Every Day Carry Gear: Mini Maglite Review

In my experience, the Mini Maglite is the best every day carry flashlight on the market. When it comes down to the bare essentials in every day carry (EDC), having a solid flashlight that you know that you can trust is absolutely essential. While there is certainly no shortage of miniature flashlights on the market that are small enough to carry with you everywhere, the fact of the matter is that some of them are not worth the materials that they are made out of. I've tried out about a half dozen different miniature flashlights since I got into EDC gear, and the Mini Maglite is my favorite every day carry flashlight that I have found to date.

It is no secret that Maglite has been considered one of the most trusted names in flashlights and every day carry gear for generations. Maglite flashlight and other Mag tools first began to appear on the market during the 1950s when company founder Anthony Maglica started producing high quality everyday tools that were designed to put up with regular use. By the 1980s, Maglites were already becoming the standard issue flashlight for many American police officers, firefighters and other public safety officials. The company soon began marketing new models of the flashlight to private citizens, and Maglite became a household name by the turn of the century.

I have been using my Mini Maglite as a crucial piece of my EDC gear for about six months, and I have a feeling this flashlight and I are going to be together for a long time to come. If you have never carried a flashlight on you before, you will be surprised at just how often you find yourself reaching for it once you give it a try. No matter where my work or play takes me, I take my Mini Maglite out of its belt sheath throughout the day for everything ranging from mundane tasks like fiddling with computer wires under a desk to helping people look for lost objects at night or in a dark movie theater. I've dropped and knocked my Mini Maglite against concrete and steel, and it barely has a scratch. It's the perfect size for providing a generous amount of light while being small enough to easily manipulate with my fingers. On those occasions that I've had to rush out the door without any EDC gear, my Mini Maglite and my Leatherman are the two items that I miss the most.

As for battery life, I have yet to be disappointed whenever I have needed to use my Mini Maglite for an extended period of time. The flashlight requires a pair of AA batteries, and the manufacture list the average life expectancy of a set of batteries to be about 5.5 hours. Since I use a couple of rechargeable AA batteries for my Mini Maglite, I haven't actually put the manufacturer's figures to the test just yet. Instead, I just pop the batteries for the flashlight into the recharger every time that the batteries in my EDC gear digital camera start to fade on me, which is about every two weeks. As I mentioned, I use my every day carry Mini Maglight multiple times a day, and the light is almost always as strong as every when I pop the batteries out to be recharged.