There ought to be a law requiring my neighbors to turn on their porch lights after dark. We have no street lights in this community. Especially in winter, when it gets dark as early as 4:30, I find myself in a sea of black ink whenever I go out walking. If only a few people would turn on their outside lights, it would be much easier and safer to walk to the corner market two blocks away.
I have also used it when my car needed a little road-side fixing, and when I dropped some little object under my desk.
Mini Mag Lite to the rescue!
I really do not want to carry a heavy, bulky flashlight when I am also planning to carry home some groceries. In this mountain community, everything is uphill, both ways. The Mini Mag Lite is small and light weight. I can keep it in my purse, or I can use the holster if I am wearing a belt.
This light is made of steel, so it is sturdy. I would not recommend tossing it around, but I have dropped mine many times and it still works. Remember, the light bulb and the focusing lens are made out of glass.
There is no button to push. You gently twist the head of the flashlight to turn it on and off, and to focus the beam.
The flashlight weighs about four ounces when it has batteries in it, so I find it easy to carry. I can also slip it into my jeans pocket. It is about six inches long. The battery chamber is less than an inch in diameter, and the head (the chamber with the light bulb) is about an inch in diameter. You can turn the head to focus the beam. Just be careful not to turn it too roughly, or you could damage the little light bulb inside by twisting its wires.
HINT
The Minim Mag Lite comes with a spare bulb inside the bottom cap.
Changing light bulbs
The little light bulb has two wires sticking out of the bottom, and the head has two little holes where you insert those wires. To fix or replace a bulb, you unscrew the head and pull out the bulb. If the wires got twisted from focusing the beam too roughly, you can usually straighten them out and put the same bulb back in.
Screw the head back on, and you should be ready to go.
Changing batteries
Unscrew the bottom cap, slide the old batteries out, and
slowly slide in the new batteries. If you hit the top of the chamber too hard, you could damage the light bulb.
Screw the bottom cap back on, and you should be ready to go.
Bright light
This little light is very bright for its size. It does seem to get more hours of usage than the cheaper brands, but that is only if you are willing to put up with a dull, yellowish light at the end of the useful battery life. Mag Lite says that you can get between five and six hours of constant use out of one set of batteries. I do not use my light constantly, so I usually get about eight hours.
I have tried many different brands of batteries, and I like Duracell the best because they tend to come back to life if you let them rest for a day or so. My light tends to sit in my purse for two or three days at a time without being used, so the batteries to get an opportunity to rest.
I like playing with the focus, which can make the light beam wider or narrower. Unfortunately, there always seems to be a gray spot in the center of the light beam, due to the little glass nipple on the top of the light bulb.
You can get LED converter kits for these little flashlights for under ten dollars. They are not as bright as the light bulb, but they do extend the battery life, and they do not have that annoying gray spot in the center of the light beam. On the other hand, they do not focus as well as the regular light bulb.
Closing thoughts
I like my little light. For big jobs close to home, like going outside the house to reset the electrical breaker switches, I have the big Mag Lite that uses three D-cell batteries, but when I am out walking, I like to carry the Mini Mag Lite. It is very handy and durable and useful.
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Thank you so much for reading my Epinion!
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