Sort N Bank coin sorter

Concept: 2 out of 5
Execution: 2 out of 5
Yeah, but: Every home can use one. It makes a great gift.

The Long Version: I have to admit that this is an embarrassing review to write. It's even more embarrassing that this is something that I've only owned for about a week; this is the sort of product that looks like a forlorn fugitive from the `80's and should have fallen out of a box while I was cleaning up the garage. But no, I bought it from a massive office supply chain that won't even condescend to list the Sort`N Bank on its website, for the low-low price of $16 - and change. Naturally.

The Sort'N' half works, but the Bank part is problematic. It doesn't have a massive capacity; lots of coins will choke the screens and need to be cleared away. I had hopes that this would become an easy storage place for all of the change that I accumulate, but it's not up to that task. I guess Sort N Put The Coins Somewhere Else wasn't as catchy a name. Or perhaps the trademarkable abbrevation is supposed to be short for 'SortING Bank', not "Sort AND Bank'. If only the inventor had included his Hotmail address on the product so that I could resolve this mystery.

The amount of change in these photos is about all the trays can handle without being completely clogged, but smaller amounts are sorted easily. It's great at sorting the wheat from the chaff when I empty out my pockets, leaving the valuable stuff on top for easy re-use and sending the lesser denominations to the bottom for recycling or landfill. Just don't toss the change down with a flourish: the trays are a little bouncy, ruining the dramatic effect of the gesture.

Using screens to sort items according to size isn't a new idea. What US Patent 359832 details is an ornamental coin basket with no claims about a sorting ability. And it is decent desk-candy, provided you have room beside your pin-art and Newton's clicking balls. Just tell yourself that its occasional need to be picked up and shaken vigorously is a substitute for dusting.

...But wait, there's more!

The "As Seen On TV" sticker does not disappoint. The TV spot for the Sort N Bank is classic cheese, and is not to be missed. (I'd like you to see that again.) The ad fails to highlight one of the reasons to own this product - instruction step #2 is "Shake Unit" - but the voice-over and hand model is a woman, and Penny tells me that that's a joke that only guys find funny. But since the Sort'N Bank is something that can only be purchased and used with a certain level of tongue-in-cheek irony, I'm not about to apologize when my sense of humour turns juvenile.

I love the internet.

But wait, there's still more (updated June 2009): The biggest weakness in the design of the Sort'n'Bank is that the tray to screen the pennies from the dimes is at the smallest end of the inverted pyramid. It has the lowest capacity, but pennies are very common; the holes to sort out the dimes need to be nearly the same size as pennies, so they clog very easily. My solution has been to use the Sort'n'Bank without the bottom tray, so that pennies and dimes fall to the bottom, and then use a magnet to separate them later. Leave the magnet in the bottom and most of the sorting will already be done. It's like magic.

The only catch is that some of the recent Canadian pennies are made from steel instead of copper, so they need to be separated from the dimes by hand. Still, it mostly works. And since the metal value in a copper penny exceed its face value, maybe it's not such a bad distinction to make.

Helvetica (Documentary)

Concept: 5 out of 5
Execution: 3 out of 5
Yeah, but: It's hard to evaluate. It's like being asked what you think about off-white paint. It's just there.

The Long Version: There aren't that many good typefaces, and Helvetica is one of the classics. Modern, clear, Swiss and san-serif, in the past fifty years it has become the default for signage and corporate identities. In his directorial debut, Gary Hustwit had the brilliant insight to explore the ubiquitous. The feature-length documentary Helvetica is the result.

The film's not just about typography, but explores many aspects of design and culture. It's said at one point that typography looks like it's about the letters, but that it's really about the space between the letters. "Helvetica" looks like a documentary about a font, but it's really about the design and its role and influence in culture. It's a fascinating look at something that goes unexamined every day.

One of the points that the documentary makes is the ways typefaces affect the tone of what's written. It implies an interpretation. Imagine the word "Shark" written in script or in bold block letters: the word is the same but it says something different. At the same time Helvetica is shown to be something of a chameleon. It's the font for American Airlines and American Apparel, and each company uses it to project a very different image. After watching the documentary, I start to see Helvetica everywhere, adding my own experiences and examples to the dozens of divergent uses shown in the movie.

