One of my favorite camping products of the season so far is the Kelty Lumapivot Lantern. With exception to a full moon, there is not a whole lot else on the market that can pack as much light as the Kelty Lumapivot Lantern. I recently went camping up in Golden Gate State Park for my first camping trip of the season and the Lumapivot was one of the products I was testing. This lantern provides a TON of light all while being compact, nimble and lightweight. As you can see in the pictures, the LED bulbs are connected to two plate like surfaces that rotate in any direction you can think of, 360 degrees. One of the things I liked about the pivoting arms was that I could have one side directing light at the ground while walking and one side directing light in front of me, perfect for those late night trips to the bathroom. This also works really well around the campsite. When cleaning up or cooking, I like to have enough light to move around the campground and that typically means I need a couple sources of light, i.e. two lanterns or headlamps. With the Kelty Lumapivot lantern, I could eliminate one lighting source.
With 6 AA batteries, you can get 6 hours with the lantern on high and 12 hours with the lantern on low. I thought this was ok, but I would really like to see the light use a rechargeable battery. And while there are rechargeable AA’s you can get almost anywhere, I would have liked to see a rechargeable battery come with the Kelty Lumapivot Lantern. 6 AA batteries seems wasteful to me and I cringe every time I have to get rid of non-rechargeable batteries.
While in the low setting, the Lumapivot gives off 60 lumens and while on the high setting, you can get 110 lumens out of the lantern. This provides a fairly good source of light up to 20 feet and it starts to disperse and gets dimmer after that distance. I found the distance of light provided to be plenty around the campground.
At a steal of a deal, I think the Kelty Lumapivot Lantern should be on everyone’s camping equipment list. For more information on the Lumapivot Lantern and other Kelty products, please visit www.kelty.com.
