5 Best Hand Crank Flashlights (Review) In 2020

The Evelots Hand Crank Flashlight is the perfect choice for family and friends who love to take to the wilderness and tackle Mother Nature head on. This set of four crank flashlights means that everyone has a convenient and dependable light source to ensure safety wherever you go.

It’s simple to use thanks to the handy crank system that will provide immediate light after just a few cranks. With this you can use it to rifle through your backpack in the darkness of your tent, or keep it lit with the two powerful LEDs to navigate through tricky terrain as you’re losing the light. For power outages, it can help you find the root of the problem without wasting phone battery, and help you get through the house without tripping over something.

The CyberTech Emergency LED Hand Crank Flashlight is an all-in-one option that can back you up across a vast range of needs in any situation you find yourself. Aside from being a dependable flashlight with three high-luminance LEDs that provide over 10,000 hours of light, it also boasts plenty of other functions that make it stand out as something that anyone who loves the outdoors needs in their repertoire.

There is a built-in USB port that enables you to charge your smartphone on-the-go, and this will charge it to full-power in just three hours, so you’re never too far away from contact. Besides this, there is also a window breaker, windshield hammer and seatbelt cutter for emergencies and survival. The embedded magnets help it stick to railings or cars so you don’t lose it, and the rugged and waterproof design ensures durability in a variety of extreme situations.

The PrimalCamp Hand Crank Solar Powered Flashlight is a fantastic choice if you need something compact and portable for casual camping trips and overnight stays. Despite its size, it still packs a punch, with a bright LED bulb that illuminates the area with ease, allowing you to see clearly in the darkest of nights and guaranteeing safe stepping wherever you go.

The crank system is powerful and reliable, producing an hour of light for just six minutes cranking time, assuring you light to get through whatever emergencies you encounter. The convenient carabiner allows it to clip easily to your belt, backpack, or tent, so you can access it quickly whenever you need, whether that’s you make sure you don’t step on the wildlife or need to find a spare pair of socks for those frigid wilderness nights.

The American Red Cross is constantly committed to giving you a better way to get out of bad situations. Well, these inexpensive flashlights give you just that. You get two for a super low price, which both include power banks and hand cranks to keep things lit up in the middle of the dark.

There’s a high conversion ratio since this is only used as a flashlight—one minute of hand cranking grants you ten minutes of light, so you can use this while the light’s on and still put power in the bank. If you haven’t already guessed, while their effort to make these cheap in the name of budget-friendly preparedness is noble, there are some design elements that they just couldn’t implement properly.

For many survivalists, the Life Gear StormProof Crank Flashlight is the first thing they would include on their list of must-haves in the event of an emergency. With just one glance, it’s easy to see why. It comes in multiple pack sizes to make sure everyone gets a flashlight of their own. The light function provides 10 minutes of light with a single minute of cranking, showing efficiency and reliability, and helping to light up the path whether you’re searching through the basement, or trying to find your way back to the campsite.

It’s not just the light that impresses us, though. There is a built-in radio so you can stay up-to-date on the latest developments, which could be crucial for your survival. Likewise, the emergency siren can alert nearby rescue workers if your party has gone astray in the waning light. For added functionality, the USB charging system will keep your devices at full power so you have an additional means of communication.

It’s far more than just a flashlight. RunningSnail won the top spot because of how versatile everything about this hand crank unit is. When the lights go out and you need to repair the fuse box or fix something else, you have to have something with a wide beam of light to diagnose the entire problem.

That’s what RunningSnail gives you. This is a bulkier model, which comes with its own issues, but it provides exactly what you need. You can run the flashlight from three different methods; hand cranking, the rechargeable power bank, and a solar panel on the top of the flashlight. Leave this out in the middle of the day to recharge if you’re still going to be left without power that night. If you charge this even on a cloudy day, you still won’t run out of power if you’re just running the flashlight. With a simple 1W LED light, it eats through the power very slowly. When you crank up the other features, that’s when you start consuming more power.

The main goal of having a hand crank flashlight is to utilize the power bank before you have to utilize anything else. Goal Zero is an all-in-one unit that starts out as a power bank and ends with the hand crank actually being it’s least viable function. If this is fully charged, it’ll run through your battery so slowly that hand cranking will only be required as a last-ditch effort.

You get an impressive 4400 mAh of power in the ban, giving you upwards of 48 hours of light if you use the floodlight setting on low. The thing is, there’s also a spotlight setting that I believe most of us would use in worst-case scenarios, and that eats up more battery than the other modes. Speaking of those modes, you get the spotlight, the flood light, but you also get an SOS red light mode to signal others in case of emergencies. Either let the red lights run solid, or put it on a strobe function. It doesn’t actually transmit an SOS signal, it simply blinks which is more than enough for people to know that you need help.

Nice and simple, the ThorFire Solar Flashlight gets the job done without overcomplicating things. There is no power bank, there is no recharging—it’s exclusively a hand crank-only flashlight. ThorFire basically made the perfect camping companion or emergency unit, whatever your needs are, that also has a high output. Most of the time when you see inexpensive units like this, they come with a very narrow range of uses.

The bright LED output gives you plenty of visibility, but the real star of the show here is the IPX6 waterproof rating. This allows you to completely submerge this entire unit for up to 45 feet (not sure you would need to, but it’s there if you do) without damaging it in the slightest. Even the hand crank input has sufficient waterproofing on it despite it being a working part.

Last but not least, we have this little gem. Chromo Inc gives you four separate hand crank flashlights for the same price that the American Red Cross charges for two. There’s a distinct difference in quality, though. Chromo Inc uses a smart lever design where most of it is inside the unit. You can crank everything up with the one-handed lever on the outside wall of the unit. It’s simple to use but requires frequent cranking. That doesn’t mean you need to constantly crank to keep the light on, but since there’s not much of a power reserve, you have to do it often enough to keep feeding it power.

When you’re not actually cranking it, you can use the lever lock to hold the lever in a depressed position. This makes it much easier to hold your flashlight and maneuver with it, especially if you’re in a cramped space. Chromo Inc gives you lanyards to clip it onto your jacket or backpack and a decent enough lumen output. This is considered a personal flashlight; you can’t lead and light the way for others with it, but that’s why you get so many in a pack.