Now before you get too excited about carrying this thing in your backpack, the XM18 is more like a portable spotlight than a flashlight. That’s because it’s actually made up out of what amounts to 18 of 4Seven’s superbright LED flashlights. It almost looks like the composite eye of an insect. Of course, they couldn’t just tape 18 flashlights together – they built a completely custom case designed to optimize cooling, and it’s even got a cooling fan and inside. All told, this beast is powered by 32 rechargeable lithium batteries.

The guys over at GoingGear recently got to check out this giant LED light up close and personal, and shot some video footage showing off one of the very first production units:

See what I mean – it’s not exactly pocket-sized. But on the other hand, the idea of a battery-powered device that can blast out a blinding 15,000 Lumens of light is still damned impressive.

All of this cutting-edge flashlight tech comes at a price, though. 4Sevens has the XM18 listed at $2,495 on their website. Each one is built to order, so you’ll want to be absolutely sure you need to light something up before you plunk down your credit card.

The laser has a range of 85 miles, which means the beam could leave our atmosphere. Therefore, Wicked says that you should not aim the laser at satellites in orbit because it could mess up the sensors on an orbiting satellite. The laser could also blind pilots.

The thing has 1W of power. That makes it 8,000 times brighter staring directly at the sun and it has 86 million lux. The laser uses special thermopile detector that lowers power to keep temperatures in line. The body of the laser is aluminum for rugged design. It sells for $999.95 (USD) in 1W form, $299.95 in 300mW, with a 500mW middle ground for $499.95.

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And unlike those LED mini projectors, this is a serious projector, pumping out a whopping peak brightness of 3000 lumens! The new hybrid light source manages to combine these multiple light sources to produce a super bright image. Blue lasers produces both blue and green colors, while the LED punches out red. All of these are combined and pushed through a TI DLP chip, at resolutions up to 1280 x 800.

The Green Slim projectors are about the size of a sheet of letter-size paper, stand about 1.7″ tall, and weight about 5 pounds. While that’s nowhere nearly as small as pico-projectors, there’s no comparison when it comes to brightness and resolution.

Casio plans on releasing several models of the projector, including 2000, 2500, and 3000 lumen variants, as well as lower resolution models which will assuredly be the least expensive. The top of the line models can also receive data wirelessly from up to 4 PCs.

The first of the Green Slim projectors is set to hit the streets in February or March, with prices ranging from $899 to $1299 (USD), so  if you’re in the market for a new data or gaming projector, you might want to wait to check these out when they’re released.

Now these aren’t those cheesy red laser pointers you get at the drug store these days. I had a chance to check out something I’ve never seen before – a violet laser. The 20mW Razor series violet laser ($99 USD) puts out a bright purple point of light which is unlike anything you’ve ever seen coming from a laser pointer. Keep in mind that despite its higher wattage rating and price, the violet lasers are still significantly dimmer than their equivalent green counterparts.

While the 20mW model that I got my hands on was perfect for driving my cat insane, they do offer models all the way up to 200mW, which actually generate enough heat to burn things – or pop balloons…

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They also let me play around with one of their intense green laser pointers, and that sucker sure is bright! Despite the fact that the green Tiger series laser is only a low-power 5mW model, this $29 laser pointer emits a super bright beam that can be seen from hundreds of feet away.

Of course, it’s nothing like their industrial-strength 700mW green laser – also known as the worlds’ most expensive cigarette lighter.

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Warnlaser has a variety of other cool laser pointers available in red, green, blue and violet, and prices range from $29 all the way up to $2500 (USD).

Sure, they don’t look exactly the same as the original Inky, Blinky, Pinky, Clyde and Pac-Man, but they’re close enough to pass for their video game doppelgangers from a distance. Besides, it’s probably pretty tough to bend neon to look like the jagged pixel edges of the original characters.

I spotted these 9-inch tall neon lights over on eBay. As of now, the full set is still available for sale, but seller JNN2728 is also selling individual Pac-Man and Ghost neon lights with bids starting as low as 1 red cent (of course, they’ll sell for a lot more than that by the time the auction closes).

Sporting a total of 768 individually addressable amber LEDs, each one of the numbers slides into and out of view as the hours, minutes and seconds tick away. With all of those LEDs wired up to a single power source, I’m just dying to see someone hack one of these to display other information (like maybe the Technabob RSS Feed?)

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While the display only measures about 11.4″ (w) x 3.75″(h), you should be able to read the time from the other side of the room with no problem. If you’re always running late, you’ll have no excuse that you didn’t know what time it was. You can find the 768 LED Clock over at Hong Kong gadget importer Brando for $89 USD.

As a matter of fact, the Torch flashlight is so intense that it generates sufficient heat to fry an egg before you can say “Egg McMuffin” ten times fast.

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Personally, I prefer mine over easy. The Torch is even hot enough to ignite a small fire (or better yet, toast a marshmallow) in seconds flat.

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Cranking out an unbelievable 4100 lumens of brightness, you’ll have no problem finding your way around in the dark with this bad boy.

