Hi,
I know Ozbargainers love torches :) so hopefully someone can help me out.
I have an old 3 D cell Maglite which cost me a small fortune 10 years ago, however a $3.5 Cree 1 AA cell (bought via here) is so much brighter!
Amazing how technology has moved so fast and cheap.
Is there anyway I can retro fit a bright LED globe into my 4.5V maglite? with 3 D cells, battery life would be huge.
Had the same desire and did some research about 6 months ago. For the cost of a LED globe for my 3D Maglite I can buy a smaller, MUCH brighter CREE torch on ebay. As a result my Maglites are sitting gathering dust.
The P2X fury looks good, but rrp $155 is huge! haha
OK, I was afraid you guys were going to confirm what I already thought, the Maglite will just sit in the draw unused.
Unfortunately, the average intruder will laugh at me when I attempt to strike him with my single AA cell Cree LED torch! haha
Unfortunately, the average intruder will laugh at me when I attempt to strike him with my single AA cell Cree LED torch! haha
I love this… this is the exact same thought I had when I replaced my big Maglite too…. but the Fury outputs 500 lumens and a quick blast of that much light in someone's face will temporarily blind them for a few seconds - and there'll be no evidence! (Yes, I've tried it on myself! haha)
Maglite actually have an upgrade LED for their flashlights, but they're quite pricey.
I've got a 4-D light at home with the upgraded Maglite LED - it was on sale quite some time ago for about $10 so it was worth a try. When it wasn't on sale, it was priced almost near the $50 mark… which is enough to buy a whole new light!
I have to admit, I wasn't too impressed with it. For the price that it usually retails for, I would've expected a huge difference. Where most LEDs provide a white light, this one is still quite yellow (warm) and doesn't seem to be that much brighter than the original globe. Having said that, my eyes are not the best judge since the perception of light is measured differently for different types of outputs - some wide outputs, some spot outputs, etc.
I can't comment on the battery life with the LED since my maglite just sits under my bed and not used very often. The batteries stay in there for years so the normal battery drain would be a factor.
This is my go-to light if I ever needed to grab something bright: http://www.surefire.com/p2x-fury.html
It's about a tenth of the size of the maglite, but absolutely sh!ts over anything else I've seen.
There's a possibility of modding another LED to fit, but I'm not sure how you'd go matching the type of LED to the reflector, etc. If the bulb was off-centre slightly, the reflector might magnify that greatly in the light that's produced at the end.