General Purpose Tools

Maglite/Niteize LED Upgrade

Upgrade your Maglite

I’ve always had Maglite flashlights, as I appreciate the way they are built. While at the checkout stand at my favorite big-box home improvement store recently, I saw a blister pack containing the NiteIze LED Upgrade Combo II for Mini Maglite AA cell flashlights. I figured “What the heck, it’s under $10, it’s worth trying.”

Upon getting the package open and laying the parts out I realized it was fairly simple surgery to upgrade my Mini MagLight. You just swap the end cap for the new button, unscrew the head unit, swap the tiny bulb for the LED module, swap reflectors, and put the head unit back on.

Don’t do what I did. Upon getting the bulb in, I hit the button on the end of the Mini Maglight while looking right at the bulb, and was fairly blinded by the intense white light. You do need to test it to make sure you don’t have + and – mixed up on the LED leads (doesn’t matter on a standard bulb.)

The company says that the upgraded Mini Maglite will project to 40 meters, and the batteries are now good for up to 25 hours of use. I’m not sure about the use, but it definitely does throw out a lot more light, and I’ll be upgrading all of the Maglites in my house.

(Note that NiteIze states that this upgrade voids the warranty on the Mini-Maglite, but the upgrade for the C&D cell variants of Maglites are just a bulb-swap, and there is no such language on the NiteIze website.)

-- Kent Dyer 09/15/11

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