Friday, March 23, 2012

Joby Blade

Imgres

Disclaimer: I did get a discount on these from the distributor, but would have bought them at full price regardless.

 

I have an irrational love of torches (as opposed to a rational love of pocket knives, which I can squarely blame my grandfather for). Not extreme military-grade torches, but I'm quite careful about planning for power outages and for non-traditional weapons in a pinch. Within stumbling distance at home I have Mag-Lite 4 cell torches (with LED lights), and two sets of replacement batteries. In the cars, I have Mag-Lite 2 cell torches, also with two sets of replacement batteries. But these torches are quite heavy, and quite bulky.

 

Specifically the car-intended ones, while very bright, are near useless when needing to do something that requires two hands (e.g. changing a tyre, fitting mud flaps, etc) - which more often than not is what you need a torch for in a car. You end up balancing the torch, it falls, and much frustration while you try and figure out how to stand the damn thing. So score 1 for weaponry, 0 for practicality.

Imgres 1

 

Enter left stage, the Joby Blade. Joby are the same crazy guys who brought us the funny looking tripods, and have recently augmented their range with a bunch of cool torches. This one specifically attaches the wrap-around legs, which are magnetized (very cool!), to a very powerful 60 lumen LED light (which has a "boost" mode up to 130 lumen) which is rechargeable via USB. Nifty! It seems durable and compact, and has already replaced one of the car torches. Score 5 for practicality (and unfortunately 0 for weaponry).

 

Recommended! Its distributed locally by Wintec Solutions, a bunch of guys who bring in some really neat brands and back it up with great service.