EtonAmerican Red Cross Crank-Powered Clipray Clip-On Flashlight & Smartphone Charger, Hand Crank, Cherry Red, Commitment to Preparedness

USB powers my phone quicker than you would think. Gain 10% with about 4 minutes of cranking.

They tested out well. I have one in my car and one at home for emergencies. Hopefully won't need them . . .

Flashlight.It's a good emergency flashlight. The beam is good for anything within a 30 foot range (and probably adequet for 40-50 feet as long as you don't need a spotlight). From my experience, the battery lasts up to 10 minutes after cranking for a few seconds, and up to 5 minutes in cold weather (~30-40 farenheit). It will still produce light after these limit, but will be significantly dimmer. The light fades as the battery gets weaker, so I typically recharge the device while I am using it to keep it bright. I've had this thing hold battery for several months (of nonuse) without being cranked. Overall I am very impressed with the flashlight portion of this product. 5 out of 5Clip.It is made of plastic and functional. I doubt it would hold much weight, but since it's only intended use is to hold the flashlight, that's okay.Phone Charging.It provides a charge. You need to crank to be able to charge anything, and it doesn't charge fast. Because of the size of the crank, it is a little difficult to charge without holing the flashlight with both hands. It doesn't come with a cable (I didn't expect it to). Overall, if you were in an emergency situation and had the time, this would be a good way to get your phone up by a few percent, but it isn't a way to seriously charge your device. I'm talking 5-10 minutes of work for 2-3% charge. Is it better than nothing? Yes. Can I see anyone taking 8 hours and 20 minutes to use this crank to charge their phone up to 100%? No. And, since it only charges while you are cranking, you can't store any energy for later (You can for the flashlight, but not for the phone charger. But, given how fast the flashlight charges and how long it lasts, it's not really worth doing it for the flashlight either.). It's enough to save your bacon, but you can't take it hiking and expect it to charge your devices.I am happy with my purchase, and have considered getting this as a gift for multiple family members.

The light isn't crazy bright, but it definitely does the trick when you need a flashlight. It charges fairly quickly with the crank dynamo. You may want to crank it for a couple of minutes each time you go to use it, to make sure it will last a while before cranking again. It says 1 minute of cranking is 10 minutes of light, but I think that may be a bit exaggerated, which isn't a big deal. When you're stuck in the dark, spending whatever amount of time cranking it for light isn't much worse than sitting in the dark. The battery will hold a charge for a while, so if you leave it charged it will stay charged for at least couple of weeks, in my experience.I haven't used the USB for charging very much, but it seems to only really charge the phone while you actively crank it. In addition, it only charges the phones I have had very slowly (the phones literally say "charging slowly" instead of just "charging"). Again, when you're stuck with no electricity it will do the trick temporarily, and is far better than no charger at all.As for the build quality, it is fairly decent quality but definitely fairly cheap, as well. It might break the plastic enclosure if it were to be dropped down a flight of stairs, for example. If you struck it with a hammer as if hitting a nail, it would likely shatter into a lot of pieces, as it is a rigid but relatively thin plastic. If wedged into a survival kit or other tight space it would likely be fine though, it is a bit flexible and would probably only break due to impact. It is definitely not water-resistant at all, hah. Overall meets my expectations and is a pretty quality product.

Nice

It's unfortunate that I trusted the good reviews and the Red Cross brand and didn't dig deep enough in parts of the reviews that were "below the fold." Yes, it's fine as a flashlight. But it's terrible as an emergency charger, which is what I really wanted.Despite *obviously* containing a battery for the flashlight, the battery has no role in the charging ports. So as others have noted, you literally have to continuously crank in order to charge anything. This interacts stupidly with the iPhone, which literally powers on (even if the battery is at only 1%) as soon as you start charging, and then of course stays on, prompts you for your passcode, etc. So if you pause for moment because your hands get tired or you slip off of the tiny crank handle, then that's treated as an "unplug/replug" event and you can't even manage to keep you phone turned off while you try to inject some power into it.The only viable way that I can see to use this is to have it charge an external power bank, which you then use to charge the phone. But when you're hiking and every ounce counts, why would you want to carry both the crank light (with an internal battery) and an external battery? This is fundamentally a cheaping out design decision: I have designed low power electronics and this is *not* how you do it if you want a competent and versatile product. Among other things it makes me wonder how much of the crank power is being wasted. If they didn't bother to include an efficient boost regulator off of the battery to the USB ports, then they probably also didn't include an efficient battery charger circuit either.I won't be returning this, because emergency flashlights are a nice thing to have around the house, but it's useless for my intended purpose.

This product is very bright after just a little bit of cranking the handle, but it charges a phone battery slowly. Seems like the flashlight has some sort of battery, as it will store some energy for later. After 2 minutes of cranking, I used it for probably 15 minutes of light with no problems. Overall, very good for the price and what it’s intended for, I purchased 2 because it was very nice.