Pelican VB3 LED Light

While a flashlight is not a Jeep modification, it can certainly be helpful in and around a Jeep.  This review is about a small battery powered LED flashlight that a friend recently gave me.  He is very much into hiking and photography, which gets him out into the SW desert for overnighters or week long trips.  Since he found it handy for his camping needs, he thought I might find it equally so for my wheelin’ trips.  As far as battery operated flashlights are concerned, I found it to be rather unique in design and quite handy…..handy enough to donate a page to it here on the site.

A little time spent with one of the on-line search engines indicates a price range of about $20 to $25 delivered to your door.  The product info sheet indicates 100 hours of operation on a set of $3 lithium coin style batteries.  (batteries were included)

The user instructions provided direction on battery replacement and operation of the flashlight.  The “head” of the flashlight snaps into the closed position and so it’s not likely that it will accidentally turn on in your pocket, purse, or glove box.  To turn the flashlight on, you grasp the little “wings” on the head of the light and lift.  Once the head is out of its closed position, it can rotate 180 degrees to provide a variety of light angles.

Kind of reminds me of a big black beetle with shiny white eyes.  There are two LEDs mounted at an appropriate angle to provide a fairly dispersed beam pattern.  There are no reflectors used on the LEDs, typical of many LED flashlights.  Doing so would significantly increase the size of the flashlight.

Another view of the flashlight, looking into the “eyes” of this black bug.

The flashlight comes with a lanyard attachment point (a lanyard is not included) and the back of the flashlight has a spring loaded clip that allows it to grip anything up to 1/2″ thick.  The user instructions suggest clipping it onto a shirt pocket with the head positioned straight out (as in the above photo) or onto the bill of your ball cap or hat.  I’m sure there are other places where it could be clipped and I’ll leave it up to you to determine what those may be.

If you are looking for a battery operated compact flashlight, this would be one to consider.  Its design makes it pretty much bullet-proof and it certainly won’t take up much space.