’ll pay for itself in 5 charges.
This little light is stupid-bright and the same size as my thumb. You’ll get made fun of until you fire it up.
August 14th, 2007 at 12:26 pm
the few things I’ve heard about dealextreme.com seem to support that they are a decent company. Maybe not the quickest to ship to you though.
I’ve got a Ledwave X-33 which i definitely think could be better (more durable lens for the main complaint) but I’ve been really happy with it.
August 14th, 2007 at 2:52 pm
Another vote for dealextreme. They can sometimes take a long while to ship things, and it’s not always obvious if that’ll happen or not, but things do eventually get through, and they’re certainly cheap, and have a stupidly large range of LED flashlights (normal, Luxeon, Cree, SSC, etc).
September 7th, 2007 at 8:43 am
Another recommendation for dealextreme. I’ve bought from them a bunch of times. Here’s what’s good about them:
* Low prices on mostly reasonable-quality goods
* FREE air-mail shipping. It takes about two weeks to the East Coast of the U.S.
* They have user reviews, so if an item is a dog, you can find out before buying.
* They are responsive. A battery charger I bought arrived with a broken plastic cover. I told them, and they replaced the whole thing without asking for the broken one back. Now I have two.
* They accept PayPal.
* My experience is that they email a shipping notice when they put the package in the mail.
If you can wait two weeks, it’s worth it.
A similar HK store is kaidomain.com. Similar merchandise, also low prices, PayPal, and free airmail, but no user reviews, and seemingly less responsive. Also, they put meaningless names on all their merchandise, sort of like Ikea, but using English words.