(Continued from Part 1. This concludes the review)
Opening the Second Box
The second product box was the Coast 100 Year Anniversary Gift Box. This box was less substantial than one containing the FX350, but it was still nothing to sneeze at. A flashlight and a knife were nested in a multi-layered cardboard cutout along with a brochure outlining the 100 year history of the Coast company, along with a couple of packs of rust preventative silica gel.
The flashlight is a special 100-year anniversary version of the HX5 flashlight. It is rated at 130 lumens and 3.75 hours of battery life with the included AA Duracell Coppertop battery. It has a zoom focus lens, and a clever two-way clip that I will talk more about later. The switch is on the bottom cap, and the switch protector has a tiny hole where a lanyard can be inserted (not included).
I initially assigned the HX5 as my “dresser flashlight” for the testing period. The dresser flashlight illuminates my steps when I get up in the middle of the night so that I don’t trip over anything in the dark. Gentlemen of a certain age may know something about getting up in the middle of the night.
I really like AA battery-powered flashlights for a couple of reasons. One reason is that I have a virtually unlimited supply of partly used AA batteries. Why? The cordless microphones at our church are powered by AA batteries. At the point when the batteries are partly discharged and too unreliable to power a microphone for an entire service, they are usually still strong enough to power an LED flashlight for a respectable period of time. The church’s Tech Team is only too happy to send these batteries home with me rather than throwing them in the trash. The second reason that I like AA powered flashlights is that I have a good supply of Eneloop rechargable AA batteries, which also work quite well in most LED flashlights. Both of these types of batteries worked well in the HX5.
The knife in the 100 Year Anniversary Gift Box is a FX228. As the name indicates, it is a frame locking knife with a blade a little over two inches long. It has a black metal frame with some nice engraving set off by brass screws. Although it has a frame lock rather than a liner lock, the frame on this little knife is not much thicker than the liner on many larger knives. The blade has a nail nick for opening, and comes out of the box usefully sharp.Continue reading“Review: Coast FX350, HX5, and FX228 – Part 2, by The Novice”

