Keychain Lighter

This is a keychain lighter in the form of a spy capsule. It's as small as the small spy capsules, and comes with a small ballchain for attachment to keyrings purses, etc.

The lighter itself is a standard mechanic ignition lighter using standard fuel the zippo fuel refills work perfectly and the flint is also standard and oh-surprise the zippo flints work as replacements.

Being in a closed capsule the lighter won't leak fuel and won't smell fuel, with a standard charge of fuel it can work for weeks or months if you don't use it often. Even in a closed capsule the fuel that is very volatile will eventually evaporate but from our quick tests we think it can be months before a charge of fuel renders the lighter useless without use. This means this little lighter is fine in emergency kits or to go camping. It is not wind resistant and there is no shielding from the wind so you need to cover it with your hands as a regular lighter if you are outside.

The flame is a regular normal looking flame, not hot enough as the butane piezoelectric ligters but good enough to start a fire and other normal activities.

A good keychain lighter with the strong advantage of being very easy to refill and service if needed.

You can get it for $5 from EDCdepot.

DexLight X1

The Dexlight X1 is a multi-mode flashlight using a single AA sized battery to power a Cree XRE LED.

The flashlight has two interfaces, a simple mode and an advanced mode. In the simple mode you cycle thru the different modes with a light press of the tailcap clickie the modes are 80% brightness, minimum brightness, then 100% brightness, 50% brightness, strobe and locator beacon.

To switch to the advanced mode you have to turn the light off for two seconds from minimum brightness, then turn it off and you are in advanced mode. In advanced mode you cycle thru the different modes with a light press of tha tailcap in the same way as in the regular mode but this time there are many modes to cycle: the first one is maximum brightness, then 15hz strobe then 5%, 10%,20%,30%,40%,50%,60%,70% and 80% brightness, then a 5hz strobe, then two SOS modes one with full brightness and one with minimum, then the locator beacon anc back to 100%. To leave advanced mode you have to turn the light off in one of the strobes for 2 seconds, then turn it on again.

Since the first two settings of the advanced mode are 100% brightness and the strobe it can be used as a tactical mode. The regular mode works fine for non tactical users.

The light can use either alkaline, lithium, ni-mh or 14500 li-ion batteries, with the 14500 li-ion the X1 is the brightest AA single cell light we have tested even brighter than the Fenix L1DCE. The beam is very white and has a very good balance of throw and flood without artifacts. It is also a good detail that all the modes work with the 14500 battery.

The construction is Ha-III aluminium in a gray-brown color, very strong and resistant to impacts and scratches. There are double o-rings to make the light water proof. The lens is a saphire window with AR coating.

In the package with the light you get a belt nylon holster, spare o-rings and some spare taicap buttons of different colors, our unit included a black one, orange, red and a GITD yellow one.

The locator beacon, not common in many lights emits a short flash every 10 seconds and can be used to locate the light in the dark, it can work for several days in this mode so it is useful to leave it on and find it at night when camping.

The Dexlight X1 is a very bright light, using 14500 batteries the brightness is amazing and the multiple modes provide great versatility with runtimes from 30 minutes to 9 hours, an amazing little light that we have liked a lot.

You can read more at Dexlight's website or order from DealExtreme for $45.

Illuminated 60x to 100x zoom pocket microscope

This is a very economic microscope that includes a small led light and can be zoomed from 60x to 100x magnification.

To use it you have to insert 1 AAA battery, turn the light on and then point the microscope to the object you want to examine almost touching it with the base of the scope. One of the knobs at the side controls the zoom and the other one the focus. The knobs are cheap but getting a good focus is still easy, magnification is very good and besides having a very small field of view the details are there and while cheap the microscope really works.

Among the small minuses the zoom knob is very loose in our unit so when you are in 100x sometimes it just slides down to 60x for this reason and the wider field of view we preferred to use it only in 60x mode.

Images are good and the LED is fine to illuminate what you want to see, we could inspect mineral traces in rocks, terrible things in our fingers and played CSI for a while without anything revealing. A fun toy, not a professional microscope but it works and it is very small and pocketable.

You can order for $8.63 from DealExtreme.

E6-B keychain computer

This is a en E6-B sliding rule in the shape of a keychain. The diameter is about 1.7 inches and it's flat so it goes well in a keychain or inside a wallet.

