Review on 🕯️ Megainvo Electric Candle Lighter: USB Rechargeable Arc Plasma Lighter for Candles, Gas Grills, Kitchens, Stoves, Camping & Fireworks by Roxana Kotarba

I doubted what I read because negative reviews are often caused by careless use or outright abuse, but now I can confirm this is true: USB-charged arc lighters suck light candles! Why? This is because cheap small lithium-ion polymer cells can only generate a short continuous arc. It's quite hot, but the electrodes are (on this particular model) only 3.5mm apart. These electrodes must be kept clean. Candle wick with a diameter of 2 mm. Their ignition consists of melting and evaporating the wax in the wick and then igniting the vapor. This happens fairly quickly but involves boiling, spattering, ignition and outgassing and then a flash of flame between the electrodes which must be kept clean or arc free. Soot build-up and accumulations of condensed wax are unavoidable under the best of circumstances, but a long neck allows for the lighting of sealed candles where the fact that the arc produces almost no light is far from the best of circumstances. Clean wicks on open cones disperse easily in good ambient light, and the slope toward them means most combustion products rise from the igniter; with candles... Let's just say you need to clean the electrodes frequently. Arc ignition is a miracle and ignites clean burning fuel well, but for candles the tongue of the flame works best. As silly as it sounds, the most reliable for sealed candles is a long-necked butane gas lighter ignited by a plasma arc (because the piezo arcs are anemic in these things). Eventually, someone will combine them into a device that will become a genuine commentary on our material culture: a Buck Rogers device that requires both hydrocarbon fuel and electrical charging to do what cheap matches have been doing for centuries.