Archive Article: 2000/01/28

28 January 2000

IF youd been out on the Sussex South Downs one cold evening in mid-December last you would have seen a strange sight. Grown men, dressed in multiple layers against the chill, shining torches at a mock sheep all evening. You might well have assumed it was madmen, phoned the police and thought no more of it.

In fact it was the epic farmers weekly rechargeable torch test in the making – or at least the bit that involved finding out exactly how far the beam of each torch would reach.

We went on to do a series of tests on the torches and you can see the results over the next four pages.

Why go to such lengths? Every farm has a torch (or several) and a high proportion of those are rechargeables. But the capabilities (and prices) of different models vary enormously, and when it comes to choosing the best one youre pretty much in the dark. We hope our test shines a little light on this rather murky subject.