This lantern in no way met my expectations of an LL Bean offering. On day one the little knob on the crank fell off and it became very awkward to try to use the crank at all. Due to design, I could not replace the knob myself. For two nights the lantern worked as it should. (I recharged each day between uses.) On the third day the lantern gave off measurably less light on the low setting and even less on the higher setting. I thought perhaps the problem was that I had been setting it in the sun to charge and we had not had enough sun to be effective so I tried the house current method and there was no improvement at all. I have returned this lantern for exchange hoping that the one I returned was not typical of the quality and operation of this lantern in general.
Received this one day before the 2011 Halloween snowstorm. This was perfect timing as we lost power for 26 hours and this lantern performed perfectly keeping us bathed in light. We cooked by it, read by it, and used it for general lighting.
After a week long power outage over the summer- we realized that the candles we had for lighting were simply not enough! Never again! This lantern is lightweight and gives great light for its compact size!! Bring on the next outage, we are ready this time!!
