Gear Review - Nite Ize MiniMag 1-watt LED upgrade kit

In case you hadn't noticed, I like LED lights. LEDs have a multitude of advantages over standard bulbs in lights, namely brightness, lifespan, and ruggedness. Aside from cost, there are basically no disadvantages.

However, over the years, I've accumulated a fairly good-sized collection of Mini Maglite flashlights.

Imagine my surprise a few months ago, when I was looking at the hardware section of my local store and saw this:

The Nite Ize LED upgrade kit. The kit itself is pretty basic, it has an LED module, and a new reflector. That's it.
You simply pull out the old bulb, and reflector, and put in the new one. The only thing to look out for is polarization, LED stands for Light Emitting Diode, the Light Emitting part is usually all we care about, during the install process, however, the Diode part becomes sort of important. Diodes only allow power to flow one direction, so if the thing doesn't light up, you'll have to pull the light unit off, and rotate it 180 degrees, then reinstall it, and it will work just fine.

And how fine is just fine? Well, I'm glad you asked:

Here is the light before I installed the upgrade, it's pretty usable, and to be honest, I think we're all familiar with the amount of light the Mini Maglite puts out.












And here is the same scene, illuminated from the same distance with the same flashlight after the LED upgrade, I think the difference is pretty dramatic.

Additionally, under normal use, the LED uses roughly the same amount of battery power, so while you don't get a power savings, you do get a great deal more bang for your buck battery life-wise.

I was able to take my trusted, and tested Maglites, and upgrade them all to LED for less than half the cost of buying new native LEDs, and so far have yet to see a single draw back from doing so.

I highly recommend this product, and if you're looking for a cheap way to go LED, you'd be hard pressed to find a better option.

Jimmy P - Out