The Lantern

Look into most lanterns and you find the bulb staring back at you. Look into this one and you find nothing at all.

BALMUDA mounts The Lantern's single LED at the top of the body rather than inside the globe, carrying the light down through a central tube so the source stays hidden from anyone looking straight at it. What you see is the glow, not the emitter. A knob on the base steps through three settings rather than sliding along a plain dimmer: a flickering candlelight, a steadier amber glow, and a warm white for reading. Each step shifts brightness and colour temperature together, which is why the candle mode reads closer to a real flame than a dimmed white LED usually manages. Dimming a white LED only makes it a fainter white, and the eye notices.

Run time depends entirely on which of those three you pick. BALMUDA quotes as little as 3 hours at full brightness and up to 50 on the lowest setting, drawing at most 6 W, with a full recharge taking around 6 hours. The adapter is rated for AC 100 to 240 V, so it fills up from any wall socket without a separate converter.

The shape comes straight from old-fashioned oil lanterns, handle and all, and the handle earns its place: at 9.8 inches tall and under a pound and a half, this is a light you carry rather than site. BALMUDA rates it against light splashes and rain, which covers a dinner table outdoors or an evening walk down the garden without packing it in a case.