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Glow Bug Night Buster 8X Flashlight Review

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Glow Bug Night Buster 8X

Night Buster(1st on the right on the pictures, next to LGI and TaskLight) currently is the only 5mm LED flashlight I have left, not counting keychain lights such as Photon III and Led Lensers. And actually it's the oldest flashlight in my collection as well. I got it I think 2-3 years ago (as I write this, it's 01/04), at that time I had no idea Luxeon LEDs existed at all, and those were not as popular or widespread back then. Anyway, all this time I've had it mostly in my car's glove compartment. It saw occasional use, and on those occasions it proved to be very useful, even though as usual I carried 6D cell Maglite as well in the trunk of my car(currently relpaced by Blaster V). Small, sturdy, and quite powerful flashlight, bang for a buck, doesn't eat battery cells and the LEDs last forever ;) All that was real attractive and I didn't better choice back then anyways. Even today Night Buster 8X will outperform a lot of multi-led flashlights on the market. I am not sure why but Glow-Bug has discontinued this flashlight for unknown reasons, though they still produce 4 led version of it, but it's a different flashlight.

Body

 - Actually Night Buster's aluminum body is one of the major features of this flashlight. Made of 2mm thick aluminum it is a small button itself besides being a flashlight. Very clear acrylic lens is quite scratch and shock resistant. Build quality while not as refined as in Hyper Lux I or even Streamlight TaskLight is still very good. At least I have no complaints and can't find any deffects on it. After few years of use, that is. Operating Night Buster is more or less easy, twist the but cap and the light is on. Untwist for turning it off and that's all to it. It's not the lightest flashlight in its class but that's the result of very thick walls of the body. Some might find this a plus, others will find it as a disadvantage. I like this brute ;).

Beam

 - Well, the beam consists of 8 overlapping 5mm LED beams :) So, there is not much to speak of focus and such. However comparing to another multi-led flashlight I've had a while ago, which was 6 led Maglite 2AA clone, this one[Night Buster] somehow managed to have a lot more focused resulting beam than the 6 LED flashlight, forgot what it was, sorry. But the Night Buster definitely doesn't produce 8 dim light circles :) It has real usable resulting beam, and will outperform a lot of incandescent and 5mm LED flashlights in its class. Actually that's the only reason I still keep it. To be honest I was playing with the idea of modifying it to install 1W Luxeon LED, but so far that doesn't seem to be achievable. It would've been a blast though :)
    Since I got a light meter I'm measuring all the flashlights I have :) And Nightbuster became quiet a surprise when I've measured it's light output. From 1 meter it produced very respectable 330 Lux. For comparison, BadBoy and ElektroLumens Illuma-Lux which are 1 watt Luxeon star LED flashlights, both produce 340 Lux from the same distance. Apparently those LEDs are overdriven, as the results are nearly identical. Visually you can't tell 330 vs. 340 Lux brightness, our eyes are not that sensitive anyways. In short as multi 5mm LED flashlight NightBuster8x is a remarkable piece.

LGI, Streamlight Luxeon TaskLight 3AA, Nightbuster 8X LGI, Streamlight Luxeon TaskLight 3AA, Nightbuster 8X

Last updated - 05/06/19