What Is The Best Emergency Lantern For Power Outages?
The lantern is a timeless piece of emergency gear, which has been around for centuries. But with the advent of LED technology and miniaturization in electronics, it's now possible to have an incredibly small and powerful lantern that can pack a lot more punch than old-fashioned oil lanterns. But how do you choose the best lantern for a power outage?
The best emergency lantern for power outages is an LED lantern that is battery-powered, well made, durable, reliable, and bright. The lantern should also be waterproof, offer multiple lighting modes, and have innovative features that allow multiple-use application of the lantern.
One of the most common household emergencies that occur in our society is a power outage. If you're looking for a lantern that will help keep your family safe and secure when the lights go out, we've got you covered with this guide to what's best for camping or at home. We will cover the features that you should be looking for when you shop for a lantern.
How To Choose The Right LED Lantern For Power Outages
Power outages can happen in any location and at any time, and nobody is exempt from this problem. You could be in the same predicament as everyone else unless you have prepared for the problem.
Whether you live in the countryside in a rural setting or in an urban environment, losing power is a reality that we all face at some point, whether it is localized or a greater area problem. Power outages can be caused by a breakdown of the energy suppliers' equipment, lightning strikes to local equipment, earthquakes, storms, and even poorly maintained electrical grids.
The cause of the outage will normally determine the severity of the outage and how long it will last. In some instances, you could be without power for days or even weeks.
This has implications in the characteristics that you should look for in an emergency lantern in your planning for these eventualities. So what are the main features that you should be on the lookout for in selecting the best lantern for power outages?
What's Important to Look for in an LED Lantern?
If you are investigating lanterns for the purpose of using them during an emergency, such as a power outage, then you need to know what to look for in an LED lantern. There are many versions, different models from different manufacturers, and at varying quality levels.
A lantern for a power outage means that it needs to work when you need it and for prolonged periods during an emergency. It must also be robust enough to use in various areas of your home.
We have developed a list of features for your consideration that we believe would allow you to evaluate a lantern for its suitability as an emergency light for power outages.
Here is the list of characteristics, but we will discuss each one individually to highlight the importance of the characteristic as it pertains to power outages.
- Quality of manufacture
- Power consumption
- Power source
- Brightness
- Different modes
- Durability
- Multi-purpose
- Cost
- Innovation
You can use this list as a checklist to make sure that the lanterns you are investigating will tick all these boxes and make a suitable lantern for power outage emergencies.
1. Quality Of Manufacture
If you are going to be relying on a device in the event of an emergency, you want the device to be well made so that it will not go defective on you when you need it most.
As we all know, if anything is going to go wrong with anything in the home, it will go wrong at the time when you need it most or at the worst possible time.
The things to check on your emergency lanterns that could be points of failure are components such as switches, hinges, connection points, battery compartment lids, and waterproof seals.
If any of these aspects of the lantern are sub-standard, it could pose a point of failure for the lantern, especially if you need to use it in rough conditions or wet conditions, such as a storm.
A well-manufactured lantern will also offer longevity as a feature, meaning it will last a long time, and you will not need to replace it often.
2. Power Consumption
The power consumption of the lantern is an important characteristic to consider in a lantern intended for emergency use. When the power goes out, you may have no indication as to how long the outage will last.
If the power outage is due to defective equipment on the energy supplier side, the power could be out for a few hours to a day or so.
If, on the other hand, the outage is due to an earthquake or storm damage, the damage done to the grid could be substantially more significant. In these instances, the power outage could last from a few days to a week or more.
For these types of extended power outages, you do not want a lantern that is going to be power-hungry and rapidly use up its energy supply.
For this reason, the best technology lanterns would be ones that use LED bulbs to produce the light. LEDs are low-power consumption light sources that will not drain the lantern's power supply as quickly as other bulb types.
Most lanterns will also let you know on the packaging how many hours you can expect the lantern to run for on its power source.
This is an important feature of the lantern to take note of, not only to tell how power-hungry the lantern is but also to plan to have additional power sources available for the lantern for extended outages.
3. Power Source
The method that is used to power the lantern should be investigated and taken into account as to whether it is suitable for an emergency application or not.
Lanterns with a built-in rechargeable power source are great, but once the internal battery in the lantern runs low, you will need electricity available to recharge the battery. Unless you have a solar system or a fuel generator available to re-charge the lantern, this type of lantern is probably not the best choice as an emergency light.
If the lantern uses normal batteries, make sure the batteries are readily available, and your local store stocks them in large quantities. For example, lanterns that use AA or AAA batteries would be preferable over a lantern that uses a more specialized battery like a CR123a. AA and AAA batteries are easy to source and are cheaper than most other battery types.
With AA and AAA batteries, you will also be able to stock up on a supply of these batteries in your home to provide you with sufficient power for your lanterns for an extended power outage.
As technology has evolved, even rechargeable variations of the AA and AAA batteries have become very budget friendly options.
4. Brightness
A lantern is intended to light up a general area such as a room rather than direct a focused beam of light in the manner that a flashlight does.
Lighting an area effectively requires lumens. The lumens that the lantern produces also needs to be effectively dispersed to light up the surrounding area.
