Shine a light with the best handheld torches

Even in an age when nearly everyone carries around a futuristic communicator-cum-computer, the humble torch still manages to be the most elemental technological gadget, with its basic but vital job of defying darkness.

However, it wasn’t the first hand-held electrical device. The battery-powered telegraph and the portable hearing aid were already around when the first modern torch was patented, around 1898 by David Misell, a Liverpool-born inventor who had moved to New York.

Misell sold the rights to the American Electrical Novelty and Manufacturing Company, later renamed Eveready.

Eveready cannily donated several to the New York Police Department, which immediately adopted them. Nothing much then happened to improve the torch for more than 100 years.

The ones used in both wars were much the same as Misell’s original, and even the Eveready and Pifco torches, bicycle lamps and so on that most of us remember from childhood remained unchanged, still with those weedy little bulbs that were always expiring.

All that changed in 2006 when Maglite, a long-established torch maker in California, launched one of the first LED (light emitting diode)-based "flashlights", offering far more light for less battery power.

From then on, torches have got brighter and brighter, to the point when many are powerful enough to be used as a legal personal safety weapon that will temporarily blind and disorient a burglar or mugger.

Modern torches are also often rechargeable, ruggedised and waterproof enough to work under water.

The best LED torches today vary from incredibly expensive to surprisingly cheap for what they offer. The one a lot of professional users recommend is the Fenix PD36R v2.0 (1) (RRP £109.95, Amazon), and it is indeed fantastically bright and well-built.

However, I recently bought the Blukar LED Torch (2) (RRP £30.99, Amazon), and it’s almost as well-built and bright, as well as being, I would say, better designed. It’s probably my best ever gadget bargain.

Maglite, which is proud of making its products in the US, is still a leading light in torches. The S2D016 (3) (RRP £47.50, Amazon) uses an incandescent bulb rather than LEDs and is powered with traditional batteries. It is heavy, no-frills and confidence inspiring.

The world's brightest torch

But if you want the ultimate, it has to be the Imalent MS32 Brightest Torch (4). Used by explorers, cavers and search-and-rescue crews, this torch produces 200,000 lumens – the equivalent of 100 car headlights – all concentrated into a beam that can light a spot more than a mile away.

The Imalent is not cheap though: at RRP £702.95 (Imalent), it’s the most expensive, as well the world’s brightest, torch.