Minimaglite brightness

[lovenhim]

I am wondering what you think of the 2AA LED maglite.  I sent an email to Maglite about the brightness of their lights.  I would like to have a brighter EDC flashlite.  I have a 7 year old Inova X% and it works fine but it is just not bright enough for me.  Here is the reply they sent to me:

Dear Paul,

Thank you for choosing Maglite products. We appreciate your loyalty!

The 2 cell AA LED Mini Maglite is rated at 69 lumens. It should be noted that rather than perform our testing "in house" as other companies are doing, we have sent our products to an independent lab for testing. We believe that providing the consumer with independent verification brings more crediblity to its published product performance and reliability measurements.

The AAA Mini Maglite is available in incandescent only and is rated at 9 lumens. For comparison issues the AA Mini Maglite incandescent is rated at 12 lumens. Please visit our website often as the specifications for all products should be added shortly.

Please contact us if we can be of further assistance.

Sincerely,
Lynn Parry
Customer Service

[Mr. Whippy]

I have a AA-2 miniMaglite that I modded with LED light.  It is much better than the incandescent miniMag But, no where near the level of the Maratac (or Fenix) 1 AAA light

JME

[Mike, Lord of the Spammers!]

There good quality, robust lights, but they've had there day now I think

I'd be looking down the Fenix, Nitecore route if I were you mate

[Styerman]

I like them , had they been around back in the day , I probably wouldn't have graduated to Surefires , and other fancy LED stuff . They are a good , basic Durable tool . Another good Mag option is an Incan. MiniMag with a Terralux dropin ( a tad bit spendy , but a good way to make your old Mag truly impressive ) .

I have also toyed with the idea of an LED upgrade to a AAA MiniMag , which in a fair court , would have been an LED lite from the get go .

Chris

[RichardMT]

I have the AA LED Mini-Mag. I wonder about the 69 lumen claim. Whether using the flood or focusing to spot (not a lot of difference) it does not seem to have near the brightness of my other lights in the same output class.

TK12 R2 has a medium 55 lumen mode, Surefire L1 has 65 on high and the L2D and LD20 Fenix lights have similar outputs among the modes and the MiniMag does not seem to come anywhere close to those head-to-head.

That being said, it is a nice little light and plenty bright enough for many uses.

[jzmtl]

LED minimag (and LED 3D mag to a lesser extend) is my around house light, despite having other high powered lights.

Although I did swap the module with a 2D LED mag so it's one mode and quite a bit brighter.