It is made in plastic but might suffer wear or break if carried in a keychain with keys and other abrasive elements so maybe better for a slim keychain, the car keys or a wallet.

The sliding rule is used by pilots to perform manual calculations about fuel usage, time to destination and others it's basically a decimal logarithmic scale and can be used by non pilots to do multiplications, divisions, square roots, percentages, unit conversions and proportions.

To perform a multiplication you just align the first number from the inner scale with "10" in the outer scale, then look in the outer scale for the second number and the inner scale will show you the result.

The precision is not very high because of the size, you will not know about decimal values in divisions and your multiplications and proportions can be off by some small units. But it works very well for aproximations, estimates and to calculate the tip or split the bill at the restaurant. It's also great to start conversations and has a vintage element reminding of the times when calculators didn't exist and everybody had to use a sliding rule for calculations.

You can get it for $5 from PilotEssentials.

Pilot's Pen

This is a pen with a green led tip created for Pilots and other professionals that may need to write at night without losing adaptation to darkness.

The light is activated twisting the tailcap, just the basic on-off-on-off without brightness levels. Without the cap the tip of the light can be used to see where you are writing, the green light is very dim and won't affect dark adapted eyes.

Green is a good color since the human eyes will see many shades under green light and if you need to see a map you won't have a problem with red marked roads or other symbols. With the cap attached there is a small lens in the cap so you can use the pen as a small flashlight, the light is very dim and will be useful to check out a map, a list of instructions, flight plan etc.

A good pen with a good selection of color and brightness for night notes. You can get it for $7 from Pilot Essentials.

Smart Tube

The smart tube is a simple and practical device to create an hydration system from a water bottle. The tube comes with different sized caps that can work with different bottles, from the regular bottles of water this includes regular bottles of water from the supermarket and Nalgene wide mouthed bottles.

The tube passes thru the cap and ends in a mouth bite valve similar to camelback systems, you have to bite sligthly for the water to flow. It is realtively spill free and will not leak unless pressure is applied to the bottle or the drinking tube.

Besides not needing a water reservoir the smart tube makes the cleaning of your hydration system easier, since it's easier to clean a bottle than a water bladder you can also just buy a bottle of water anywhere, screw the tube and use it to drink water while running, hiking, bycicling or other outdoor activities. You can choose the size of the water bottle depending on your activity, location and time of the year.

From our tests we could see that basically this worka as the Camelback hydration systems the only difference being that the reservoir of water is your choice. In conclusion a good idea to have a handsfree hydration system.

You can read more and check out different models form the official website.

Key Knife

The key knife as it name indicates is a small keychain knife in the shape of a reguler key. The blade of the knife opens from the key and when stored it is hold by friction.

The key size is just a little longer than the regular keys we have here, it can certainly camouflage in a keyring as another key but with just a little inspection you can notice it is not a regular key because the blade can be seen. In other words the blade does not hide completely behind the key.

Opening and using this little knife is easy, it works fine to open boxes, cut paper, envelopes and other minor cutting jobs that are common for a keychain knife.

The grip if you need to cut something a little more resistant is not very good because the key as a handle makes the blade a little fragile and it has some noticeable play in the joint with the key so we wouldn't recommend serious cutting jobs with this little knife.

It is certainly a very interesting tool to have in your keychain in case of need, the only problem is that you may forget you have it.

You can get it for about $24 from Garrettt Wade.

Mini Reminder Electronic Alarm

The MiniReminder is an electronic novelty used to make sure you don't lose one of your precious EDC items or gadgets.

This gadget has two parts, one receiver and one emiter, you attach the emiter to your item/gadget and keep the receiver with you in your pocket or keychain. The emiter will send radio signals to the receiver and if the units get sepparated 10 or 25 feet (you can set two distances) the receiver starts to vibrate and beep letting you know you have just forgotten your EDC item somewhere.

The manufacturer recommends this for MP3 players, tools, flashlights and even kids(!).

The idea is very cool, in the practical use sometimes the radio signals can't travel well or are blocked and the receiver starts to beep and vibrate when nothing has happened, attending the false positives can be a little annoying so our impression is that this is useful for some special item that is in risk of being forgotten but probably not practical for simple EDC items. Anyway a curious gadget that you may want to experiment.

You can read more and order for $40 from this site.