You are looking at a classic LED light. The PALight has been around for a couple of years now, and has been revised a few times, but it's still a distinctly different animal from every other flashlight. And it's darn handy.

This one's the top-of-range "Survival" model, which The LED Light (who supplied the light to me) sell for a mere $US17.50. This one's got a white LED; there are red, green and blue versions as well.

The PALight's first unusual feature is that it runs from a nine volt battery, which dictates the stubby rectangular shape of the light.

The two halves of the PALight's synthetic-rubber-armoured case are held together with a neat little clip, which you undo by pinching it. It ought never to let go as a result of abuse - well, not unless the abuse is sufficient to break the whole light - but it's quite easy to remove by hand, without tools.

Inside, all you can see is the (included) 9V battery, plugged into a standard snap fitting. The PALight's electronics are all in a sealed compartment at the front. The light's not waterproof, but it's highly water resistant; no amount of rain should be able to drown it.

The second unusual PALight feature is that the thing never turns off, unless its battery is dead or missing. There's an ultra-low-level glow all the time - which is why the light's lens, in the glamour shot above, looks blue.

The always-on mode is about bright enough for someone with OK night vision to read a coin-sized piece of a map; its purpose is to show you where the light is, not to show you where you're going. Press the rubber-covered button on the Survival PALight once and you get a low brightness mode; press it again and you get high brightness; press it a third time and the light goes back to always-on, but with regular attention-getting high brightness pulses; press the button once more and you're back in standby mode. There are cheaper PALights that lack the low brightness and pulse modes.

In always-on mode, the PALight draws less than 0.1mA. So you'd expect an unremarkable alkaline 9V battery with about half-amp-hour capacity to last more than a year.

It'll actually last a lot longer, though. The manufacturers claim a battery will last "over 2 years" with the light in always-on mode, and that actually seems plausible enough to me. That's because the PALight I tested worked surprisingly well at very low input voltages, which is what it'll get from a really worn out battery.

Hooked up to my bench supply and running at a level nine volts, the PALight drew 6mA in low brightness mode, and a hefty 78mA in high brightness mode - obviously, substantial energy's being wasted by the LED controller in this situation, because there's no way that LED's consuming seven tenths of a watt.

When I wound the power supply down to a mere 2.8 volts, though, the always-on mode was still a visible glimmer, and low brightness mode worked as well - though at only 0.2mA current draw, giving a much dimmer light than the flashlight had managed at 9V. High power and pulse modes didn't work at all. But a nine volt battery that can only deliver 2.8 volts into a 0.2mA load is, for all normal intents and purposes, dead flat. A 9V that won't give you a glimmer of life from, say, a transistor radio, will thus actually give you useable output from a PALight.

A lithium 9V battery (lithium 9V batteries actually deliver nine volts - they don't have the over-voltage problem of lithium AAs) has more than twice the capacity of an alkaline one; I'd seriously consider one of those as the second battery for a PALight, after the included alkaline 9V finally dies.

UPDATE: As of the end of April 2004 (almost 19 months after I first wrote this review), I officially pronounce the battery that came with my review PALight dead. It's still good for about 4.5 volts, which means the always-on glow is still fine, and the low brightness mode still works (dimly), and the pulse mode works too, though also dimly. High power ain't happenin', though, and the light is not very useful.

So the two year battery life claim is perfectly plausible - this light actually did get used from time to time, and I don't know how long it had been sitting on the shelf before it was sent to me, so 19 months ain't bad. Someone who uses their PALight semi-regularly and wants high brightness mode to work well may find themselves changing batteries once or twice a year. Fair enough.

The lens on the front of the PALight gives it a quite tight beam, so it's not the best thing for finding your way down a treacherous path. But if you want decent brightness at medium range from a single LED, you need a narrow beam
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