Thermoelectric Oil Lantern; Converts Heat into Electricity to Power Bright LED Lights. For Camping, Power Outages, Reading and Hiking

Love it. Years ago I designed something similar that worked quite well. However, mine was an ugly stepsister to this sleek product. The device generates electricity via a thermoelectric generator using the heat from a liquid paraffin candle and lights LED lights. It is very effective! One of the liquid paraffin candles burns for many hours with very little odor. The LED lights can illuminate a room enough to move about without tripping on everything. Or, you can choose a set of LED lights that can shine down on a book for reading. At first I was unhappy that I couldn't use regular tea lights as the candle, but soon realized that the liquid paraffin light is way more consistent than a standard tea light. You are tied into using their proprietary candle, but they are fairly reasonably priced. Since I have these for emergency light during a power failure, I'm not concerned so much by the price of the candles. If you wanted to use these for every day lighting, you may want to find a way to refill the canisters. I was a little disappointed in the construction, the body is plastic, and a bit flimsy at that. However, I'm still happy enough to give the whole thing a five star rating. I have burned one for several hours with no issues or failures, I see no reason that mine won't keep working in the future. One nice feature of the thermoelectric generator is that when you blow out the candle, the LED lights will remain on for a minute or so due to the remaining heat in the system, then they slowly fade out. That can be handy if it is the last thing you turn out as you go to bed, you have a few moments of light left as you crawl under the covers. As others have mentioned, it is a bit difficult to change the candle. The candle cartridge has tabs that fit into slots in the lamp body and you twist the cartridge to lock it in place. Though, once you know how it works, it's not difficult to change the candle cartridge. All in all, I feel comfortable recommending these for emergency lighting. They really do what they claim. I have several for myself and have happily given them as gifts.

Admittedly, I bought this for the novelty of it. That said, this worked perfectly, right out of the box, and delivered far more light than I expected. Above you can contrast the lit lantern, with the light you get from the candle alone.The TEG unit itself -- the electric generator -- looks very solidly built. Lot of metal there. The rest of it, not so much. But seriously, for a $20 thermo-electric generator unit, what do you expect?The weak point is the disposable oil candle. But there are ways to avoid running through boxes of disposable oil candles. First, temporarily, it's easy enough to drill a couple of holes and refill that oil candle, as a stop-gap. Second, permanently, an internet search for Luminiser and mason jar will turn up instructions on how to a mason-jar oil candle that will run this lantern quite effectively.The third picture below is my Luminiser, running on a mason-jar oil candle base. I have removed the flimsy plastic legs as well, so mine is now basically a table lamp, sitting on a heavy oil-filled mason jar.It looks like this is on close-out, so I bought a second one (here), and a couple of packs of the "disposable" oil candles (from elsewhere, they don't seem to be offered here).FWIW, if you do the math (I did), this is a vastly more efficient light source than an Aladdin lamp or a Coleman lantern. Which would be your closest competitors for making light out of oil or kerosene. The combination of TEG plus LED is that much better than burning the oil directly for light. .

This lantern is really cool. Totally works. It is a fun science toy that demonstrates the Seebeck Effect AND is a commercially available product with practical use. The overall industrial design is very nice. It is quite aesthetic. I'm going to buy more. I think this is an emergency preparedness kit must have! I think this is an excellent car camping weekend get away device.Per the nature of the thermoelectric coolers, this design is really amazing. The center is hot, the red part inside gets cold. This a nice feature to not grab something that is not hot.At the time of purchase, this uses the oil bottle that comes with it ONLY. Apparently there were tea light models, but tea lights very drastically.Things that could use improvement:The oil is a little difficult to remove and to insert. Arrows showing the direction to rotate the oil bottle on the lantern to lock it or remove it would be much appreciated.It would be nice if the switch had some way to indicate if you are turning on the flashlight or lantern lights.I think if it is raining and you are stuck outside, it might be nice to have some type of rain cap that won't get hot and will still permit airflow.I think there are many statements by Luminiser about this that....I think the advertising/marketing people should retract several statements as they are NOT true.This is NOT an outdoor adventure piece of gear.The website advertises this as 200 amplification of light, but on Amazon they advertise 2000 times. The math is simple and both of these numbers are not correct. It is much less than 200. It is still super bright.It is also advertised as a 90% reduction in CO2. This hasn't any reference as to what that means. This lantern is replacing a flashlight. The CO2 a flashlight outputs is ZERO. This lantern is burning hydrocarbons. It is a 100% INCREASE in CO2 production.The company also has stated the candle output is 100 WATTS. This should be retracted.Aside from very misleading advertising, this is a cool product and I'm looking forward to using one for camping and am excited to add this to my emergency home preparedness kit.

It arrived quickly. This is the second one because the first one arrived damaged. Now the lamp was packed well. I am very interested in this kind of thermoelectric lamp.The lamp working just right. Today we have an electric shortage and I can read a book with this lamp. The light is enough for that. I am very satisfied with this product.