LED beanie guide

What the figures on an LED beanie mean

Two numbers tell you most of what you need. Lumens measure how much light the unit puts out in total, and the number of levels tells you how many steps you have between a glow and a beam. On our original LED Beanie with Light the light carries four bulbs, gives up to 120 lumens and has three brightness settings. The Kids LED Beanie has the same four bulbs and 120 lumens, with a reach of up to 30 feet.

Run time comes as two figures, and both are true. Left on without a break, the four-bulb light runs up to 4 hours. Switched on and off the way a real evening goes, on for the gate, off under the streetlight, on again for the trail, one charge covers up to 8 hours of use. The gap between those two numbers is your best tool for stretching a charge.

Three of our hats with a light give no output or hours: the Fleece-Lined LED Beanie with Ear Flaps and the LED Beanie and Neck Warmer Set give no light figures, and the Reflective Stripe LED Beanie names only its three levels. Choose those for the ear flaps, the neck warmer or the stripe, and one of the other six if you want to know your hours before you leave the house.

Where a hat gives two run times, the shorter one is the light left on and the longer one is the light switched on and off through an evening.

Which level to use

Use the low setting for anything within arm's reach: a padlock on a shed, a map in your glove, the back of a kitchen cabinet. At that distance the top setting bounces straight off a white wall or a sheet of paper and back into your eyes, and you read less, not more. The middle setting suits a sidewalk or a path you already know. Save the top setting for the unlit stretch of trail, the dark end of the yard where the dog has gone quiet, or the engine bay where the light has to reach past the hood.

Every step up costs run time. If you mostly walk under streetlights, switch the light off between them and the same charge lasts close to twice as long. A light on your head also does a second job after dark: it marks where you are for anyone driving toward you. NHTSA counts lights among the aids that help pedestrians be seen, and our guide to being seen at night covers that side in full.

Charging the light

Every MELASA LED hat charges its light from a USB port, so a car port, a laptop or a power bank will do it. The Fleece-Lined Reflective LED Beanie takes a USB-C plug. Plug the light in with the cable that came with it.

The National Fire Protection Association gives two plain charging rules for lithium-ion batteries, and both apply to the small cell inside a hat light. Use the charger or cord supplied with the device. And stop charging once the battery is full, rather than leaving the light plugged in until morning.

When a battery needs to retire

Lithium-ion batteries are more likely to overheat or catch fire when they are damaged, or used, charged or stored the wrong way, and the NFPA lists the signs that a battery has had enough. Stop using a light that smells odd, gets hot, makes a popping sound, swells or changes color. A light that has been crushed or cracked belongs in the same pile.

A spent hat light does not go in the household trash. Take it to a battery recycling point or a hazardous waste drop-off, as the NFPA advises. The hat itself is ordinary knit and goes wherever your old clothes go.

Washing the knit

The light comes out before the hat goes in the wash. On the LED Beanie with Light and the kids beanies, the unit pulls out of the cuff, and the knit can then be washed by hand or in the machine. Let the hat dry completely before the light goes back in, so no damp knit sits against the charging port. The two reflective LED beanies and the LED Beanie and Neck Warmer Set do not say whether the light comes out, so ask us before you put one of them in water.

The fleece-lined hats hold more water than the single-layer knit, so give them longer on the rack. A hat pulled back on damp in January is the wet clothing that cold stress advice warns about, and NIOSH tells people who work in the cold to carry a spare hat for exactly that.

Fitting a kids LED beanie

The American Academy of Pediatrics makes a simple point about hats on children after dark: a hat must not slide down over the eyes or block a child's view. Put the beanie on your child and have them look up, down and to the sides. If the cuff creeps down toward the eyebrows, fold it once more, so the light sits on the forehead and the eyes stay clear.

The same organization reminds parents that children lose heat faster than adults because their bodies are smaller, and that ears and noses are among the first places to get frostbite. Pull the cuff over the ears on cold days, take wet hats and mittens off as soon as the child comes in, and keep play indoors when the temperature or the wind chill drops below -15°F, as the AAP advises. Charging stays with you. A child can switch the light on and off, but the cable and the outlet are a grown-up job.

Where an LED beanie does not go

An LED beanie does not go under a hard hat. OSHA's 2006 letter on caps under hard hats recommends allowing only liners designed for that particular hard hat, and quotes the ANSI rule that winter liners for Class B helmets, the ones rated for electrical work, have no metal parts. A hat light is a battery and a circuit board sewn into knit. Under a hard hat, wear a thin liner from our winter skull caps shelf, check it with the maker of your helmet first, and keep the LED beanie for the walk to the truck.

The hats with a light in the MELASA family of hats live on three shelves: the LED beanies, the kids LED beanies, and the reflective beanies for the two that add a stripe.