One year ago, I bought a LED LENSER P7 whilst vacationing in Australia. At that time, the German brand was not well-known in South Africa and I hadn’t been exposed to any of their products. That has changed. Since then, most LED LENSER torches are available at selected stores.

For a while, I relied on Captain SearchEye, a high-power halogen-bulb torch. It required a fairly lengthy charge cycle, couldn’t be operated whilst plugged into a lighter socket and would provide necessary lighting for less than a quarter of an hour. The torch is heavy, but is very effective. The biggest issue with rechargeables is that most have an overload protector built-in. Hence, they can generally not be operated whilst plugged into a power source. Eventually, Captain SearchEye passed away – the battery could no longer be charged and even though there seemed no obvious damage to the halogen bulb, battery and internal circuitry a fix for the unit was not an option. I bought a smaller, rechargeable halogen torch only to find that it too wouldn’t operate whilst plugged into the car’s cigarette lighter socket. Runtime? A paltry ten minutes or so, making it absolutely useless for occasional patrols taking about an hour. Clearly it was time to ditch cheap and nasty Asian technology and go back to quality, performance and good workmanship!

My new solution is certainly nowhere as cheap as the halogen torches I’ve selected in the past. But with the P7 as an excellent reference, the selection of the pricey LED LENSER X21 was a no-brainer.

The X21 is roughly 40cm in length, weighs about 1.5kg and boasts 7 LED‘s that can pump out a whopping 950 lumens light beam to a distance of almost 400m. Best of all, the X21 relies on four ordinary D batteries and can run on those for quite some time – no more recharging or worrying about battery life.

The torch is supplied in a carry case and includes four batteries and a carrying strap that can be attached to the torch to make it more convenient to lug around.

Operating the torch is very simple: the first press of the button provides a full power beam and a subsequent press switches to a lower output beam. Another press of the button switches the torch off. It’s not necessary to press the button in: a light press provides light for as long as the button is held down halfway. To focus the beam, the 9cm front section is simply pushed or pulled. As with the P7, weather sealing is excellent, as is the build quality. Check out the Zweibrueder Optoelectronics website for more details.

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