One to Watch: Muyshondt Spinner
Tony Sculimbrene 11.25.14
I am not going to hide my bias–I am a huge fan of Enrique Muyshondt’s flashlights. I loved the Aeon and the Aeon Mk. II. Both are among the best EDC lights available, regardless of price. I recently had the chance to review another of his lights, a AAA Mako Mk.II, and it was also a great light.
But alas, he makes them in such small batches that they are hard to grab even if you are looking for them. So I am doing you a favor and giving you a heads up: he is making a new light and pre orders are up.
That is a pretty shameless plug, and I get that, but here is where I am coming from. As a fellow gear geek, I feel like you’d probably want to know. If we were talking about jazz music, this would be like finding a complete, lost album from Miles Davis. If this was film, it would be like Francis Ford Coppola having an edit of Godfather III that fixed all of the problems (though it seems unlikely that could happen–he’d have to edit his daughter out of the film entirely).
The Spinner, as he is calling this new light, is a small form factor light. It has no reflector, just a pure simple beam from a lone emitter. The light is very small and runs Muyshondt’s great and reliable staged twisty. Unlike most twisties, this one works by twisting in one continuous motion, you twist more for more light. You don’t have to fiddle with turning it off and on to switch modes.
The twisty alone makes this a worthy upgrade from most 1xAA lights, but it’s not the heart of the Muyshondt magic. No, that would be his insane runtimes. His lights run forever, positively sipping batteries. I have had my Aeon Mk.II for almost two years, and I have carried it quite a bit and I am still on my second battery. Continuous runtimes are really great. The fit and finish will undoubtedly be superb as all of Enrique’s stuff comes out looking and feeling amazing.
Two words of caution. First, this level of refinement isn’t cheap. The Spinner is $225. That’s a lot of money, but this is essentially a hand built item. Second, the output is quite low compared to many lights on the market (30 lumens for 7 hours and 4 lumens for 160 hours). Don’t be scared off by the low lumens counts. Enrique is very conservative in his ratings, and in general you don’t need much more than 30 lumens for EDC tasks. This isn’t a searchlight, but it was never intended to be one. In the end, Enrique always designs for longer runtimes over higher output.
This is undoubtedly an enthusiast piece, but what a piece it is. The 1xAA form factor has increased in popularity, and as a result we have a wave of over-designed, under-built lights. This is the anti-trendy 1xAA, and if history is any indication, it will be sold out the next time you check.
Oh and here is a gratuitous shot of my Aeon Mk. II–a perfect piece of gear–with another sweet bit of kit, the Graham Stubby Razelcliffe Midtech:
