The title says 3 Watts yet the description says “Lamp: One 2 Watt Lexeon LED.”
Hows does a 2 watt LED give out 3 watts of light? Or does it mean that the flashlight consumes 3 watts although the LED only uses 2 watts? Does that mean 1 watt is lost as heat? That’s freakin’ hot.
I bout a fantastic 3 watt LEd flashlight on ebay for $5.95, free s/h. It has Hi, Lo and Flash settings, and the light can be focused. Uses 3 AAA batteries.
First, a 3W LED consumes (up to) 3W of electrical power. Depending on the quality of LED, it could be anywhere from ~0.3W to ~1W of light – the rest does go to heat. It’s not “freakin’ hot”, though – even a puny 2-cell Maglite is about 2W, almost all of which is heat. Real men’s halogen flashlights start at around 5W for pocket models, and aren’t all that hot.
If you actually want 3W of light, get a 10W LED (like the Cree XM-L), but the 7W of waste heat will heat it up good.
Anyway, the “2W” is probably a typo, but it’s pretty mediocre either way.
You can go a lot brighter on 2 NiMH or Li AAs, and the smaller, lighter flashlight lets you carry more spare cells. (And you can’t readily get lithium D cells, so you can’t store it loaded for any length of time without risking a delightful alkaline leak.) Unless you have a specific application that needs both super-long uninterrupted runtimes and alkaline compatibility, it’s IMO a poor compromise.
Yeah, but those regulations were written when most flashlights used energy-hungry hot krypton bulbs. AAA and AA batteries would have lasted only a few minutes at 2 watts. With LEDs, D bstteries shouldn’t be required. In fact, with energy-saving circuitry (i.e. very fast imperceptible strobing), a 3 AAA LED flashlight can last as long as a krypton D flashlight.
I was basing 1 watt being hot on my Airwick air freshener which uses 1 watt to generate pure heat to circulate the scent. And it does get hot enough to burn the skin. I also have a bag sealer that uses 2 AAs and it gets hot enough to melt plastic. So if that lost 1 watt went to pure heat, I’d be afraid… but thanks to your explanation, I’m not worried.