What is it?
Anyone who maintains their own car will understand the importance of good lighting – but most torches and work lights aren’t designed with car maintenance in mind. The Ring Magflex Twist, on the other hand, is designed specifically for use in car maintenance. It’s usually sold for £30-40.
It’s cordless and can be recharged from either the mains or a 12v accessory socket and it has two lights – one 3W strip for illuminating a broad area and a smaller, more focused 1W light for tight areas. It has a couple of magnets on it for attaching to metal parts of a car, as well as a hook for hanging it in trickier areas.
Does it work?
It’s a really impressive bit of kit. The light it produces is very bright, regardless of which bulb is switched on. The colour of the light has been designed to closely match daylight too, so it doesn’t tend to cause eye strain. It’s the magnetic mounts that make it so versatile, though.
There’s one on the base of the light, attached to a section that swivels 180 degrees , and rotates 360 degree, plus another on the rear of the lamp. Between them, they mean the lamp can be set up to illuminate pretty much any angle. The magnets are strong, too – minimising the risk of knocking the lamp off whatever it’s stuck to.
There’s also a hook for hanging the light up in places where space is tight, or where there’s no metal to stick the magnets too. So there are lots of options to suit different jobs and most of the time it’s easy to get the lamp set up. Then it can be forgotten about – leaving both hands free to use tools and get on with the well-illuminated job.
The Magflex was barely scratched
Of course, accidents always happen in the workshop and the Ring Magflex is quite likely to get dropped – but it’s really well constructed with a sturdy polycarbonate cover over the fragile LEDs cob and a hefty, weighty construction. It feels like it should stand up to years of abuse. In fact, it’s so sturdy we decided to run it over – and it survived with barely a scratch.
The built-in battery lasts about three hours before it needs a recharge from one of the two supplied chargers – one that connects to the mains and another to plug into a 12V car accessory socket. There’s not much more to it – the Magflex is a smartly designed, well-made work lamp and at £30-40, depending on where you buy, it’s decent value too. It's an ideal addition to any tool box.
Price: around £30
Key features: 2x magnetic mounts, 3W COB LED light, 1W precision LED.
Alternatives: Clarke RWL55
