Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsDepends what you want it for!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 23 October 2021
I bought this because I wanted a non electric light source for emergencies and maybe camping, plus I had a lot of tealights which I thought I could use with it.
Now on the plus side its probably the safest tealight holder you can get and will prevent most unfortunate, though not all, spills.
That said it has a 3 prong grip to seat the tea light in which will have to be adjusted with a pair of pliers if you want you use it with cheaper standard tealights. The tealights provided are about 4.1cm wide and my bag of wilko ones are 3.8cm, hence the pliers. However I wouldn't recommend using cheap tealights, the ones supplied with it are 1.5cm deep whilst my cheap ones are about 0.7cm deep. Using cheap tealights I have found the following effect: you get about 30 - 40 mins of maximum light and then the wick starts to sag dimming an already low light light considerably. I have also found these tea lights near impossible to relight because of poor quality wicks, I'm going to experiment next with beeswax tealights next as they are supposed to burn longer and brighter, though the only ones I can find are probably too deep for the lantern at 4cm.
TLDR: a small, safe, cheap, not fantastically bright light, which is most economical when used in a single burn to the end of each candle (6 hrs?) and you may need to experiment with the best candle for you so you can stock up. Also the steel plate at the top gets mighty hot!
P.s. I have now experimented with the more expensive beeswax tea light and I would say they do burn hotter and brighter. In terms of the light output the problem of wick sag remains and I would not say the increase in light was enough to justify the increased cost. However with the increased heat I suppose a desperate survivalist could now more practically heat a small cup of water provided the cup bottom of the cup was a conductive material ie. Metal
