EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) — To paraphrase, Dorothy on “Wizard of Oz”: Pocket knives, multitools and flashlights, oh, my.
Oh, or rather “O” is the theme of the day.
Bear with me while I tell a bit of a story.
I’ve always loved a good pocket knife and have been enamored with Leatherman-type multitools for a couple of decades.
Two small flashlights from Olight — the imini and the i3E EOS. They are displayed on a souvenir hand towel from the Sun Bowl to give context to their size. Photo by Dave Burge/KTSM
But I’ve never been a flashlight kind of guy. Sure, I use a flashlight when necessary and know exactly where one is in my house in case of an outage.
But I’m not one of those guys who know all the technical details, stuff like the difference between lumens and candelas and all that stuff.
That may change. I may need to dig deeper into the world of EDC flashlights.
I recently took an advantage of one of the online sales from a company called Olight, which sells EDC lights, tactical lights, self-defense lights, headlamps, bicycle lights, camping lights and accessories.
What prompted this new foray into a different and sometimes confusing aspect of everyday carry? A couple of things.
I had my eye on a prybar made by Olight which they call Opry 2. (Yeah, everything Olight does has an “O” in it. Not sure if it is clever or annoying yet.).
During the sale, by picking up a few other items and bundling them together, I was able to get a pretty steep discount on this titanium prybar I had been coveting.
The Opry 2 normally goes for around $50.
During the sale, I got the a aforementioned prybar, a mini flashlight, two mini-bolt action pens (yes, they are called O’Pens) and a utility blade for $66. I also got another mini flashlight as a gift just for making the order.
I had been carrying a small pocket-sized light from one of Olight’s chief competitors for about eight months. The light is well built and has three levels of brightness, but it is complicated to turn on and off and operate.
For flashlight enthusiasts, what they call “user interface” — a fancy term for how you use it — is really what differentiates whether a light is worth having or not.
The Olight imini is about an inch and a half long, including magnetic base or cap. You detach the light from the base and it turns on. Put it back into the base and it turns off. Caveman simple. Me like.
It also has a magnet at the end of the light so you can attach it to the hood of your car in a pinch or any other place that has metal. Very convenient, very simple.
It is powered by three button-size batteries and you get three replacement batteries included in the packaging. Again very convenient.
The other light, the one I got for free, is called the i3E EOS. It’s a keychain flashlight that normally retails for about $10. It is powered by a AAA battery. You twist the cap and it turns on and you turn it the back the other way, and it turns off. Again, caveman simple.
It’s about 2 1/2 inches long, about the size of my pinky, so it is super simple to carry. Just tuck it into a pocket and you have it handy anytime you need a light.
Stay tuned and I’ll take a look the other gear I picked up from Olight in the next few weeks in my next installment.
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