It’s sold as an outdoor camplight, but BougeRV’s very bright LED lantern is really a multifunctional work lamp for any place that needs an extra dose of lighting. It’s rechargeable and compact enough to serve as a long-lasting flashlight with three swiveling LED panels that can direct 3000 lumens onto your table, campsite, workspace, or engine block from a height of more than five feet thanks to its telescoping aluminum pole.
I’ve found it impressively versatile and useful over the last week of testing at home, at the beach, or tooling around in my camper van. It provides warm or cold light exactly where I need it, with three levels of brightness ranging from dim to supernova.
At $109.99, the BougeRV Outdoor Portable Telescopic Camping Lantern is also more capable than many of its more expensive competitors. There’s a lot to like here.
At the heart of this lantern is a 57.7Wh battery that can power the lamp on its lowest setting for up to 60 hours, or about three hours when all three LED strips are set to max brightness. You can power it off USB-C from a separate external battery or wall jack if you need more time. It’s slim enough to carry in the water bottle pocket of a backpack, but its 2.3-pound (1kg) weight is a bit much for most gram-counting adventurers.
The lantern is built around the number three. There are three retractable legs that can be secured with three included pegs to serve as a sturdy base for the three LED panels raised up to 64.57 inches (164 cm) off the ground. You can independently turn on one, two, or three of the LED panels set to three intensifying brightness levels via the cluster of three buttons on the top of the unit.
There is, however, just one lamp for the flashlight, one hook on the bottom, and one slider switch to prevent the light from accidentally turning on. There’s also one USB-C jack that both charges the lantern in about four hours and charges your gadgets at up to 22.5 watts.
At first, the articulating segments that rotate, fold, and slide can be a bit much. But I soon mastered the buttons and movements needed to retract and expand the lantern into the illuminated origami of my choosing. In general, the aluminum and plastic assembly feels robust enough, but I wonder how those extended light arms will hold up after a few falls, especially when the aluminum pole is fully extended. It is IP54 rated so it should prove immune to rain showers and dust.
The only thing I miss on the BougeRV lantern is a magnetic base — a useful feature on the Evo Lantern from Flextail. Other than that, the BougeRV lantern beats the 500 lumen Flextail in almost every way, despite costing $40 less and being roughly the same size.
I didn’t expect to like the BougeRV Outdoor Portable Telescopic Camping Lantern this much. But it’s so adaptable, useful, and reasonably priced that I just can’t help myself.
Photography by Thomas Ricker / The Verge
