I was at a local department store tonight and happened to see they had some cap lights like JP had mentioned. This store only carried the Energizer brand and I decided to pick one up for biking and general use. It looks like a lot of cap lights and head lights DO have red LEDs built into them too. Learn something new every day….
For grins I decided to compare the light output of the Energizer to my modified HF red LED flashlight. Here is the result:
I did put new batteries in my modified HF unit and those red LEDs are sure bright now! I don’t inspect honey bees at night and that wasn’t my real purpose for buying the Energizer cap light. However the cap unit looks bright enough to me to inspect bees if you wanted to.
As a general purpose white cap light, I am very pleased with this Energizer unit. It puts out a LOT of white light when switched to that mode of operation. The white light from the 3 white LEDs on the Energizer unit is MUCH brighter than the total white light from the 24 LEDs in the Harbor freight unit. When dealing with LEDs it comes down to the quality vs quantity in most cases. The other thing I liked about the Energizer unit; it runs off 2 AAA batteries.