Eureka Warrior 400 Lantern Review

Eureka’s Warrior 400 lantern has the power to brighten up your entire campsite and more.

By Dan Sanchez

Battery powered lanterns have received a bad rap lately. Many avid campers complain that they don’t put out as much light as a gas-fuel lantern, and those with larger capacity batteries are just too bulky and heavy. But with a new compact design and LED power, Eureka’s Warrior 400 may be an answer for those campers who want to lower their carbon footprint while enjoying the outdoors.

Weighing in at just under four pounds (with batteries), the Eureka! Warrior 400 is light and compact. It uses six D-batteries that fit into an O-ring sealed bottom compartment. With a bright LED bulb the Warrior 400 puts out 400 Lumens of light, which is enough to make it suitable as your campsite’s primary lighting source.

Made from a sturdy ABS plastic, the Warrior 400 has a rubberized carrying handle, base and bottom.  This works great in keeping the lantern from slipping off the top of smooth surfaces and helps it absorb impacts during transport.  When it’s not in use, the large handle folds back to match the contours of the lantern’s body, maintaining it’s sleek design that measures 4.8″ x 4.8″ x 9.5″.

But the handle is also sturdy enough to hang it on a branch or the inside of your large family tent. The knob used to release the lantern’s bottom battery compartment also allows you to hang the lantern upside down and can be used with an aluminum carabiner and ABS plastic hooks (included), allowing you more variations on where and how you can hang the lantern to suit your needs. 

Once the kids are safely tucked in their sleeping bags, you can turn the main LED bulb off, and switch on the smaller reading light. This directional light points down and provides you with a personal light for reading, catching up on your e-mails or to write down the next day’s agenda. The Warrior 400 also features a red strobe light and the main diffuser globe can be removed to reveal the LED dome and provide greater illumination.

The Warrior 400 can be set to a variety of illumination modes that include high, low and strobe. In high, the battery life run time for the main light is 60 hours in high, 132 hours in low and 158 hours in the strobe mode. The reading light run time is 240 hours in high, 384 hours in low and 792 hours in the strobe mode.

We found the Warrior 400 easy to use and relatively light weight. While it provides plenty of light for a campsite, don’t expect it to be as bright as your gas lantern.  Nevertheless, it is much more portable, better for the environment, and you can use it inside a large 5-person family tent. The variety of methods you can hang the Warrior 400 also makes it much more convenient than a typical gas lantern. We ended up hanging it upside down from the carabiner on a tether across the campsite and could easily unhook it when we needed to head to the nearby creek for some night fishing.

At a retail price ranging from $69-$89 the Eureka! Warrior 400 is also a great value. It doesn’t take up much space with the rest of your camping gear and is durable enough to survive an accidental drop from the campsite bench. For more information, visit the Eureka! webiste here.