Buying the Best Battery and A/C Powered Clip on Book Light Designs that Properly Illuminate Your Books
Thursday, November 19th, 2009Properly selected, a book light can reduce eye strain by providing excellent lighting while reading, even in darkened venues, and can conserve both energy and money. A well designed clip on book light design can make your light easy to attach to your book, book holder, or book stand, and many designs do double duty as craft, podium, hobby or other task lighting. Light weight incandescent or LED designs can provide just the right amount of light exactly where you need it, without wasting energy or disturbing others around you, like a spouse or partner on the other side of the bed.
By lighting your reading materials with the right amount and temperature of light, the right book light can help to save your eyes from strain and help you read even when the lights are low. Our eyes require more light as we age, and providing the right amount of light for what we’re reading can be a real challenge. Obviously, the most perfect light for reading is natural sunlight coming directly over your shoulder, but we often wish to read when or where such lighting isn’t available. Hence, the right book light, a light we can use any time and any place we choose, iscan be} an incredible convenience. Then, turning off the overheads and lamps lighting things other than our reading, we conserve considerable energy as well as the money it takes to pay for that energy.
When choosing between incandescent and LED designs, three primary concerns are: the different color or temperature of light produced by these two distinct technologies, the cost of acquisition, and the cost of maintenance and operation over time. Incandescent lights typically produce a warm, somewhat golden-tinged light, and incandescent bulbs typically will provide light between 15-25 hours of use and then have to be replaced. LED lights produce a whiter, cooler light, with many designs now optimized to be the equivalent of the output of lighting from the sun. Today, most book lovers find the light of modern LED designs to be more “sun like”, producing greater clarity and contrast and making all printing easier to read. While replacement incandescent bulbs are generally available in local electrical and hardware stores, as well as over the Internet, the expense and inconvenience of replacement can really mount up over time. Since LEDs offer life expectancies of 10,000 to 50,000 hours, their 10-20% greater initial purchase price quickly becomes irrelevant. For these and other reasons, LED book lights are now more popular than the older incandescent.
Battery powered book lights are the handiest, as your light can be used almost anywhere. Unfortunately, batteries themselves are also a an item that must be replaced, typically lasting only 20-30 hours of use at best, in either LED or incandescent designs. Optional A/C adapters are available for most book lights, and another possibility is to make use of rechargeable batteries and a recharger. Most book lights make use of either AA or AAA batteries, and many excellent models are available from which to choose. In addition, if your light is to be used near to an A/C outlet, an optionally available A/C adapter can be a money saving investment.
Finally, the area of dispersal is also a meaningful consideration when selecting the perfect book light for a specific application. If your light will only be used to illuminate a standard size, mass market paperback, a single LED or incandescent book light design will probably be sufficient; but, if you read magazines, most hard cover books or a stand full of music, you’ll want a much more powerful light which distributes the light over an appropriately larger area. The best way to determine the most suitable design for your particular application will be to test it in actual use. When shopping, be sure your retailer offers both good pre-sale and return service, in case your first choice turns out not to be as suitable as you had hoped. With diligence, you can acquire the best portable light for just about any application.