Banish the Dark With This Smart Portable Lamp

Nearly everyone has a flashlight in their pocket these days in the form of a smartphone, but it’s not a very good one. Sure, it does the trick for walking home in the dark or pinpointing the keyhole, but try balancing it to illuminate the guts of your PC or the box you are rummaging through in the attic. You can bet it will slide over and plunge you into darkness at the most annoying moment possible. What you need, my friends, is the Wiz Luminaire Portable Light.

This multipurpose wonder lamp is a marriage of old and new that has brightened my life (pun intended), and it’s just plain practical. It has an adorable curvy design with a convenient handle, is wireless, offers hours of illumination, and recharges via a USB-C port. As with nearly everything these days, it hooks up to the Wiz app so you can choose animated smart lighting scenes for any occasion. When my daughter’s not using it as a night-light, I like to roam around holding it aloft like a town watchman of yore. Unlike a phone flashlight, you can set this lamp down or hang it on a hook to radiate warm light in every direction.

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Portable and Practical

Venturing into my attic space means fighting my way through piles of boxes and old stuff that I am reluctant to throw away but definitely should. This cold, dark labyrinth has no lighting, and is tough (and creepy) to navigate by smartphone flashlight alone. 

I’m still psychologically scarred from the time I dropped my phone, which disappeared into the insulation and plunged me into darkness several feet from the hatch. A perfectly timed scratching sound (source unknown) sent me frantically feeling my way around with my heart hammering in my chest. I’ve seen enough horror movies to know what happens next. I bumped my head on a beam, knocked several piles of junk over, and barely made it out alive.

I resolved to get a better light. By the next time I had to retrieve something from the attic, the Wiz Portable Lamp had just arrived, and I brought it with me. When bathed in pleasant warm light, my attic feels far less ominous, and I found what I needed in record time. Since then, I’ve picked up this trusty companion for everything from fetching the cat at night to searching the back of the big closet to taking the trash out in the dark.

This lamp puts out 400 lumens, which is about the same as a regular 40-watt bulb. There are touch-sensitive controls on top, which allow you to turn it on and off, change light modes, and dim it for a gentler light. There is also an app that offers more lighting options, including colors and dynamic lighting effects. When my partner is sleeping, I sometimes use it in candlelight mode for reading, as it emits a softer glow than my bedside lamp and I can put it anywhere.