Review on Camping Lantern With 1500LM LED, 4 Light Modes, Waterproof, Battery Powered, Ideal For Hurricane, Emergency, Survival Kit, Outages, Fishing, Hiking - Lepro Lantern by Jason Ingram

I have some of those little LED lanterns that you pull up on the handles and they switch on. They're okay but the light temp is way on the blue side of the spectrum which is hard on my eyes, and the lens is not frosted so the light is not diffused in any way. They're fine in an emergency but they hardly make a camping experience enjoyable.I saw this and thought I'd give it a try to replace those other lanterns. This lantern does not compress down upon itself but is not so huge that you wouldn't take it camping (particularly car camping). I don't think I'd take this backpacking but it's fine for car camping.The housing is robust and wrapped in black rubberized material to provide good shock absorption and grip when holding. The metal handle is also wrapped in a rubberized coating that reminds me of truck bed liner material. The handle, it should be noted, is a very thick and confidence inspiring metal. Not a thing gauge metal that you'll bend on accident.On the bottom of the unit is a carabiner style clip that is attached on a hinge. This is a very cool feature as it easily clips into the light attachment loop on the ceiling of a lot of newer tents. When used in this manner, you can take the top off to increase headroom. Very cool! The bottom lid is plastic that is again covered in a black rubber material for shock absorption.All control is via a single weatherized power button on the body of the unit. A single press goes to full power daylight setting. A quick follow up press goes to a warm white. A third quick press goes to a combined setting (which to my eyes still looks like the daylight setting). A 4th press takes you to a flashing red beacon setting. If you turn on the unit to the desired light temp, you can further adjust to taste, by pressing and holding the power button and it dims, bottoms out, and then brightens back up. You just stop when you reach your desired level of brightness.The great thing about this lantern is that the light is diffused! You don't get all those weird shadows from having 16 clear LED's throwing light around in a circle. Even the daylight setting of this lantern is far preferable to the blue tinged lights of some other emergency lanterns. A thoughtful touch is that inside of the light chamber there is an inverted, mirror polished, cone that reflects light from the array below outward, rather than letting that light get projected upward and lost. That's a nice touch in an affordable lantern!Batteries. This unit uses 3 D-sized batteries, which make it a little on the heavy side but, again for car camping or power outages it's fine. I tried this with some Eneloops AA batteries and some D-cell adaptors. It works fine but after about 45 minutes the total light output was noticeably dimmer. The manufacturer claims 24 hours at daylight, 26 at warm white, and 13 combined. I would expect significantly shorter run times with AA batteries since they don't have as many mAh as D cells. But it definitely works in a pinch.Opportunity for improvement. One thing I dislike about this unit is how the battery lid attaches. There's a hollow tear drop shaped spindle that protrudes from the center of the battery lid that slides onto a similarly shaped spindle that protrudes from the center of the battery compartment. This is because the battery lid needs to maintain the right orientation with the 3 batteries in the compartment. Once the spindles are mated, the locking mechanism for the lid spins freely but the battery connections stay static. This is a neat solution to this problem, admittedly, BUT, you wouldn't want to try to change batteries in the dark and, if there's anything that's going to break it's going to be these 2 spindly pieces of plastic. This is the only thing that's keeping me from giving this unit 5 stars.This is a very well thought out piece of outdoors, emergency gear. If the battery compartment design, and D-cell battery requirement aren't deal breakers, I definitely recommend this lantern.