Lepro Torch Review: The Battery Torch That Lives By Your Front Door

When the power goes, the torch you need is the one you can find in the dark, that switches on first time, and that doesn’t need a charge you can’t give it. The Lepro torch is built for exactly that moment. It’s a two-pack of small, pocket-sized aluminium battery torches that run on ordinary AAA batteries, with five lighting modes including SOS and a zoom head that goes from a wide room light to a focused beam.

This Lepro torch review covers why AAA power beats a rechargeable torch for emergency kit, what each mode is actually for, and where to keep the pair so one is always within reach. Our answer to that last one is simple: one lives by the front door, and the other goes in the car.

Why a Lepro Torch Beats a Rechargeable One in a Power Cut

Rechargeable torches are brilliant for everyday use. Emergency kit is a different job. It can sit untouched in a drawer for a year, and on the day you finally need it the power is already off, so there’s no socket to top it up from. A rechargeable torch that quietly went flat in May is no use to anyone in a February power cut.

The Lepro torch sidesteps all of that by running on AAA batteries. There’s no charging cable to hunt for by the light of your phone, no waiting for a top-up and no app. Put the batteries in, put the torch where you’ll look for it, and it’s ready whenever you pick it up. If it does run low halfway through a long evening, you swap the batteries and carry on, which no built-in rechargeable cell will let you do.

That’s the whole case for a battery torch in a UK home. It isn’t the cleverest light you can buy. It’s the one most likely to work when everything else has stopped.

Five Lighting Modes on the Lepro Torch, and Why SOS Matters

The Lepro torch has five modes: High, Medium, Low, SOS and Flash. Each one has a real job in a power cut.

• High lights up a whole room or the garden path, and reaches down the far end of the street.
• Medium is the everyday setting for getting round the house, checking on the kids or finding the candles you swore were in the kitchen drawer.
• Low is the one you’ll use most once you’re settled: enough to read the electricity meter, find the stopcock or get to the loo without waking the house.
• SOS flashes the recognised distress signal, so you can be seen if you’re broken down on a dark road or need help from a neighbour.
• Flash makes you visible, whether you’re walking the dog on an unlit lane or waving down someone who’s looking for you.

Five modes is about right. It’s enough to cover every job in an outage without turning a simple emergency torch into something you need the manual for.

Adjustable Zoom: Wide Room Light or a Focused Beam

The head of the Lepro torch zooms. Pull it one way and you get a wide flood of light that fills a room or a campsite. Push it the other way and it tightens into a focused beam that picks out detail a long way off, like a house number, a fence post in the next field or the dog at the bottom of the garden.

In a power cut that wide setting is the useful one indoors, because you want to see the whole kitchen, not one bright spot on the wall. The focused beam earns its keep outside: checking the street to see whether the neighbours have lost power too, finding the fuse box in a dark garage, or looking for a tile the wind took off the roof.

AAA Batteries: The Boring Bit That Makes It Work

AAA is about the most common battery size in the country. Most homes already have a few in the kitchen drawer, the TV remote has two more, and every supermarket and corner shop sells them. That’s what makes a battery operated torch so dependable: you’ll never be stuck waiting for a special charger or a battery you can only buy online.

Keep a spare pack of AAA batteries with your Lepro torches and you’ve covered even a long power cut. For a torch that will sit unused for months, take the batteries out and store them in the same box or bag, then put them in when you need them. Clarissa would also want you to write the date on the pack.

Aluminium Body, Built for Rain, Snow and a Damp Garage

The body is aluminium, not plastic. That matters for a torch that gets knocked off the hall shelf, rattles round a glovebox or sits in a cold car all winter. Cheap plastic torches can crack or split over time, and an aluminium body is far tougher.

The Lepro torch is rated IPX4, so it copes with rain and snow. That’s the right level of protection for the jobs it actually gets: nipping out to the shed in a downpour, checking the car on a snowy morning, walking the dog on a wet winter evening or looking for a leak in a damp garage.

It’s small and light too. The pocket-sized body slips into a coat pocket, a glovebox or a grab bag without you noticing it’s there, and the wrist strap means you can hang it off your wrist while you use both hands on a fuse box or a stuck back door.

Where to Keep Your Lepro Torch: By the Front Door

A torch only helps if you can find it in the dark, and the best place for one is somewhere you already reach for without thinking. That’s why we keep a Lepro torch by the front door, on the hall table or shelf next to the keys. When the lights go, everyone in the house knows where it is, and it’s right there if you need to step outside to see what’s happened.

Because the Lepro torch comes as a pair, the second one has a home too. A few good spots:

• The car glovebox, for breakdowns, flat tyres and winter evenings on unlit roads.
• The blackout box, with the spare batteries, candles and a wind-up radio.
• The bedside drawer, for a power cut in the middle of the night.
• A grab bag or get home bag, where its small size and light weight really count.

With a bigger house, or more than one floor, a second pack puts a battery torch at the top and bottom of the stairs, so nobody has to feel their way down in the dark.

Our Verdict on the Lepro Torch

The Lepro torch isn’t trying to be a tactical torch or an everyday-carry gadget. It’s a simple, pocket-sized emergency torch that runs on batteries you can buy anywhere, with five sensible modes, a zoom head and enough weather protection for a British winter. Two in the box means one by the front door and one in the car, and that covers most of the moments a household actually needs a torch.

If your current plan for a power cut is your phone torch and a hopeful rummage through the junk drawer, a pair of Lepro torches is one of the easiest and cheapest upgrades you can make. To see what other buyers think, check the reviews on Amazon.

What the Rest of the Team Think

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Pros and Cons

Pros

• The Lepro torch runs on standard AAA batteries, so there’s nothing to charge and it works in a power cut
• Aluminium body rather than plastic, so it stands up to knocks and drops
• Comes as a two-pack: one for the front door, one for the car or blackout box
• Five modes, including a proper SOS signal and a Flash mode for being seen
• Adjustable zoom, from a wide room light to a focused long-distance beam
• IPX4 rated, so it handles rain and snow
• Pocket-sized and light, with a wrist strap

Cons

• No built-in charging, so keep a spare pack of AAA batteries with your Lepro torch
• Not the right pick if you want a USB-rechargeable torch for everyday carry
• Weather resistant rather than waterproof, so it isn’t made to be dropped in water

Frequently Asked Questions