Bruton Firestorm

The firestorm is a weatherproof lighter by Brunton. The lighter measures 3.3'' x 1.8'' and weights 1.6 ounces.

The ignition is piezoelectric and should be good for over 30.000 ignitions, the fuel is butane refillable as expected. The flame should be able to resist winds up to 80 mph.

The lighter has a threaded cap with an o-ring to make it waterproof, the cap has a hole for a splitring or lanyard, there is also a metal clip in the lighter body to attach it to a pocket or inside a backpack.

We found this lighter to be rugged and serviceable the construction is solid and the design looks very nice, the clip and lanyard hole are very good details for different carrying options.

You can read more in Brunton's website and order for $48 from Tad Gear.

Byrd Harp

The Harp is a multitool made by Spyderco for his child brand Byrd. It has eight tools that rotate out individually from an outer ring and snap open to be used.

The tools included are: A corkscrew, a flat screwdriver, phillips screwdriver, an awl, gimplet, saw, a file and a small and large head hammer that doubles as bottle opener.

The harp is 3 3/4'' when closed and weights 4 5/8 ounces so it's not precisely a wallet sized tool but the flat shape makes it an interesting tool for pockets, including backpack pockets and other bag pockets.

The selection of tools is interesting, this is probably the only multi tool that includes a hammer so if your activities frequently require the use of a hammer this will be a great tool. We found that having the hammer and the awl but not being able to smash the awl with the hammer might lead to frustration but that is how the tool is designed, we would have liked being able to remove the tools completely, maybe even customizing which tools are included but that is just daydreaming.

The corkscrew is as useless as in other multitools and consumes space, a blade is missed and the reason why a blade was not included is probably that this is intended as a complement to your Spyderco or Byrd knife.

A curious tool that is interesting as long as the selection of tools fits your needs.

You can read more and order for $32 from Spyderco's website.

TAD Gear's Titanium Dog Tags v 3.0

This is a new version of TAD Gear's Titanium Dog Tags. The Tags can be used as both an identification device and as en emergency cutting tool.

The tags have two titanium parts that pivot around a black anodized titanium pivot, one of the edges is sharpened to be used as a cutting tool you just pivot and click to open or close the tags.

There's also one side available to be engraved and be used as a regular tag with the information you want, depending on what you do or what you want to put in the tag.

The construction and quality of this new version is very high, all the parts are very well built and the titanium pivot is a particular good detail, it can be adjusted to the tension you want depending on how easily you want to be able to rotate the tags to open and close, if you wear them around your neck then you should adjust them tight and have the blade as an emergency one. If you hand the tags somewhere else you can leave the pivot not so tight and have a quick mini blade handy when needed.

Being made of titanium the tags are very light and will resist corrosion and wear, the engraved part can get scratched from play against other neck chain since titanium is strong but gets scratched more than steel or even aluminium.

You can read more and order from TAD Gear for $59.

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.