Gear Review - Freeplay ML-1 Lantern

This little lantern is bright. A bright spot in a sea of battery suckers. It never requires batteries or bulbs. That’s right, you heard me, never.

Actually the LED only lasts a mere 100,000 hours… that’s 11 years burning continuously for 24 hours a day. I’m not sure I’ll be using it that much.

When you get your lantern you’ll notice you can use it right away without cranking. The batteries are pre-charged. Then once they run out you will need to give it some cranks to get light. The button glows green when you have the brightness turned down to show you that you’re being “green”. And it glows red when you have it turned up to maximum brightness. It helps you stay conscious if you don’t feel like winding it again soon. When on high power it lights up a large tent perfectly.

The ML-1 also can be used as a flashlight. There is a button under the adjustment knob that, when pushed, turns a focused beam of light on.

What if you don’t like to crank it to charge it up though. No sweat, just plug it in to an AC/DC adaptor and let it charge for 3 hours before your trip. That gives you a full charge. I really can’t see any drawbacks with this little lantern. You can save batteries, thus reducing waste and saving your wallet. And, if your batteries do happen to run out on a long trip, you always have the crank.

It goes for $55, which we think is pretty steep. Considering you can get a non-crank/non-recharable/lasts-a-few-years model  for $15-$20. But if you consider the cost of batteries, and your the type of person that will actually use this thing often, it probably pays for itself over the decades you could potentially use this thing.

Add comment October 23rd, 2008