A good lighting setup can be the difference between a warm and inviting campsite and one that’s, well, dark. Lighting can just be a headlamp and lantern, but overhead lighting is best to see what you’re doing and be seen by your friends and family at camp. Some overhead lighting systems are elaborate and are a lot of work to set up. But when you’re overlanding, camp is often only for a night, and all that work might not be worth it.
I recently tested the Hardkorr Tri-Colour Ezy-Fit Flexible Led Strip Light and found it an excellent solution for quickly and easily illuminating my campsite. This camp lighting solution consists of a strip of LED lights encased in a zippered canvas sleeve with a clear window for the light to shine through. This sleeve protects the LED strip and gives you multiple options to hang your lighting in camp.
This light strip emits three colors: white, warm white, and orange. It’s also dimmable; the on/off light switch doubles as a dimmer. The three colors are really only two colors, white and orange, with the third “warm white” color being a 50/50 mix of white and orange. The white light most useful if I needed to see something in detail, while the orange color was best for creating a relaxing atmosphere without harsh white light. The orange light attracts fewer bugs, too.
The zippered sleeve has a carabiner on both ends and three Velcro loops. This light strip is designed to work best with tents and awnings, where there are small bars and struts to hook the carabiners around. I found the combination of velcro loops and carabiners to be enough to attach this LED strip in most places.
However, the carabiners are pretty small, less than 2 inches to be specific, so they won’t work on their own to clip onto anything larger than a narrow bar or cord. You can hang this just about anywhere if you have some ingenuity, a little extra rope, or both.
There are also three Velcro strips on this light strip, one on each end and one in the middle. I found these strips worked best in conjunction with the carabiners. The Velcro in the middle of the strip is nice to keep the light from sagging in the middle, too.
The Tri-Color Ezy-Fit Light only comes with one power option, an automobile cigarette lighter-style DC plug. Since this is designed as a vehicle camping accessory, DC-only power probably isn’t an issue for most users. However, there are more versatile LED string lights out there that are USB powered. This offering from Hardkorr could be made more portable and, therefore, more versatile if it were powered by USB.
$77 | hardkorr.com
The Tri-Color Ezy-Fit Flexible Led Strip Light also comes in a 2.4-meter length version ($119). For further details and other lighting options from Hardkorr, visit hardkorr.com.
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