Maglite Solitaire

Riding on their name, junk – I’ve owned five maglites, three in the 80’s/90’s which served me well in extreme conditions and two of these overrated and over priced AAA led lights. One I gave to a relative and the other sat in my car’s door pocket. It would work intermittently and eventually got thrown and destroyed in frustration along with my crappy Kincrome. The need to work for three minutes while I do maintenance on my car was to much to ask. I now buy cheap torches and could buy twenty of them with many years worth of batteries for what I for these junk items. Light output is great but it doesn’t stay on when needed. Were great, great idea but they are useless when needed. Don’t waste your money! Also leaving another review for another junk brand that did the same thing and also got thrown before the dudlite.

Pointless with what is available now days – I have two old Solitaire's and these are what really started my love affair with Maglite, I loved these things as if they were high light output torches at the time and carried them everywhere with me at night as they were diminutive in size and weight. The bulbs are tiny and the light output then was minimal however compared to todays key ring torches that are available for $2 they didnt even stack up with light emittance or durability!!

The Solitaire's bulb was it achilles tendon, they constantly blew and were hard then to find and now are even harder and more costlier than ever, they also chewed the 1 AAA battery so quickly you could swear that you just put it into the Solitaire!

Otherwise the Solitaire was well built, well water resistant and lasted over the years. With no LED replacement option for all these years they were made redundant and retired to a box somewhere. They were replaced with Led Lenser K3's and other cheap torches for everyday around the house use.

I have just seen that there are LED drop in replacement bulbs, however for the $15 you pay it is pointless to get one and put it in as it'll cost more than the torch itself!

It was a short lived love affair with the Solitaire, now taken over by its larger cousin the 2D Maglite and now the Led Lenser MT7 (New Toy)... Size and weight and light at the time. Doesnt stack up today even with the most cheap key ring torch - performance is pathetic.