When would you want to have a strong flashlight handy? After dark, most often. For example if your dog or a neighbor’s dog is barking in a warning tone, if you have car trouble while driving in the late evening, or if you are out camping in the woods and hear a sound that just might be a bear. But it could also be in the day time, if you dropped something tiny like a sewing needle into your carpet. It’s definitely a good idea to have at least one high-powered flashlight in your possession, and you can get them for reasonable prices.
If the power grid goes out for some time, you couldn’t have too many effective flashlights. Well-known newsman Ted Koppel wrote a book about what could happen. It’s called Lights Out, and I reviewed it here.
Where to Keep A Powerful Flashlight
Keep it in a convenient spot, where you can get to it immediately. In a vehicle, this would be within reach of the driver’s seat, whether underneath it, in the glove compartment, or on a magnet in the vicinity. In your home, on the refrigerator is very good, as is right by the bed. Next to the back or front door can also be handy. Decide where to keep it based on its intended uses. This seems obvious but planning this out will also show you how many you will want to have.
If You Don’t Have Any High Powered Flashlights Now
You could just grab any large flashlight when you are in a store, and that would be better than nothing. But particularly when you get into lights of this quality, it’s worth considering your choices. That typically means finding them online, and most of the lights in this website are easily available on the internet.
Think both about how strong the light is and how far it goes. Light strength is measured in lumens. Flashlights vary a lot in lumens. More is generally better for high-powered ones, but not if you are going to be looking around for a small thing that fell in your carpet. For those, you would want less so you weren’t squinting or getting blinded!
For comparison, wattage measures the amount of electricity that a light bulb uses, but lumens is a more useful figure now with LED lights so widely used. Lumens measures how bright a light is. For many all-purpose flashlights, people get them with maybe 200 lumens, but for ultra-high power flashlights with a thousand or more lumens could be the best choice.
Can Headlamps be High in Power?
Headlamps can be very convenient if you need both hands for what you are doing, and some are very bright. Here’s an article I wrote on another website about good headlamp flashlights.
Conclusion
Do some research and get one. Better yet, get more than one.