When selected properly, a book light can reduce eye fatigue by assuring ample light while reading, even in the darkest places, and can save both energy and money. A sturdy clip on book light design can make your light easy to securely attach to your book, book holder, or book stand, and many designs can do double duty as hobby, craft, podium or task lights. Light weight incandescent or LED designs can provide just the right amount of light exactly where you need it, without wasting energy or disturbing those around you, like a spouse or partner sleeping beside you.
By lighting your reading materials with just the correct amount and temperature of light, a book light can save your eyes from strain and assist your reading in darkened venues. Our eyes require more light as we age, and providing the correct amount of light exactly where we’re reading can be a real challenge. Obviously, the best light for reading is natural sunlight coming directly from over your shoulder, but we often need to read when or where such lighting isn’t available. Hence, the right book light, one we can use any time and any place we choose, iscan be} an incredible convenience. Then, turning off the overheads and lamps illuminating so much more than our reading materials, we conserve considerable energy as well as the money it takes to pay for that energy.
When making the choice between incandescent and LED book light designs, three primary considerations include: the differences in the type of light produced by these two distinct technologies, the cost of acquisition, and the cost of maintenance and operation over time. Incandescent lights typically create a warm, somewhat golden-tinged light, and incandescent bulbs typically last between 15-25 hours of use and then have to be replaced. LED lights produce a whiter, cooler light, and many designs are now optimized to approximate the output of lighting from the sun. Today, many book lovers find the light of modern LEDs to be more “sun like”, producing greater contrast and making all printing easier to read. While replacement bulbs for many incandescent book light designs are readily available in local electrical and hardware stores, and over the Internet, the cost of replacement can really add up over time. Since LEDs offer life expectancies of 10,000 to 50,000 hours, the 10-20% greater initial cost of acquisition quickly becomes irrelevant. Generally, then, LED book lights are now the preferred choice over the older incandescent.
Battery powered book lights are the handiest, as they can be used anywhere. Unfortunately, batteries too are a replaceable item, typically lasting only 20-30 hours of use at best, in LED or incandescent designs. Optional A/C adapters are available for most book lights, but another option is to use rechargeable batteries and a recharger. Most book light designs make use of either AA or AAA batteries, and many rechargeable options are on offer. In addition, if your light is typically used close to an A/C outlet, an optional A/C adapter can be a money saving investment.
Finally, the area over which the light is dispersed is also a meaningful consideration when choosing the perfect book light for a particular application. If your light will only be used to light up a standard size, mass market paperback, a single LED or incandescent book light design will probably be sufficient; however, if you read magazines, most hard cover books or a stand full of music, you’ll want a much more powerful light that distributes the light over a much broader area. The ideal way to determine the most perfect design for any particular application will be to test it in actual use. When shopping, make sure your dealer offers both good pre-sale and return service, in case your first choice doesn’t work out. With a bit of application, you can buy just the right book light for just about any use.