Why This Little LED Lantern Is the First Thing I Pack Every Time

The campsite was completely dark by 7:30 PM. September in the Cascades does that. My headlamp was dead and I had not packed a backup. I was standing in the middle of a campsite I'd used a dozen times, and I could not find my stove, my cook kit, or my food bag. My husband was somewhere in the dark trying to locate the tent stakes. It was, to be honest, completely avoidable.

That was the fall of 2019. I had retired from rangering the previous spring, and apparently I had gotten comfortable enough to start cutting corners on my personal kit. Professional habits were slipping. That night cost us a cold dinner and thirty minutes of stumbling around with the light from our phones. I told myself it would not happen again.

I tried a few things in the months after. The big Coleman propane lantern I had used for car camping for years was too heavy and too bulky for any trip where I was covering ground. The cheap plastic flashlights from the hardware store worked fine until they did not. And the ultralight lanterns from the big outdoor brands were solid but priced at $45 and up, which felt like a lot for something I just needed to light a campsite while I cooked dinner.

A ranger colleague from my old district sent me a link to the Etekcity LED collapsible lantern in early 2020. She had been using two of them for weekend family trips and swore by them. The price was $14.98. I ordered three without much deliberation.

What surprised me first was how small it packs down. Collapsed, it is about the height and width of a hockey puck. It fits in the outer pocket of my day bag without thinking. The accordion-style body pulls up to full height in about one second. There is a hook on top that works with a tent line, a tarp loop, or a low branch. I have used that hook on every trip since.

Collapsed, it is about the height and width of a hockey puck. Fits in the outer pocket of my day bag without thinking.

The light output is honest. It is not going to light up a baseball field. What it does do is illuminate a campsite table well enough to cook on, read a map by, or play cards with your kids after the sun drops. On the highest setting, I can light a 10-by-10 foot area comfortably. On the low setting, it runs noticeably longer and is plenty bright for inside a tent.

Battery life is where a lot of people land when they decide to spend more on lanterns. The Etekcity runs on three AA batteries. I have gotten roughly eight hours on a fresh set at medium brightness, which covers two camping nights without a restock if you are not running it all night. I keep a four-pack of Energizer AAs in my kit bag and have never run out on a trip. The catch with proprietary rechargeable lanterns is that if you forget the cable or the battery fails, you are stuck. AA batteries are available at every gas station and general store between here and anywhere.

I now keep one in my car camping bin, one in my backpacking kit, and one in the emergency box at home. The emergency box one has been used twice during power outages in the past three years. My daughter grabbed it during the ice storm last February and asked if she could keep it in her apartment. I ordered her two more.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

There are better lanterns. The Black Diamond Moji is a nicer piece of gear. The Goal Zero Crush is excellent. If you are an ultralight backpacker who needs every gram accounted for, or you are doing remote winter expeditions where gear failure is a real risk, spend the extra money and get something purpose-built for that use.

But for the person who camps a few weekends a year, who drives to the site and sets up a tent and wants to cook dinner and keep the kids entertained after dark without squinting at a phone screen, the Etekcity does everything you actually need. It is durable enough to have survived four years of my personal use without cracking or dimming. The accordion body has never stuck or frayed. The hook holds reliably. The on/off button is a simple press, no cycling through eleven modes to find the one you wanted.

Nearly 50,000 people have reviewed this lantern. That number is not marketing. That is people finding something that works, using it, and coming back to say so. I am one of them. My former colleague who sent me the link is another. My daughter is now a third.

Pack one. You will not think about campsite lighting again, and that is exactly the point.