Monday, July 13, 2009

Burning the candle at both ends…

Written By: Steve Roudebush

Our favorite “flicker candle” has always been the CandleLite brand product. The original incandescent version has a reasonable randomness to it and the overall effect looks great even from the front row. When City Theatrical began manufacturing the product, they took a fresh look and made a handful of user friendly changes (most notably, making the Candlestick version just a little bit wider so that the 9V fits inside!).

Another important and somewhat overlooked change made was availability of each CandleLite flavor in an LED version. Smartly, City Theatrical kept the incandescent versions too. Here are the important points to consider:

1. Battery Life – As you would guess, the LEDs win. On average, the LED unit will last about 20 hours on a fresh 9V battery. The incandescent will run ~ 2 hours. That’s 10 batteries saved (10 x $1.49 BMI 9V Panasonic Industrial Battery = $14.90). Oh, and keep in mind that the LED units are the same price as the incandescent.

2. Realism – The incandescent units win. LEDs don’t have a nice analog-ish ramp-up and ramp-down smoothness. No mistake, the LEDs look decent, but are just a bit choppier when compared to the incandescent.