I go camping every so often and when we go we take a caravan and tent. We are always on the look out for camping gadgets and the Unicom wind up lantern was one that caught my eye. It looked ideal, a handy light source that did not require batteries. It cost around £6 from a camping supply store.

The wind up lantern feels very cheap and flimsy when you take it out of the packaging. The internal dynamo is powered up by winding up a handle which stores away in the body of the base when not in use, the tiny handle makes it relatively fiddly to wind and it only takes a minute or so to fully charge the battery.

The light source comes from 4 LED lights inside a clear plastic dome on the top of the lamp. The beauty of the lamp design means that the light is spread out in all directions unlike a torch which only shines where you point it. The light is not particularly bright, it is adequate for reading by if you are really close to it but you would need more than one to properly light a caravan's tiny living room. The fact that the handle is reasonably thin makes it easy to hang from any hooks which is handy but we normally put it on a table.

The makers claim that the light will shine for a full 30 minutes but I have found this to be untrue, yes there will probably be some light for the full 30 minutes but after the first 10 or 15 minutes the lamp starts to dull really quickly. This means that the lamp has to be constantly recharged which is really annoying.

This camping light is ok, despite the poor time the light source lasts it is still reasonably handy to have on camping trips as an extra source of light. I am going to invest in a better quality wind up lantern at some point as this one is not great and I would like one that is more sturdy and gives longer between charges.