Coleman LED Quad Lantern Immediately

I bought this for my father as a camping lantern, and he's been totting it around to family get-togethers, he likes it so much. We have NOT been camping yet, but we've tried it out in window-less rooms and I have to admit that it puts out quite the amount of light (which is a relief, since the lumen count is lower than the CFL Coleman lanterns), and it isn't too harsh to look at. There are diffusers over the LED's, so while they ARE bright, they aren't painful.

One interesting feature is the main base overrides the panel settings. Thus, if you have a panel turned on, plug it into the base, and turn the base off, the panel turns OFF. Then if you were to remove the panel from the base, the panel setting would kick in again, and it would flip on. Similarly, if you turn a panel off, and plug it into the base, it will use whatever setting the base has. This means that you can't turn off individual panels on the lantern BASE. However, this also means that you don't have to turn off the panels individually, so I guess that evens out.

As a previous reviewer said, the NiMh batteries in the panels will lose charge over time (NiMh hold charge for 3-6 months), which means there will be a slow but continuous drain on your D-cell batteries while in storage. If you are using this lantern for camping, simply remove the D-Cell batteries during storage and then load them back into the lantern when you are loading your car, SUV, RV, etc. By the time you reach the campsight, the panels will be charged.

You CAN replace the batteries in the panels, but ONLY put rechargeables in there! You might be tempted to throw in some alkalines in the event that the D-Cells drain (meaning, you used old D-cells in this, you aren't going to drain it in a weekend, even if you left it on all weekend), but don't do it. That's like throwing an alkaline in a battery charger (which causes it to overheat).

All in all, I haven't found any flaws yet. There is even a handle (you can see it in the picture) on the base unit so that you don't have to carry the lantern by the panels, though you'll find transporting without the batteries in it to be much more convenient. 8 D-Cells ARE a bit heavy.Get more detail about Coleman LED Quad Lantern.