Not a word about Alpin. Oops?

[firiki]

Hey outdoors people! New member here. Need opinions on a LED lantern I recently acquired. It's from Alpin, model LT-1813D. I've used it for roughly 3hrs in total and though I'm perfectly pleased with it's performance I am concerned about it's energy efficiency. They say it can give up to 300 lumens and 3 days or 25 consecutive hours on high scale bafore baterries run out. I like it's build quality but then I found nothing on this company on MTo so I started to wonder. I cannot upload pictures yet but I think you should find some on the web easily. Any thoughts are greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance

Edit: Realised I posted this in the wrong forum. Could a moderator put this in the right place please?

[firiki]

Hmmm. Seems like I got my first review topic. It may take a while though.

[Sparky415]

Some of us are quietly watching 

[Gareth]

3 days at 300 lumen from 3xD cells?  That does strike me as extremely optimistic.   You'll just have to test it for us and let us know.

[gregozedobe]

3 days at 300 lumen from 3xD cells?  That does strike me as extremely optimistic.   You'll just have to test it for us and let us know.

It may only put out 300 lumens for the first 10 minutes, then the output slowly declines as the battery voltage decreases. 

Lots of lights have misleading specs.  A classic is something like "190 lumens of output.  Lasts up to 7 days on one battery."  If you look at a proper independent test you will notice that it does put out 190 lumens, but only for the first 30 seconds, after 1 hour it is down to 5 lumens.  And it will put out "light" for 7 days on the lowest setting, but this starts out as 1 lumen, after 1 day it is down to 0.1 lumens, and after 3 days it is essentially only bright enough to see that it is "on" if you look directly at the LED in pitch darkness.  And this is all with a fresh, premium quality primary lithium battery, you will get much less from an ordinary alkaline battery (a.k.a. an "alkaleak" battery).

[Gareth]

that does seem to be the most likely scenario sadly.

[firiki]

A little update. The test wan't exhaustive, as the light emitted in the end could still be useful in survival scenarios, though I don't know for how much longer would it remain such. I have no means of measuring lumens and candelas.

I simply had the lantern going for a few hours on low every night this August to light up a surface of  rougly 4 x 4 meters which it did quite passably, hanging upside down without its cover. It's far more useful like this than it is on the ground. It scored about 42 hours using the same set of Duracell batteries since March last year, without much use during this period. I doubt the batteries were significantly depleted either by the green LED indicator or by low temperatures. I might have to try again, however I'm not really fond of this lantern due to light/energy source/size ratio. The construction quality seems quite good actually, including the switch -I don't like electronic switches for the outdoors or for contact with water.   

I run into the exact same light being sold under the "Maxlite"  brand name in a shop so I did some searching. Turns out this lantern is probably made in the same factory(ies?) and it's being branded according to the client's specifications.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CCRXCH2/ref=as_li_ss_tl?tag=routerbrand-20

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Top-sell-5W-350-lumens-Nichia-LED-camping-lantern/474091722.html

Edit: It uses 3 Nichia LED stars

[Gareth]

Good follow up mate.  I have to say I'm a little surprised that it's done so well.  As gregozedobe said above, I was expecting it to barely be giving out any light after all that time, if any at all.  So the fact you say it's still actually illumination an area is pretty good going IMO.

[firiki]

The lamp seems quite OK if I'm being honest. Nice, touch plastic, rubber proctetion on the edges, only the incorporated hook underneath feels cheap. I'll give it another chance, for the time being it is kept as an emergency light. It's the battery size that I dislike but it's not a break dealer   

Edit: This thread was missing some pics.