Flashlights usually aren’t top of mind these days. But if a natural disaster or storm knocks out the power, a durable flashlight brings both comfort and an important element of safety. In more extreme cases, a flashlight may even ensure your survival.
A high-quality flashlight is useful in all kinds of mundane situations too, whether you’re jogging before dawn, exploring the woods at night, digging through a dark attic or garage, going camping or catching fireflies with the kiddos.
Which flashlight should you buy? Not only are there too many flashlights on the market to count, but there are also a number of different categories of flashlights — from baton to hands-free to lantern-style. We researched the most popular products at a number of retailers, read recommendations from experts, acquired over a dozen devices and tested them all for you in order to present our picks for the best flashlight for 2021.
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The $30 ThruNite baton-style LED flashlight is an all-around fantastic device. This compact flashlight offers powerful output for about 40 minutes before dropping to lower lumens; its light-but-sturdy aluminum body is comfortable in the hand; its two-button interface (one to power it on, one to toggle its brightness level and strobe effect) is intuitive; its belt clip is handy and keeps it from rolling; its beam is wider than many similarly priced baton flashlights; and the flashlight is waterproof up to 2 meters.
One of the cooler features of the ThruNite LED flashlight was its firefly setting — a gentle light that’s perfect for nighttime use when you’re trying not to startle wildlife or wake sleeping kiddos.
Basically, casual users shouldn’t have much to complain about with the ThruNite. Its only real shortcoming was that 40-minute high-power duration. If you’re walking in the woods at night and want to explore for hours, you’ll want a baton-style light that boasts consistent, high-level output — which comes at a cost.
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I didn’t test all the high-end flashlights on the market, but I did test a $90 Olight Baton Pro rechargeable flashlight — a favorite brand of many enthusiasts — for the sake of comparison. I can’t call it the “best” high-end light, but it certainly showed what a little more money can buy.
The Olight blew the other baton-style lights out of the water when it came to high-level output and consistency. Over the course of an hour, its output — which already started higher than most of the low-end and mid-level lights — barely budged. Its small body is lightweight and sturdy. The designers creatively packed a slew of features into the single-button interface: low, medium and high power settings; a low-level firefly-type mode and a super-bright turbo mode; a strobe effect; timers; and a lock to keep the light from accidentally turning on and draining its battery.
In short, the Olight rechargeable flashlight is a wonder of design, and if you’re in the market for a powerful flashlight that’ll get lots of use, it will serve you better than lights in the under-$50 range.
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In the simplest terms, Rayovac’s Floating LED lantern is the best flashlight for the money. The plastic body feels cheap (though it does float in water), and the rubber button does two things: turns the light on and turns it off. The output across 60 minutes was impressive. Sure, the bright light wasn’t as consistent as you get from a high-end light like the Olight, but even after 2 hours in a stress test, the Rayovac still put out more lumens than almost any light I tested after only 1 hour.
The big downside of the Rayovac is its 6-volt battery, which you’ll have to replace when it runs out. That costs almost as much as the flashlight itself.
That said, if you want a solid light to keep in a closet until disaster strikes, Rayovac’s lantern will do the trick.
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Although Rayovac’s camping flashlight is technically a lantern-style light, it still features a forward-facing beam, unlike some lights with 360-degree coverage. These lights are great for camping or group activities in the dark, and the best one I tested was LE’s rechargeable LED lantern.
Although LE’s output wasn’t exceptional in a single direction — which our testing procedures emphasized — it effectively lit a large space for over an hour, and did so more brightly than the slightly cheaper Energizer lantern.
LE’s real charm comes from its inventive design. Two baton-style lights detach from its body, allowing would-be campers to break off and accomplish their own activities without stealing the light from everyone else. It’s a cool idea, and one that cleverly anticipates the concerns and activities of real people.