Normally with lanterns, you will want to balance the number of lumens the light produces with the number of hours that the unit will run on its power source.
Lights that are extremely bright will not be energy efficient. They will provide a bright light, but only for a short amount of time.
It is better to select a lantern with a lumen level that will provide enough lighting so that you can see to do basic household activities without danger caused by the lighting being too dim.
Lanterns that have a lumen rating of somewhere between 200 and 300 lumens would be ideal. If you have a bigger area to light, it would be more cost-effective to have two or three lower lumen lanterns than one higher lumen lantern.
5. Different Modes
Having a lantern that has multiple functionalities is useful, especially in an emergency situation. When the SHTF, you never know what lighting requirements you will need.
A lantern that provides you with options for different light intensity and an emergency strobe setting to call for help should you need it are useful characteristics for an emergency lantern.
Different light intensity modes will allow you to adjust the brightness of the light according to your needs and also manage the power consumption of the lantern.
Lower brightness modes will consume less power from the lantern's power source and extend the time that the power source will last.
6. Durability
The lantern that you select for emergency situations must be durable and able to withstand some rough handling and abuse from the elements.
The materials that the lantern is made from must be shock-resistant to some degree so that it will withstand being dropped, blown over in the wind, or getting knocked about while being transported.
It will also be a good idea if the lantern is waterproof. This feature would allow you to take the lantern outside in adverse weather without the worry that the light is going to fail on you.
7. Cost
Cost is a factor that many people would look at as the first feature of the emergency lantern that they consider.
While everybody likes to find a good deal, sometimes going too cheap is not a good idea, especially if you are going to be relying on that equipment in an emergency.
However, an emergency lantern does not necessarily need to be over-priced either. You are probably going to look to invest in more than one of these lanterns; if you can find one that ticks all the criteria that we have mentioned and is reasonably priced, then you have found yourself a winner!
How Many Lanterns Do You Need?
When it comes to deciding on how many lanterns you are going to need for your home, there are two basic considerations to bear in mind.
- How many lanterns do you need for safety?
- How many lanterns do you need for comfort?
You may be only interested in enough lanterns to keep your home safe during a power outage. This would mean that you only want lights in strategic locations in your home, and everyone would need to gather in that location to benefit from the lights.
On the other hand, you may want a little more comfort in your home in the event of a power outage. This would require more lanterns in the home to provide enough lighting for each person to be comfortable in their own space.
This may require one lantern per person in your household and then additional lights for the common area of the house.
Every family's needs are different, so start your emergency lantern shopping list by putting down every person's name or a description of every location where a light would be necessary. For example, one in every room, one in every car.
The number of lanterns you settle on will be determined by the level of comfort you require in a power outage.
Why You Need a Quality LED Lantern
Quality LED lanterns are not only good for when the power goes out but are useful to light outdoor areas, garages, or even to take with you on a camping trip!
An LED lantern would even be useful to keep in the trunk or glove box of your car for those roadside emergencies that happen in the dark!
Are you looking for a LED lantern that can be used as an emergency lantern for power outages as well as a multitude of other applications around the home and outdoors?
At STKR Concepts, we believe we have a product that will check all the boxes for the requirements we have discussed and go above and beyond these requirements. It is called the ILLUMiDOME Mini Lantern.
It is the perfect solution to your camping, fishing, outdoor area lighting, and emergency lighting needs. It's durable enough to withstand any adventure or emergency while still being lightweight and compact.
This premium light boasts 220 LUMENS of wide-angle light with its 1 Watt LED and offers multiple light setting modes of low, medium, high, and a rapid blinking hazard mode.
You won't have to be concerned about running out of battery power since this lantern takes 3 AA batteries which are easy to find and easy to stockpile to keep your light powered for extended periods of use.
With this lantern's various mode settings, you can maximize the life of the batteries and also adjust the light intensity to your needs.
- ILLUMiDOME Low mode will give you in excess of 100-hours of use.
- Medium mode will allow the light to run for 80 continuous hours of use.
- High mode, which is the brightest mode, will give you 24 hours of continuous use, which should give you light for two or three nights on one set of batteries.
We at STKR Concepts believe in quality products that solve lighting problems and staying in line with this philosophy, we like to bring innovation to all the products that we manufacture.
The ILLUMiDOME lantern is no different and offers many unique and useful features that enhance the effectiveness and application possibilities of the lantern.
The ILLUMiDOME can be stood on its base as a dome light, hung up in the right-side-up orientation, or upside down to give more effective shadow-free lighting to the area. This is especially effective when the central reflector is removed and stored in the base of the unit.
To make this product versatile and suitable as an emergency lantern, we also made the ILLUMiDOME waterproof!
And the best part of our ILLUMiDOME lantern is that it is competitively priced, so you can easily have one for each bedroom for your home as well as multiple units for the common areas of your home.
Conclusion
Power outages are situations that can strike at any time and affect everyone. The degree to which this problem will affect you and your household will depend on how well you plan for this situation.
Fortunately, at STKR Concepts, we have thought about this problem and have a solution for you. After all, our specialty is solving lighting problems.
But even if you do not choose our lantern as your emergency lantern of choice, it is best to be prepared in your home so that a power outage will not leave you stranded in the dark!
