Rayovac SE3DLN Sportsman Xtreme 300-Lumen LED Lantern
by Rayovac
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Tools and Hardware Reviews of Rayovac SE3DLN Sportsman Xtreme 300-Lumen LED Lantern
Customer Review: Overall Great, With a Few Quibbles
Summary: 4 Stars
Basically in agreement with the positive reviews, with a few quibbles. (1)Changing the batteries is a clumsy operation. The base twists off to load the batteries. Putting back the base however requires a tricky alignment of the contacts. The base has two sections. The section with the contacts rotate freely about the section that you grip. Maybe I'm just clumsy, took me six tries. (2)Overall rugged materials and construction, with the exception of the tent hook. Cheap plastic, probably would break if dropped. Folds flat into the base. But held in place only by friction fit. If you use it enough, it will probably wear and no longer stay folded in place. If you don't fold and unfold the hook often, not a problem. (3)Even when the power is off, one LED flashes every couple of seconds (like a smoke detector). This is a "finder beacon" to allow you to locate the lantern in a dark tent or room. I keep it around for emergencies. I don't know whether this causes any significant drain on the battery. When I have time, I'll check with the manufacturer. Still, it's one of the few units that run on a few (3)D-Cells. Many run on AA cells or then jump to 8-D-Cells. AA cells don't last as long, of course, but 8 D-Cells by themselves weigh a ton. Good unit for the price. Another example of Amazon's quirky pricing,though. Seems to vary from $26 - $30 on a daily basis. Still, Amazon's shipping and customer service is amazing.
Note added 9/13/09: There are differing opinions about ease of battery installation. As I originally reported, the problem is that the bottom cap consists of two pieces that are joined by a pivot. The inside piece, with the notches that lines up with the tabs in the battery compartment, is free to swivel about the outer piece that you actually grip. So you first line up the notches with the tabs, but when you try to seat the cap, the inside piece can swing out of alignment. I bought two units. One is easy to assemble because the pivot is tight, and the inside piece doesn't swing too freely. The other is a pain because the pivot is loose, and the inside piece swings easily. I think that's why some people say it's frustrating and others have no problem...depends on how tight the pivot in their unit is. This is difficult to explain without a diagram. Still, I think the configuration is poorly engineered. However, this is an operation you don't need to do often, unless you use it constantly.
Note added 4/27/10: I've had a unit with the same set of batteries for a year now (infrequent use), so current drain by the beacon LED is minimal. No need to disable it or remove the batteries. But I do agree with others that the beacon LED is useless because its emission field is so narrow that you can't see it unless you're staring at it straight on.
Customer Review: goo lamp
Summary: 4 Stars
Basically in agreement with the positive reviews, with a few quibbles. (1)Changing the batteries is a clumsy operation. The base twists off to load the batteries. Putting back the base however requires a tricky alignment of the contacts. The base has two sections. The section with the contacts rotate freely about the section that you grip. Maybe I'm just clumsy, took me six tries. (2)Overall rugged materials and construction, with the exception of the tent hook. Cheap plastic, probably would break if dropped. Folds flat into the base. But held in place only by friction fit. If you use it enough, it will probably wear and no longer stay folded in place. If you don't fold and unfold the hook often, not a problem. (3)Even when the power is off, one LED flashes every couple of seconds (like a smoke detector). This is a "finder beacon" to allow you to locate the lantern in a dark tent or room. I keep it around for emergencies. I don't know whether this causes any significant drain on the battery. When I have time, I'll check with the manufacturer. Still, it's one of the few units that run on a few (3)D-Cells. Many run on AA cells or then jump to 8-D-Cells. AA cells don't last as long, of course, but 8 D-Cells by themselves weigh a ton. Good unit for the price. Another example of Amazon's quirky pricing,though. Seems to vary from $26 - $30 on a daily basis. Still, Amazon's shipping and customer service is amazing.
Note added 9/13/09: There are differing opinions about ease of battery installation. As I originally reported, the problem is that the bottom cap consists of two pieces that are joined by a pivot. The inside piece, with the notches that lines up with the tabs in the battery compartment, is free to swivel about the outer piece that you actually grip. So you first line up the notches with the tabs, but when you try to seat the cap, the inside piece can swing out of alignment. I bought two units. One is easy to assemble because the pivot is tight, and the inside piece doesn't swing too freely. The other is a pain because the pivot is loose, and the inside piece swings easily. I think that's why some people say it's frustrating and others have no problem...depends on how tight the pivot in their unit is. This is difficult to explain without a diagram. Still, I think the configuration is poorly engineered. However, this is an operation you don't need to do often, unless you use it constantly.
Note added 4/27/10: I've had a unit with the same set of batteries for a year now (infrequent use), so current drain by the beacon LED is minimal. No need to disable it or remove the batteries. But I do agree with others that the beacon LED is useless because its emission field is so narrow that you can't see it unless you're staring at it straight on.
Customer Review: Awesome lantern
Summary: 5 Stars
BRIGHT! This thing is definitely good enough for any scenario I could imagine. Tried it out in our dark basement, and this thing lit the place up.
I read all the "bad" reviews and these are the two biggest complaints... Battery cover and "easy find" blinking LED that slowly drains batteries.
Battery cover - not bad at all if you line up the RED ARROWS!... although changing in the dark would be tricky, I don't think it would be impossible.