The downside of LE’s lantern is its battery usage. For best results, you’ll need three D batteries for the lantern, and three AAA batteries for each break-off baton, for a grand total of nine batteries. That leaves you with an expensive device to keep up, and a heavy lantern to carry on a nighttime hike. That said, the pros definitely outweigh the cons here.
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Foxdott’s $15 rechargeable headlamp is a fantastic device for the price. Its output wasn’t consistent, but it was much higher than other headlamps in the same price range. What’s more, the multilight design allows for tons of settings, including red-light mode and strobe mode. One button controls the standard LEDs, powering on two, four or six or activating a strobe effect. The second button activates two extra-bright LEDs, dims them, turns them red and makes them blink red. You can use both buttons to choose any combination of the above effects.
I like that you can simultaneously run six high-powered LEDs with two blinking red safety lights, especially if you’re jogging on the road in the predawn dark. Or you can simply activate two dim LEDs for after-dusk exploration. It gives you flexibility and performance that other headlamps simply don’t offer.
How we tested for the best flashlight
The two primary tests I conducted measured a given flashlight’s performance over time and the spread of its beam. For the first test, I affixed the flashlight to a tripod, pointed at a reflective screen 6 feet away. I then pointed a light meter at the reflective screen and tracked the relative lumens over the course of 60 minutes.
Although I tested the lights in an almost completely dark garage, the light readings shouldn’t be understood as absolute. Instead, they give a window into how the flashlights compare with one another and how their outputs change over time.
This chart shows the relative change in lumen output across a 60-minute testing period.
The other test involved setting up a flashlight 6 feet away from a white wall, then measuring the diameter of the beam of light. This gave a sense of the general width you should expect from these lights — although it obviously only applied to some of the lights. Lantern-style lights, for instance, provide much wider light coverage.
Beyond these two tests, I used the lights in a dark room and outside at night to get a general feel for each of them and the features they offer. Here I looked for light output options, extras like safety lights or strobe effects and a lightweight-but-sturdy body that felt intuitive to use even in the dark.
The rest of the pack
Broadly speaking, most of the lights I tested weren’t great. They either produced little light, like the $14 J5 Tactical flashlight and the Eveready baton flashlight (which only costs $6.50 for a two-pack), or they produced wildly inconsistent light across the 60-minute testing window. And while the best products, like the Olight, can maintain consistent output over hours, even good affordable options like the ThruNite and Rayovac units I recommend see either steady or eventual clifflike drop-off within an hour.
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The $18 Mini MagLite Pro baton, however, is solid in its output. This small flashlight starts with lower lumens than the ThruNite, for instance, but it maintains solid output for much longer — even after 90 minutes of running, it still maintained a higher output than the ThruNite after 40 minutes.
The problems with the MagLite are mostly due to its physical design: You turn on the MagLite flashlight by twisting the top, which if you continue twisting removes the head of the light. Yes, the same motion that powers on the light also takes it apart. You also don’t get any of the various settings the ThruNite offers and the MagLite seems almost designed to roll off surfaces (I can’t tell you how many times I set down all the flashlights and had to catch the MagLite as it crept off the edge of the table).
David Priest/CNET
As for lantern-style lights, I found most, including LE’s $37 Searchlight, Samlite’s $27 lantern and Energizer’s $19 Lantern, to have low general output. LE’s lantern was the best of the bunch, thanks to its clever modular design.
Headlamps were surprising to test because of their erratic performance — particularly the $14 Energizer and Gearlight devices (selling two for $14), which bounced all over the map throughout their 60-minute testing periods. The $12 ARCBLD headlamp was much more consistent, but it produced poor light compared with competitors. That left the steadily dropping output of the Foxdott headlamp in the lead, even before considering its superior feature set (such as charging and the aforementioned light arrangement).
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Which light is for you?
After dozens of hours testing these 14 flashlights, part of what’s clear is just how different the needs of different people might be — and thus how different the recommendations are. Some devices are great for casual use, but for those interested in high-end flashlights, devices like the Olight (or any number of others) might be more appropriate.
Looking for lights? Here’s further reading
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