The Torch gets its mighty strength from a 100-watt halogen bulb which runs on a 14.4-volt rechargeable battery. Of course all this intensity does chew up some power – battery life is only about 15 minutes per charge – so you’ll want a spare battery or two.

The $299 Torch flashlight is available from Wicked Lasers.

Handcrafted by Etsy contributor Schablien, the LED Hula Hoop works its magic with 18 super-bright LEDs embedded into the hoop. Half of the lights change colors, while the other half are fixed tones, producing a rainbow of hues as you swing your hips to-and-fro.

The hoop is powered by a rechargeable battery pack which should give you 8 to 10 hours of illumination before it needs a charge. You can find the light-up hoop over on Schlabein’s Etsy shop for $195.

In the words of Alvin (of Chipmunk fame), “Me, I want a Hula Hoop.”

[$195 too pricey for you? If you're feeling more adventurous, you can build your own basic version of the LED Hula Hoop with about $15 in parts by following this step-by-step tutorial over on Instructables.]

Alliance Optotek’s Aqualia lamp uses a dozen bright LEDs to provide ample lighting for any work area. It’s all housed inside of a sexy 18-inch tall aluminum fixture which can be adjusted to an angle of your choosing, and automatically dims down to night-light brightness when closed.

The LEDs output no UV or IR radiation, and are flicker free so they’re easy on your delicate eyeballs. I also like how the fixture offers full 0% to 100% dimming, so you can set the brightness to your preference. Plus, the LEDs are rated at 50,000+ hours of continuous use, so you’ll get plenty of use out of the fixture before it burns out. As a bonus, power consumption is a mere 16-watts at maximum brightness.

While I haven’t been able to find pricing or availability information for the Aqualia, online LED specialists TheLEDLight carry similar fixtures by the same company (for about $200 each), so you might be able to get one special ordered through them.

Litrospheres are tiny self-luminous particles which can be injection molded or embedded into paints. Brightness is said to be about the same as that of a 20-watt light bulb, but I’d imagine that would depend on how much surface area is covered with the particles. The material is extremely cost-effective, covering an 8.5 x 11 surface for about 35 cents. The particles can even be customized to give off just about any light color. There’s a good description of how the technology works over on PESWiki.

MPK, the company that manufactures this glowing goodness expects Litrospheres to make their first appearance in safety gear, but I’d love to coat all kinds of surfaces with this stuff. Can you imagine how cool it would be to drive down the street in a luminescent car?

[via Treehugger via Neatorama]

Designers Maiko Watanabe and Koichi Tanaka’s Sweet Icicle Lamps encase a bright cold cathode tube in a block of crystal clear acrylic to add drama to any room. Cold cathode fluorescents are the same type of lamps used to illuminate modern LCD screens and many desktop scanners.

The fixtures come in two sizes and are available in both blue and white tube colors. I haven’t been able to find a North American outlet for these yet, but if you’re willing to do a little Japanese translation, you can find them on Rakuten ranging from ¥12,600 (appx. $112 USD) to ¥15,750 (appx. $141 USD).

There’s just something so refreshing about a digital watch that’s just clean and simple, unencumbered by extraneous information or newfangled display paradigms.

The face of these chunky black watches is simply a numeric readout of the current time or date, using super-bright multi-segment LEDs. Each watch features a durable stainless steel back, a black leather band and is water resistant to 5 atmospheres (appx. 165 feet).

Slan LED watches are available in blue, green, orange, red and white variants from LedWatchStop and fractalspin, with prices averaging around $100 USD.

According Le Journal du Geek, the Philps LivingColors lights will be released in Europe by the end of this summer for a price of € 149 (which works out to about $200 US.) They’re expected to launch in other countries later this year.

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Each compact light can push out 16 million unique colors, all of which can be controlled via an included wireless RF remote that can even work through walls. You can set any remote to control up to six fixtures simultaneously, keeping their colors in sync for a truly dramatic effect. The unique organic design embeds a colored projection source into an egg-shaped glass orb. Since it uses some seriously bright LEDs, Philips designed a special heat sink into the lamp that looks more like a work of art than a technical necessity.

Another thing that really strikes me about the LivingColors fixture is that it provides both ambient and directed illumination, letting you splash color across a wall at the same time as providing a source of visual interest wherever you place the fixture.

I can’t wait to get my hands on some of these for my house.

The watches come in three dramatic polycarbonate finishes: translucent pink, amber or white, and make a very dramatic statement with their high contrast pSEL displays. While o.d.m. didn’t seem to have them for sale in their U.S. online shop, I was able to find them for about $80 to $90 each on eBay.

[via Emily Chang / Stylehive]

The company’s “super-transmissive natural light TFT” (ST-NLT) displays are designed for use in environments where there is an abundance of bright light. Initially designed for use in industrial applications, such as outdoor kiosks and brightly-lit warehouses, the displays could be used for other applications, such as portable devices, in the future, due to their low power consumption levels.

ST-NLT displays feature vivid color output in even the harshest light environments, and come in sizes ranging from 5.5 to 15 inches, and from 320 x 240 up to 1024 x 768 resolution.

[via RegHardware]