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good for putting it in the car, but i hate this style of flashlight

Works fine, a bit weird bluish tinted light from the LEDs but bright enough to change a tire and a good run time on the battery.

Trigger locks it on and another pull turns it off, you don't have to hold the button for it to stay turned on.

Bleh, crude junk. Poor beam focus and not nearly as bright as even the typical single AA 3W Cree pocket lights you can find for no higher cost at places like http://www.dealextreme.com

Pretty sad they're still making LED lights with 1995 tech considering how great the improvements have been in the LED industry over the last 4 years, and 7-8 hour recharge on this one sucks, as it's both far too slow to wait around on if you need light, yet too short to charge overnight without worry that if you forget it, that it's charging at a high enough rate to cook the battery.

does it really last 5 hours?

Not good for putting in the car, as Dave_C says. The battery in this sucker sucks. Before 6 mos is out it will be battery burial time, if the landfill police don't get you.

I don't quite agree re the led's, although there is truth to what he says--- it is the crappy batteries in this chinese junk that makes it truly trash.

danpi, you don't agree re: the LEDs because you don't know what you're talking about. High-end LEDs are not found in crap electronics like Dorcy brand. I've seen this flashlight in person, and it's just about as bright as my small Maglite.

Check these non-rechargable flashlights if you want something small and cheap, as dave_c recommended:

http://www.dealextreme.com/products.dx/category.901

If these are premium/modern grade encapsulated LEDs, figure about 5 lumens if driven hard (highest current they can safely tolerate) which makes 'em about 100mW each, 1.3W total and 65 lumens total, BUT because the focus is not tight at all you have that 65 lumens spread over a larger area which is ok if you need to light up half of a wall dimly, but not all that useful for other purposes.

The one saving grace would have been the long runtime, but with modern multi-mode flashlights having a reasonably low, low mode, you can still get several hours of runtime from something much smaller and more durable.

On the other hand, what incentive did they have to use premium grade highest efficiency LEDs? Not much, if that was their design goal they could have used a single 1-3W power LED like the other lights do.

Dorcy does now have a few flashlights that would've been competitive about 3-4 years ago, but it's not 3 years ago, everyone else is moving on to more efficient LEDs and more refined drivers for them.
http://www.dorcy.com/products.aspx?c=36

Hey "friend,"

You said you didn't quite agree regarding the LEDs. Am I missing something?

I work with plenty of post-docs who are clueless when it comes to anything other than their area of research. Even then, I know PhDs who know surprisingly little about their field in general, so don't attempt to tout your academic achievements in an online pissing contest. Bell labs has a diverse research department - name-dropping that company is like saying you're an expert on oncology because you do research at Pfizer. Sorry, I remain unimpressed.

The only reason I know a thing or two about LEDs is because I've built a few homemade systems that I use on my bicycle, and I did the leg work to figure out which ones work. High quality LEDs cost more than most Dorcy flashlights, inclusive.