Aviators, astronomers, truck drivers, campers and anyone wanting to retain their night vision can benefit from LED flashlights with red or green light options.
Which is best, green or red light? Well, it’s the total brightness of the light that has the most significant effect on night vision retention, so you’ll want a light that allows you to easily adjust brightness. Our eyes are more sensitive to green light, which means you need much less green light than red light to see something, giving green light an edge. See a detailed discussion of this topic here or here.
Here are a couple of top rated flashlights optimized for night vision:
Streamlight 14003 Sidewinder LED Flashlight
The Streamlight Sidewinder is a popular choice because it of its dimming features — it can light an entire room, or it can be dimmed to a task light level. The flashlight incorporates four different colors of LEDs: white, red, green and blue. Each LED lamp features four levels of brightness: Low (5%), Medium (20%), Medium-High (50%), High (100%) plus a Strobe function (100%).
The Streamlight Sidewinder is available at Amazon for about $59.
Smith & Wesson Galaxy 12-LED Flashlight
The Smith & Wesson Galaxy 12 is a versatile LED flashlight, featuring eight white, two red, and two blue LEDs. The ultra bright white LEDs offer general lighting and visibility within 20 feet, and red and blue LEDs for low-light viewing. The battery life is 30-hours using three AAA batteries.
The Galaxy 12 received an average of 4.4 of out 5 stars from 17+ Amazon reviewers.
The Smith & Wesson Galaxy 12 LED Flashlight is available at Amazon for about $23.
This is another good one: Alldaymall® 2 x UltraFire WF-502B CREE Q5 Single
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