Using a single 18650 battery, the E70 Mini features a stylish duotone design and steel pocket clip. It's a great first EDC at an affordable price.

The E70 Mini is a great first EDC flashlight, at an affordable price. With convenient USB-C charging (if you get the AceBeam battery bundle) and plenty of power, it offers decent run time and powerful output, considering the size. It offers peace of mind with an easy-access strobe mode, and a variety of standard brightness levels to suit all requirements.

Need a practical pocket-sized yet EDC flashlight that won’t break the bank, but still has decent performance, and looks great? The E70 Mini from AceBeam might be just what you’re looking for, and at $80, we think it’s a great addition to your pack.

The E70 Mini is truly petite, at a mere 111mm (4.37”) long, and an overall diameter of 26mm (1.03"), though the clip adds a few millimeters to this. It’s also IP68-rated, and can be fully submersed in water up to 2m. Rain won’t be a concern.

The tube features a double-layer two-tone design, with swirling milled cutouts on the black anodized aluminum outer layer enabling you to see the metallic blue inner peeking through. If black isn’t your style, it’s also available in a brushed titanium color, with the same blue inner highlights.

The strong stainless steel body clip can be removed, but it’s such a small impact on the size for such a useful feature, that unless you're intending to mount this on a rifle or similar, it’s probably not worth giving up the utility.

Speaking of tactical use, the E70 Mini features a powerful 1000-lumen strobe mode which is more than enough to disorient an attacker, though not quite enough to blind for any length of time after it’s deactivated. On the head, you’ll also find a serrated hard tip for breaking windows in an emergency. There’s no specific gun mount provided, but it’s small enough to fit into any generic mount designed for a laser. Still, this is designed for pocket carry, not mounting.

Also, a nice touch for flashlight enthusiasts is the inclusion of slots for glow tubes or tritium vials. These are glass tubes containing a small amount of radioactive material (perfectly safe) that emit light for decades—a bit like glow-in-the-dark paints, but without needing a light source to charge. But at current prices, sourcing six small tritium vials would add another $50 or so to the price, so perhaps not!

Included in the box is a lanyard, two additional rubber seals, and a USB-C charging cable.

Featuring a triple set of the improved Nichia 519A LEDs, the E70 Mini offers up to 2000 lumens of high color rendering index (CRI > 90) 5000 kelvin light. A high CRI value means that you’ll see objects as they would be in natural daylight, rather than tinted with a slight blue or yellow hue that most flashlights suffer from. This makes it great for use as an additional photography light source at night.

The beam is quite floody, with a soft round pattern that produces an even distribution of light. It’s great at short to medium range, but no good for highlighting objects at long distances.

Six brightness modes are possible, plus a strobe:

Like all Turbo modes, the maximum 2000 lumens can only be maintained for a short time (and reactivated later, though only until the voltage is too low). Instead, when shopping for an EDC light, you should really look at the high or medium operation modes for comparison. 600 lumens is possible for roughly two hours as a dropdown from either high or Turbo, which should be enough for any evening walk.

In Turbo mode, the E70 Mini will certainly get warm, but not dangerously so.

The E70 Mini is such a small and powerful flashlight that you’d be forgiven for thinking it uses a custom built-in battery, but I’m pleased to report that instead, it uses a single standard-sized 3100mAh 18650 battery for power.

One was supplied in our $80 package (although you can save $10 by opting to buy without), and it’s a special AceBeam branded battery with one hidden superpower: it includes a USB-C port for directly charging it.

You still have to remove the battery from the body to charge, but you can either use any USB-C charging cable, or you can throw it in your 18650 external charger, or swap it out for another.

Unfortunately, there's no way to see the current battery level, so your only indication that you need to charge will be when you're unable to activate Turbo mode, or High dims down too quickly.

If you’re new to flashlights, you might be surprised to see an entire section dedicated to operating the E70 Mini. Surely it’s as simple as pressing the power button?

Well, not quite. In fact, the E70 Mini features a small push button at the end, but tapping it will do nothing. That avoids accidental activation in your pocket.

Turning on the E70 Mini can however be done in a few different ways:

Once the E70 Mini is powered on, you can then:

Written down, this sounds a lot more complicated than it actually is, and even if you're completely new to modern flashlights, you should pick it up quickly. You can also lock the flashlight out completely with five taps (and do the same again to unlock).

If you’re familiar with other AceBeam lights, you’ll notice the UI is almost identical, except for the power-on sequence, which requires pressing the button twice. Otherwise, you’ll be right at home.

The E70 Mini is a great first EDC flashlight, at an affordable price. With convenient USB-C charging and plenty of power (if you buy with a battery), it offers decent run time and powerful output, considering its otherwise petite size. It offers peace of mind with an easy-access strobe mode, and a variety of standard brightness levels to suit all requirements.

On the downside, some might not like the two-taps for on, especially when it goes against the standard of other AceBeam lights. There's no battery level indicator to show when it's about to run out. With regular use, you're likely to learn when the power is low, or get into the habit of swapping batteries every week or so.

There is one other big downside to buying the E70 Mini as your first EDC flashlight: you might get bitten by the flashlight bug, and soon enough, dropping $300 on the latest gear won't seem unusual!

If the E70 Mini is a bit too small for you, consider the regular E70. It’s identical except for being bigger, brighter, and more powerful. On the other hand, if you like the form factor of the E70 Mini, but think the brightness is overkill for your needs (and $80 is still too much for you), consider the Rider RX instead. With a maximum brightness of 650 lumens, the Rider RX comes in array of stunning stain steel colors (including rainbow!), and runs off standard AA or rechargeable 14500 batteries.

James has a BSc in Artificial Intelligence and is CompTIA A+ and Network+ certified. When he's not busy as Hardware Reviews Editor, he enjoys LEGO, VR, and board games. Before joining MakeUseOf, he was a lighting technician, English teacher, and data center engineer.

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