Pinnacle Flashlights Blog

Have you ever dropped a flashlight and watched in frustration as the light went out on striking the floor? Been in the middle of a task and had the bulb burn out? You’re not the only one. Sudden impacts can easily break the filament of a bulb, and everyone knows they can burn out. The durable LEDs used in flashlights don’t have either of these problems, though, since they don’t have glass globes or filaments to break. Over a very long period of time an LED might get dimmer, but this period of time is usually measured in tens of thousands of hours (that’s 10,000 hours), so for most practical purposes this is never an issue - and of course, LEDs never just “go out.” The exception to these rules is if the flashlight is poorly designed, in which case the LEDs (also called emitters) can get too hot or are forced to use more power than they are intended to, which can drastically shorten the time it takes for them to dim. This is VERY COMMON in cheap flashlights, since some manufactures assume the lights will not be used very often. Always remember, you get what you pay for!

One of the greatest things about LEDs is that a flashlight manufacturer can arrange it so that they produce different amounts of light. This means that instead of being stuck with one brightness like a normal light bulb, a person with an LED flashlight can choose to use more or less light for any situation, which saves power. For instance, if you need to rummage in your purse or find your way down a dark movie aisle, you don’t need much light, no more than 10 lumens at most - which doesn’t take much electricity to produce. However, if you went to search for a dog that has gotten loose in the area around your residence you would need much more, usually at least 100 lumens and often many times more than that - which takes much more electricity to make. Since LEDs can produce different amounts of light you can use the same flashlight for many different tasks and only use as much power as you need, reducing the need to replace or recharge your batteries.