First of all, I do not own the featured image. Pelican Products, Inc. does.
However, I give them plenty of kudos for making such an awesome flashlight, namely the Pelican 1920.
I am not a practicing tradesman anymore. I haven’t been doing that sort of work full time in a little over a decade.
However, I know a good flashlight when I see it and I equally know how much a good flashlight is revered and sometimes coveted among tradespeople.
I believe this is Pelican’s best flashlight for the money, hands down.
It can be had brand new for about $25 and it is bundled with two Energizer Max (Alkaline) AAA batteries!
I had owned one for almost two years and I have another one coming in the mail either later today or sometime Friday. There will be no mail service Thursday in observance of Independence Day.
I had mine for almost two years and I EDCed it in my backpack and quite a few times in my pants pocket and it performed flawlessly. It was even dropped on hard concrete and had the battle scars to show it, but it still performed without a single hiccup.
The reason why I no longer have mine is because it fell under the sofa at my friend’s house. I located it there but before I found it I told him he could have it if he found it. Then I checked under the sofa and there it was. So, I presented it to him.
He is a welding student and almost finished with trade school.
I had been wanting for about a year to give him a small flashlight for use at school and on his future jobs.
This one couldn’t be more perfect.
I bought my first one at Smoky Mountain Knife Works in June of 2017, while on vacation in East Tennessee.
When I got home from that aforementioned trip, I decided to rewrite (“The Textfile”) completely from memory as I had deleted it from all my devices and storage media, because I felt so ashamed and convicted for writing it. In this new version, my main character, Grayson Thomas, was no longer a tractor mechanic (that position had gone to Logan Baines in “Radiant Affection”, which I started in 2012 and at first was written as a replacement and a form of repentance and atonement for writing the original version of “The Textfile” in 2005 and 2006.
In the new (2017) version of “The Textfile”, Grayson Thomas is now instead a dockyard mechanic, and he extensively uses his Pelican 1920 on his job but he also EDC’s it during his off hours. Grayson Thomas will be knocked unconscious and comatose from a fall he sustained on the job while repairing the yard crane and the envious roustabouts in the dockyards will gamble over his Pelican 1920 flashlight that had fallen from his pants pocket. That is how much this flashlight impressed me, by the way!
I soon realized that I miss that flashlight, so recently, I ordered a new one.
Here is what I like about the Pelican 1920:
It can take a great deal of abuse and still work as well as when it was first unboxed. While, the impact rating isn’t rating isn’t available on Pelican’s website, I would imagine it to be “tactical grade” or at least “contractor grade” and I’ve dropped mine on concrete from a height of maybe five feet and it still worked perfectly.
The pocket clip is made of Carbon Steel and won’t bend or break like so many other pocket clips. It is firmly planted on the flashlight body as it has a ring around the threaded connector where the tail switch attaches, so it won’t even pop off!
The switch is “tactically correct.” This means that it has a forward clickie and can be turned on momentarily and then off as soon as the switch is released or with more pressure it can be turned completely on. Switching between light settings can be done without fully depressing the switch as well.
The LED light engine features two settings:
Low-22 Lumens for 8 Hours and 45 Minutes-enough to see close up work for maybe a week on a set of batteries.
High-224 Lumens for 2 Hours and 15 Minutes-just enough to light up the walk from the bus, train, aircraft, boat or personal vehicle to the job site. This is especially useful as many of these jobs in which a flashlight like this is used entail coming in around dawn and knocking off around dusk. This is even more true in the winter months especially at higher Latitudes.
The water resistance rating is IPX7, which according to ANSI, means:
“Ingress of water in quantities causing harmful effects shall not be possible when the enclosure is temporarily immersed in water under standardized conditions of pressure and time.”
In other words, it should be okay to work in and under shallow bodies of water without it being ruined. Pelican makes flashlights that are capable of going much deeper underwater as well!
The only jobs where this flashlight would be inappropriate would be those that involve working extensively on live electrical circuits or those that involve the direct handling of volatile commodities, to which Pelican has a wide selection of flashlights for those situations, as well.
My only complaint I have about this flashlight is that it isn’t American made like some of the other Pelican flashlights, but we live in a shrinking world.
I would be tickled pink if my new flashlight would be in the mail today, but accept that I might have to wait until Friday.
By the way I give the Pelican 1920 a five out of five stars!
This therefore concludes my review.
I hope, you, the reader, have been informed and maybe even entertained.
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