My friend Ailinn always buys us weird and wonderful gifts and the Rolson LED book clip was no exception to this rule. It is also available from Amazon for £3.44 with free shipping. I had read some positive reviews of booklights so was keen to try my gift out.

The Rolson booklight is a simple little gadget, one end has a clip which you attach to your book and it has a flexible stalk attaching it to the lamp. The fact that the stalk is so flexible means that it folds down really small for transport although some kind of small bag to protect it while it is in my handbag would be nice. The whole thing is made of good quality plastic so it is nice and sturdy.

The LED lamp is switched on by a simple sliding switch, it reminds me a bit of a tiny lamp post in its design and it is around 3 cm by 1 cm wide. The light is powered by button cell batteries and you need a tiny screwdriver to get into the battery compartment. I have yet to wear out the battery so the lamp obviously doesn't use much power.

My daughter attends piano lessons every Tuesday night. Before the clocks went forward again it was dark at 8pm when she was in her lesson. The community high school has a small seating area for parents waiting for kids but as it is really busy and noisy there I prefer to just sit in the car and read a book in peace for half an hour which is where I decided to use the booklight.

The clip is reasonable quality, it does not grip your book very hard so you don't have to worry about it leaving marks on the pages but unfortunately this means that it can move around a bit unless you clamp it onto a lot of pages. The light is nice and bright but unfortunately it does not fully illuminate a full double page of a standard sized paperback very well. I found that it illuminated the middle of the pages really well but the light did not spread out as well to the edges or bottom of the page and I needed to keep readjusting the light.

The Rolson LED booklight is ok but not brilliant, I ended up just using my cars interior light instead because adjusting this booklight all the time got annoying. If I were going to buy another booklight I would definitely go for another brand that does not have the same problems as the Rolson one has.