Blinking LED (that's only really visible if you're looking directly straight on at the front of the light, so I don't really see it being that useful anyway - Easy solution if you don't mind taking it apart and voiding the warranty, which at this price I was willing to take a shot. There are 3 screws in the battery compartment that you have to unscrew to separate the battery and light assembly from the outer case. Once I took this out I used a pair of needle nose pliers to GENTLY twist and break the blinking LED off of the circuit board. No LED = no completed circuit to drain the batteries. Put it back together and the light works same as it did before, and now I can confidently leave the batteries in and know that I'll have a working light a month or two from now. Problem solved. I'm sure the manufacturer wouldn't recommend this, but I'm a problems solver and I couldn't help myself.
So in conclusion... this is a compact and super bright lantern that is built to last. The only flaw is the (barely visible) blinking light, but as you can see... it can be remedied. For the price... you can't go wrong.
Update 5/21/2010: Took this thing camping for the first time last weekend in the Shenandoah National Park, VA. I was very excited to try it out, and was not disappointed! First night there were some strong T-storms coming through, but we managed to get tents up and a small fire started before they hit. I ended up using the lantern in the tent to get stuff situated, and used the tent hook on the bottom of the lantern(some reviewers are skeptical about the sturdiness of this) to hang in the tent. Well, it didn't rain much, so we stood out by the fire in our ponchos to enjoy what was left of the fire. The wind was the worst part of the storm (I'd say 15-20mph)and bounced the tent around quite a bit. That lantern was swinging around inside but never fell, and was so bright it made our tent this glowing pod that cast plenty of light that we could see perfectly out by a now smoldering fire. It was actually pretty enjoyable to watching the top of the tent dance around in the wind with the light swinging around inside. So after that, I feel very confident and pleased with the design of the tent hook on the bottom of the lantern... it comes in very handy.
Customer Review: Glares up at your eyes, runtime exaggerated.
Summary: 3 Stars
Using 10ah rechargeables in it, it draws 1.1 amps on high, & 0.48 amps on low. That means in less than 10 hours, the batteries will no longer be able to keep it at full brightness on high, & will no longer be as bright after 20 hours on low.
In my tests it ran around 10 hours on high before it dimmed slightly. After 12 hours on high, it was noticeably dimmer... slightly dimmer than it would be on low with fresh batteries. After 18 hours it was no brighter than a small nightlight.
On the low setting, it ran 23 hours before I noticed it was getting dimmer. After 35 hours, it was no brighter than a small nightlight. It would probably run very dim like that for days, which is probably where they got the long runtime ratings from, but it won't be usable light. You can put almost dead batteries in it, & it will probably glow very dim for a very long time.
It is very bright on high. It's the brightest LED lantern I've ever seen (I've seen a lot of them). On low it's very bright too. It seems relatively durable, so should withstand normal use.
The brightest part of the light is aimed about 45 degrees upward. So the brightest part of the light is shining upward in your eyes instead of down where you need to see. You're blinded by glare & have a hard time seeing anything. You don't shine a flashlight in your face to see down a path, & car headlights don't point toward your windshield to see down the road.
Fortunately the top of the light is flat, so if you put it upside down, the light is better, but it sure looks stupid that way. There is also a hook folded into the bottom so you can hang it upside down from stuff too.
The freely swiveling battery connector in the base is a total nightmare in poor design. Try to line the notches up to put the battery cover on, & it swivels away.
Unlike everyone else here, I only gave it 3 stars because they exaggerated the runtime (runtime is usually expressed in the time it takes to run dim down to 50% brightness, not to the point it's so dim that it's useless), & for a poor design of what could have been a 5 star light. They should have actually used the prototype at least 1 night before mass producing it.
The stupid design flaws could have been easily corrected without making the light more expensive, & it's never good to lie about runtimes or other specs.
Customer Review: Great light, VERY Bright, Well built
Summary: 5 Stars
I just got this light so can't comment on the battery life yet, but in terms of the design, brightness and construction.. very good!. I was Shocked at how powerful this light is, it's almost like looking into a 100 watt bulb, it's that bright and easily lights up an entire room with useful light, even on low it's still more than bright enough to see what's going on. The bulb itself has had three very bright LED's inside totally a 4 watt output. I've found it to be as bright or brighter than the dual mantle coleman gas lanterns that are known to be very powerful as well but with this you don't have to worry about the gas or fire.
Some have complained about the batteries being very hard to install and I can see why some might have trouble. But I've found that if you just line up the two arrows, one on the battery compartment cover and the unit itself where the two grooves slide into each other first, then press the cover on and give it a twist it locks in with no problem. I took it off and put it on in 5 seconds once you just line up the slots it's no problem.
The top dome comes off easy to expose the bare bulb mode and goes back and secures just as easy. It has a metal handle covered in rubber that is strong and sturdy as well as a plastic hook on the bottom that you can hang it upside down in a room or tent. Some have said that they wouldn't trust the plastic hook, but I hung it over my bed, hung it on my finger with the batteries inside and shook it up and down very hard to see if it would break off at all and it held totally securely. I even pulled the hook with about 12-15lbs of force and it still showed no signs of coming off so I would not be concerned about that and I would hang it by the hook if needed.
The unit also has a strobe mode by holding the button for 3 seconds which is nice as well. So you hit the button once for high, another time within about 2 seconds for low, then once more to turn it off. It does have the flashing LED locator light which some have said will drain the batteries and it probably will, so I just take the batteries out and install them when needed since I found getting the battery cover on it be easy once I used the method mentioned above.
Overall.. very impressed with the feel, construction and POWER of this light. Great light to have!