3 Of The Best Lighting Gear Options To Brighten Your Camping Trip (According To Reviews)

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When you go camping, there are lots of things to remember, including camping bags, tents, food and water, stuff to start fires, and more. Some folks solve this in some creative ways, like camping in the bed of their truck, or even bringing along some high-tech camping equipment to make the experience more comfortable. Others sometimes take the bare essentials to lead a more spartan camping trip. Regardless, one thing that just about everyone needs when they go camping is a light of some kind. 

Much like other useful camping gadgets, lights come in all shapes and sizes. You can take along a trusty flashlight or lantern to keep things simple, while others may want to be more decorative with camping-specific string lights and other colorful lighting. For those who go glamping, there's even a good selection of USB-powered lights for you to choose from. For the most part, though, people tend to stick to the classics. 

The good news is that those products have improved dramatically over the last century. Today's modern lighting is brighter, adjustable, and lighter than its predecessors. Plus, you have more varieties to choose from now than ever before. Finding a good flashlight isn't terribly difficult. As long as it turns on when you need it, then you're good to go. If you want to up your lighting game a little more, here is some of the best camping lighting that we could find. 

Sometimes a simple flashlight is just what the metaphorical doctor ordered, and for that, the Wurkkos FC11C strikes a good balance between simple, well-built, and affordable. It's made from aluminum and has a bit of heft to it while also being IP68 water and dust resistant, a boon for campers. It's small enough to easily fit in a person's hand or pocket and it comes with a clip so you can attach it to a backpack or belt to keep it out of the way. In addition, it outputs light at 1,200 lumens and has a beam distance of over 450 feet. The battery is rechargeable with a USB-C cable and Wurkkos makes it in both 4,000K and 5,000K light temperatures. 

As a flashlight, it's actually quite good. The good news with this flashlight is that it's just a solid flashlight. You get all of the above features and it isn't a complicated piece of tech. Just a bright, simple flashlight that works as expected. Some reviewers have complained about small things, like how the light control can be a little hard to find in the dark at first. However, it makes up for it with little niceties like a magnetic base that is strong enough to hold the flashlight in any orientation. Overall, it's a solid camping flashlight. 

The Wurkkos FC11C is already pretty small, but if you want a really small flashlight that packs away easily, the RovyVon A1 Gen 4 is about the best option in the ultra-small flashlight category. Since it is easy to put in any backpack or pocket, one of the best features it has is a lockout mode that keeps the light from being accidentally turned on in your pack, which would cause the battery to drain. Otherwise, its greatest strength is that it's small enough to be easily affixed to a keychain while still providing 650 lumens of light on high settings. We also liked the moonlight mode which grants 0.5 lumens, helping the user to preserve their night vision. 

In terms of construction, it's a plastic PU material and the flashlight comes with an IPX6 water resistance rating. That means it can't be submerged but can take splashes like you get with rain. Reviewers praised the flashlight's lockout mode and small stature. It's a little bit bigger than a AA battery. It also charges with USB-C, and its smaller battery means it doesn't take very long at all to charge. RovyVon says that it can last up to 56 hours in moonlight mode, but you'll get maybe several hours on the higher power modes. If this one isn't doing it for you, there are several other very good rechargeable flashlights that you can swap it with.

The BioLite brand is fairly well known for making good camping lanterns. It makes mostly solar-powered lights that charge during the day in the sun and then shine at night as needed. Fully charged, its produces can last about a full day, give or take a couple of hours, although it likely won't get a full charge over the course of one day of sunlight. Fortunately, both lights are rechargeable via USB-C as well.

First, let's talk about the BioLite Solar String. This is a 44-foot stringed light set with 20 bulbs. It comes with roughly 25 hours of rated life and multiple brightness settings. There is a color variant as well as a white-only variant that you can choose from. Both of them come with mostly the same features with one being able to cycle through various colors and one having only white. Both sets of lights are IPX4, which means they can be rained on without any problems. It's best used for campsite lighting rather than tent lighting where it is definitely overkill. 

The other option is the BioLite Luci lantern, which is much better for tent use. It has a few variants to choose from, although we like the model with the larger battery. It lights up at 360 lumens max, which isn't too bright and can light a tent without problems. It's also inflatable, so you can pack it away quite easily.

To start, we sorted through dozens of posts from people asking this very question to get a feel for what brands were most often recommended by other people. We also sourced other blogs to see what the bloggers were recommending these days. From there, each product was run through FakeFind, which is essentially FakeSpot's replacement now that Mozilla has shut that down, and then further narrowed the list down. We wanted to focus mostly on products that had the best chance of solving the problem. The Luci lanterns are small, water resistant, and aren't so bright that they ruin your night vision. Meanwhile, the flashlight selections are different sizes.