The format of the movie is a mix of talking-head interviews interspersed with examples of designers at work and samples of popular culture, with a score that's usually understated and well-chosen. The film is 80 minutes long, with another 95 minutes of interviews included as bonus features. I'm glad that it was perpetually rented out at Queen Video because it spurred me to eventually buy my own copy. I had to laugh when I saw that the 'security seal' uses Helvetica to identify the package - the documentary literally can't get away from the influence of its subject.

Further Reading:
HelveticaFilm.com, the main web site for the documentary.
Wikipedia has pages about the documentary, the typeface, and Arial, a derivation on Helvetica that's also mentioned in the film.

Pelican 7060 LED Flashlight

Concept: 4 out of 5
Execution: 5 out of 5
Yeah, but: This is the first time I've seriously considered a perfect 5/5 rating.

The Long Version: In 2004 the Los Angeles Police Department had a problem: their standard-issue 2-pound Maglite flashlights were too heavy and expensive to keep using. By the spring of 2007 Pelican had turned the LAPD's requirements for a new light into a shipping product: the 7060 LED. To save everyone a lot of reading, I'll say it now: this is by far the best flashlight that I've ever used.

Here's the rest of the quick version: It's regulated with a flat 90 minute run time, incredibly bright, large but not outrageous, has two switches, and is rechargeable.

Meet the Family:

The photo above shows my collection of 'serious' lights. On the far left, giving off the lovely orange light, is my trusty 2xAA Mini Maglite. Mine was already an old light when I found it in a parking lot twelve years ago; this model is often the first "good" light people buy. For this photo it's using a pair of freshly-charged Eneloops batteries. To the right of it is my Pelican M6 2330 LED, a model that uses a pair of 3V CR123A batteries, and these cost so much that I don't keep a spare set on hand. On other side of the same coin, the batteries cost so much that I barely use the light, so they're probably still fairly fresh. Next to it is my 2410 "Stealthlight" - yes, the bright yellow one - that I reviewed here. It's also using freshly charged Eneloops, but it takes four of them. And finally, on the far right, is the 7060 LED. All of these lights have their bezels 18" from the seamless paper that forms the background, so there's no trickery involved in this photo. The 7060 really is that much brighter than the rest of the group.

There's no perfect do-everything flashlight, just as there's no one perfect camera, car, or pair of shoes. There are some that are better in each broad category, but I won't be attaching my Pelican 7060 to my keychain and I wouldn't explore a dark building with a Pelican L1 or a Gerber Infinity Ultra, which are the lights on the far left of the photo above. But if I had bought the 7060 first, it and the Gerber would be the only two flashlights that I'd own. The LAPD's 7060 is far superior to the M6 unless I really need a light that will fit in a pocket, and it's only second to the 2410 for one specific task that I rarely need. (More on that later.) The maglite has only sentimental value.

Like the kids from my high school, flashlights that are bigger aren't necessarily brighter: it all comes down to what's driving the lamp. So the fact that the 7060 dwarfs the rest of the family and that it's the brightest is a bit of a coincidence. If having a smaller size is a serious factor, you can probably find lights that use the same Cree 3W LED as the 7060 but with a more compact power supply and construction. I'll leave that as an exercise for interested buyers, because last time I did serious flashlight comparison on-line, I wound up buying the most expensive light I've ever owned.

And With That, Back to the Light:

Compared to the centre of the beam, the corona isn't particularly bright. But if you're close enough to what you're lighting that the spot is too narrow to use, then there's going to be plenty of brightness in the spill of the beam. The composite photo above gives a good impression of the brightness of the light overall. The inset image is shot at -4EV - which is recording only 1/16 as much light, or 6.25% for the metric types - and shows the ringed pattern of the beam better. There's actually three separate levels of intensity, with the width of the main beam being 10% of the throw distance, a dimmer corona being 30%, and the total spill being about 60% of the throw. If you light a wall that's ten feet away, the centre is 1' across, the brighter corona is 3' across, and the total spread is 6'. Neat.

A lot of other reviews have made a big deal about how far the 7060 throws its light, and it's very true. If you're doing serious research into this light, believe whatever the other reviews tell you. If you have a more casual interest, it's probably enough for me to say that I can put a decent spot of light on the roof of a grocery store that's at least 250m away. It's not a searchlight, but it might let me know if someone's actually stealing that car when its alarm goes off sixteen floors below in the middle of the night.

