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Wicked Lasers - "The Torch"
Charging
The Torch arrived with a fairly dead battery, so we stuck it right on the charge. There is a light on the charger that turns red when it's charging, and green when the charge is complete. The first charge took about 30 minutes to complete. After playing with our new toy for a while, the battery life only seemed to last about 1 minute. We were very concerned, since it's supposed to last approximately 15 minutes. After a second charge, our battery life increased to approximately 2:30. We noticed a trend with the recharging cycle adding to the total battery life, until we reached approximately 8 minutes. After that, the life seemed to level off and not rise above 10 minutes.
This was rather disappointing since the battery is expected to last 30 minutes. Imagine this: you get lost in the woods and have your torch flashlight with you. The best use in this scenario is to light a fire and call it a night, rather than try to find your way out with 10 minutes of battery life.
Testing
We started out testing our Torch flashlight by burning a piece of paper. The charge only took about 20-30 minutes, and we were expecting approximately an 8 minute battery life. SURELY, a flashlight couldn't set paper on fire, right?
Burning Paper (music: Lil' Wayne - Fireman)
That was quite impressive, the ball of paper was merely dust by the time The Torch was done with it, but can it light a cigarette? While we were getting ready to film one of our tests, Fernando happened to walk out with a cigarette in his hand. We told him we'd gladly light it for him...with our flashlight. Fernando graciously helped us out in the name of science.
Lighting a cigarette
Fernando thanked us and went on his way. After a quick re-charge, we decided to see if the Torch could melt plastic. We looked around the labs, and all we could find was our trusty iButton. You may not recall the iButton, but it was an item we attempted to review this past April. The battery life on the iButton lasted all of 30 seconds, and refused to recharge afterwards. We couldn't help but label it one of the worst products we've ever reviewed.
The iButton (music: Disco Inferno - Burn Baby Burn)
We were impressed at how the Torch obliterated the iButton, and decided to move on to our final test: Cooking an egg. This doesn't seem physically possible, since we're talking about reaching the boiling point of an egg. We first cracked an egg into a greased Pyrex dish, and sat it on top of the flashlight. On the Wicked Lasers website, they use a metal dish, which I'm sure conducts heat much more than our Pyrex. The Pyrex dish seemed like a more real world situation, so we decided to test it instead.
Cooking an Egg (music: Green Eggs and Ham techno)
As you can see, The Torch cooked the egg, but cracked the lens! This was because no heat could escape from the lens, it was direct light the whole time. Wicked Lasers sent us 3 replacement lenses, which was very nice of them, but I wouldn't suggest the user trying it at home. It doesn't even seem like replacement lenses can be purchased on their website, though I'm sure it's possible through customer service. The lenses were very easy to replace, however. The egg was almost completely cooked when our battery died, though I would suggest stirring the egg more - we had a burn spot!
