Hasta La Gadget!

You know how your mother always told you not to stare into the Sun? Well, the same guidance holds true with this small flashlight that can blast out a whopping 3500 lumens of brightness.

The NiteCore TM26 “Tiny Monster” Flashlight uses four superbright CREE XM-L U2 LEDs to light up the darkest of nights. Despite its monstrous brightness level, it can actually run for up to 1000 hours using four 2600mAh Li-ion 18650 or eight CR123 batteries. You can also use fewer batteries in an emergency.

The TM26 gives you eight selectable brightness levels, and displays this information, as well as voltage and battery levels on a built-in OLED display. It’s also IPX-8 waterproof, so it can be submerged safely in up to two meters of water. The flashlight measures about 5.59″ long, and weighs just under a pound (without batteries).

Keep in mind that you’ll pay dearly for the power to blind your neighbors. The Tiny Monster flashlight is available for order over at ThinkGeek for $389.99(USD).

There’s certainly no dearth of apps floating around with the sole purpose of turning your phone’s LED bulb into a makeshift flashlight. So if you’re someone to whom design is an afterthought (at best), you’ll probably be perfectly content keeping what you already have. For the rest of you, though, HLP Flashlight for iOS is a simple, elegant take on a utility that’s more or less become a necessity. And there are even a few fun kicks thrown in, to boot. More »

Japan is no stranger to earthquakes. Despite this, the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami devastated the country. So you can never be prepared enough. That’s why Force Media, a Tokyo-based initiative, has now come up with a new flashlight that can alert people in the event of an earthquake.

This flashlight is called Gurapika (model JF-ERL1W) and comes with a built in radio that is tuned to the Earthquake Warning Alarm system that is sounded in Japan in the event of an earthquake. It will alert users with a visual and audio alarm in the event of a seismic emergency. Many people have living spaces that do not allow them to hear public address systems and public alarms when inside, so this is a handy device. Plus, it’s a flashlight.

The flashlight can also be charged in a regular wall socket and will give up to 14 hours of light or six hours of radio on a full charge, and can also be used to juice up your gadgets. In a pinch, it can also be powered for short periods of time via a hand cranking mechanism, eliminating the need for batteries. You don’t want to worry about batteries during an earthquake.

The Gurapika flashlight is available now from Amazon Japan for ¥4,609 (~$50 USD).

[via Gizmowatch]

In cases of real emergencies, most emergency lights are pretty much useless if you don’t have the required number of and type batteries to power them up. You can consider yourself lucky if you come across sealed packs of double As and triple As as you stumble around in the dark, but if what you’ve got is a set of batteries in mixed sizes, then you’re pretty much doomed.

Panasonic was well aware of this problem, which is probably why they came up with the BF-BM10 flashlight which is also known as the ‘Any Battery Light.’

I think the name pretty much says it all. You can use any size of 1.5 volt battery that you can find lying around in your house, from the tiny AAAs to the huge D-sized battery. The flashlight uses one battery at a time, and you can expect up to 86 hours of operation if you insert four brand-new batteries into the slots.

Panasonic was inspired to invent the flashlight after demand for portable torches soared after the devastating earthquakes in Japan last 2011.

At this point, the Any Battery Light will only be made available to the Japanese market, and will go on sale later this month for 2,000 yen (~$24 USD).

[via Japan Today via Bit Rebels]

When your power goes out, one of the last things you want to be doing is fumbling around your home looking for a flashlight. Then, once you find one, having to fish around your drawer full of crap to find batteries that can be used for it, most likely somewhere in the AA or AAA variety. If you don’t have the right battery, you’ll be sitting in the dark, unless you have a new emergency flashlight from Panasonic that can use any battery you throw at it.

Panasonic’s Emergency Flashlight can use a combination of AAA, AA, C or D-sized batteries to help you through emergencies or to supply light for an impromptu backyard session of beer pong.

To keep the flashlight’s cost low, Panasonic isn’t making it possible to use all of the batteries at the same time, instead allowing you to use the flashlight to house multiple batteries and choosing which ones you’d like to use. Even though we’d like to see the flashlight use every battery possible all at once, Panasonic is promising 86 hours of use when all battery slots are filled.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: LockStar Announces GPS-Enabled Watches To Help Track Family Members, Samsung Reveals Robotic Vacuum Cleaner With Longer Reach,