If you read as many flashlight reviews as it takes me to decide to buy a new light, you'll quickly learn that almost every LED light is said to have a "white" beam. To a normal person this is true, but I'm a photographer. The photo above is a composite of two calibration shots taken on a neutral grey target. The left-hand side is the light from the LAPD's Pelican 7060, and on the right is the effect of the Recoil 2410. (They are metered differently and can not be used to compare brightness.) The stripe running across the middle of the photo shows what a true daylight-balanced light source would be. It's a little hard to see in this small photo, and most monitors are free spirits when it comes to colour reproduction anyway, so trust me when I say that both the Pelican 7060 and 2410 are tinted green. The 2410 is a little more blue and a little less green (6050K, +25 magenta) than the 7060 (6000K, +29 magenta) which gives it a slight advantage.

So colour-critical photography is the only time that I might reach for my Pelican 2410 instead of the 7060, although the power difference might be a bigger consideration in actual use. But it's worth noting that both of these lights are passing pretty strict standards to even be considered. My M6 has only a slightly visbile green tint, but it's so not-white that it's essentially unusable (6300K, +40 magenta) for my photography. And the M6 is far better than my old 4xAA Princeton Tec "Impact XL" LED. There's a reason why the Impact isn't in the family photo - as the green sheep, it has wandered off and I can't be bothered to look for it. But once again: for normal use by a normal person there's little or no functional difference. The tint issues that are critical to photography probably wouldn't even be visible to someone who isn't attuned to looking for it.

About The Construction:

There's a certain irony to the original LAPD mandate of designing a flashlight that can't be used to beat people up. The 7060 is still a hefty light, and certainly feels tough enough that it could do some damage. The grip is very good, and the balance point of the flashlight is almost at the front switch, making it top-heavy. Add the aluminum heat-sink to the equation and I have no problem imagining some out-of-court settlements. Perhaps the LAPD and/or Pelican forgot that the Monadnock PR-24 baton that Rodney King made famous is also made from plastic?

Even with all of the comparison photos that I've seen, I was still surprised by the size of this light when I first took it out of the box. The black ABS plastic body doesn't have sex appeal of finely machined metal, which would have both reduced the case's diameter and allowed a smaller heat-sink, but its larger size makes it a better tool even though it makes it a worse toy. I was also surprised at the weight of it, since it being called 'light' is in comparison to a 3D Maglite, but others that I've handed it to have been surprised at how little it weighs. Regardless, this isn't a flashlight that gets tucked in a pocket. Pelican does include a souvenir belt holster, which might be useful for someone who rarely plans on carrying their light this way, but I've already lost mine. When I need to take it out of the house I'll just add it to the bag that I usually carry to work, which has a pocket just right for the 7060, or include it with my various camera gear.

The two bright spots below the head of the flashlight are the terminals for the recharging dock. The charger is a grey plastic that doesn't match the look of the 7060, and is designed to be wall- or vehicle-mounted. To keep the light in place in a bouncing squad car the charger must need a very tight grip on the light, and as a result it will scratch the body of the light no matter how carefully it's inserted and removed. The Pelican video shows it being snapped into place; other advice I've seen says to carefully slide the light down into the cradle. Neither works, but snapping it in is easier. It's a tool, so a few scuffs don't bother me.

The last point that's worth noting about the Pelican 7060's construction is that it has two independent on/off switches, both of which allow momentary-on control. I find that I use the one on the body more than the one on the tail, but it's certainly nice to have both. Now whenever I use my 2410 (body) or 2330 (tail) I wonder why they weren't designed with two switches. It seems like such a natural idea now that somebody's done it, but I couldn't imagine why it would be useful until I tried it.

And Finally:

Perfect marks are very hard to get around here: a score of 2 out of 5 is for something that's decent and serviceable, with a lofty "3" being reserved for something I really respect. To get a ranking of "4" requires an exceptional idea or a near-flawless execution. I'd really like to find something that gets a truly perfect score, and the 7060 comes very close, but it lacks that final spark of brilliance to put it over the edge. I'm honestly not sure what a 5/5 product will look like, but I think I'll know it when I see it. Until then, I have only the most minor complaints about what is otherwise a flawless light.