DeWalt's Top-Rated 20V Spotlight: How Bright Is It & How Long Can It Last?

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The work lights made and sold by DeWalt aren't strictly limited to jobsites or DIY projects — users also employ them for everyday lighting, camping trips, power outage supplies, and more. The brand's cordless lamps, which come in different sizes and varieties, are particularly useful DeWalt products to keep in your car for emergencies. One of the brand's most highly rated lighting products is the DeWalt 20V Max Jobsite LED Spotlight. The DeWalt spotlight goes for $119 on Home Depot and is currently discounted to around $70 on Amazon.

Somewhat confusingly, there are two types of the spotlight with the same model number (DCL043) — one with four white LEDs, one with three white LEDs, and one with a low-light red LED, which can be easier on the eyes in the dark. The brighter of the two, naturally, is the one with four white LEDs, which can produce up to 1,500 lumens of light. Rather than a flood light, spotlights are intended to have a good range — DeWalt's spotlight can be seen at a distance of up to 1,525 feet, roughly the length of five football fields.

DeWalt's spotlight offers two brightness settings, so you can also set it to 500 lumens depending on what you need to illuminate. Using its low-light setting is also helpful if you need to stretch out the tool's battery life. How long the DeWalt spotlight lasts depends both on which setting you're using and what size 20V battery is attached. With a low-capacity DeWalt 20V Max 1.5 Ah battery (model DCB201), you can expect a maximum of 2.5 hours on the high setting, while the low setting can last as long as 3.5 hours. Its runtime can be extended further with larger DeWalt batteries (the brand sells up to 15 Ah 20V Max units).

While DeWalt makes other lights that are brighter and last longer, the DeWalt 20V Max Jobsite LED Spotlight is still highly rated with people who've used it. On Home Depot's website, where the DeWalt spotlight has an excellent 4.8 out of 5 overall customer rating, the product page sports a "Top Rated" badge. The same score can be found on Amazon, based on nearly 20,000 user reviews. Combing through these reviews, you can get a good sense of what exactly it is that users like about the DeWalt spotlight. The keywords "bright," "very bright," and "super bright" pop up often, and its "long-lasting" battery life also gets lots of shout-outs.

You can find similar praise outside of retailer websites. On r/DeWalt, a Redditor made a specific post about how happy they were with the DeWalt 20V spotlight titled "WOW!! My new favorite flashlight." The post mentions that, when on its 1,500-lumen high setting, the device outperformed a Feit flashlight that claimed to output 3,000 lumens. The user also reports that the light lasted on high with a 1.7 Ah battery for over three hours.

It's not just the brightness and battery life of the spotlight that have earned it strong user reviews, though. Another redditor on r/flashlight praises several things about the tool, including "no heat issues." This review also notes the convenient design of the DeWalt spotlight, which is upright so it can be used hands-free and has a 90-degree pivoting head for more versatility when aiming the light. You can also hang it using the built-in hook, giving you more options for placement. It's rated IP54 water- and dust-resistant, and DeWalt says the spotlight's over-molded lens cover is especially durable.

It's very rare to see any tool or device with universal praise, of course, and DeWalt's top-rated 20V spotlight is no exception. The main complaint you'll find among any negative or mixed reviews of the product concerns its price — after all, there are many flashlights out there that you can get for significantly less than $119 or even $70. This premium cost isn't limited to the brand's spotlight, though, as one of the important things to consider before buying DeWalt tools is that they are generally fairly expensive. For what it's worth, many of the reviews that do note the DeWalt spotlight's price say that it's worth the cost.

Other than its cost, the bulk of 1-star reviews for the tool typically refer to defective or broken models that don't represent the light when it's working as intended. There are also several negative reviews from frustrated customers who mistakenly received the all-white LED model when they wanted the red-light option, or vice versa, which is something to be careful about when ordering the product online.

Occasionally, you may find a negative review complaining that the spotlight isn't bright enough or that it has poor battery life. These, though, make up a minority of reviews overall, which is why the DeWalt spotlight is as highly-rated as it is. While there are some DeWalt tools you should probably avoid, the DeWalt 20V Max Jobsite LED Spotlight is not one of them.