Blusmart Rechargeable Electric Arc Lighter – reviewed by Elena Hookway

I bought this very smart looking device when my gas cooker developed a fault. The button to activate the release of gas from the cooker rings stopped functioning and so I needed a different method to ignite the gas stream. I didn’t fancy using matches for that because of a potential fire hazard, and so I turned to this electric arc lighter.

The lighter has a very cool and contemporary design, with an ergonomic handle that’s big enough for both adult male and female hands to grip comfortably, and a highly flexible, steel finish nozzle, which can be rotated through a whole 360 degrees. The nozzle measures approximately 9 cm long. The handle is made from a combination of robust feeling, glossy black and pine green coloured, hard plastics.

The red coloured button to activate the electric arc light has a sliding safety cover, which moves back and forth smoothly, but with a sufficient degree of resistance that a toddler shouldn’t be able to expose and use the activation button. There is no need for butane gas refills with this device, which is a strong positive and saves you money, and no flame either, which definitely makes it safer to use than lit wooden matches.

You charge up the lighter by using the supplied USB to mini USB lead, which measures about 20 cm long, and is sufficiently thick, roughly 3.5 mm, to suggest that it will be resilient even with very regular use and unlikely to malfunction. You plug the mini USB end into the socket located on the left hand side of the handle, and the USB end into the USB socket on your laptop or USB compatible socket plug, etc.

There’s a small charging light located on the left side of the handle and which illuminates blue when charging. It takes perhaps half an hour or so for a full charge from flat and the light turns off as soon as the device is fully charged. The lighter once fully charged ought to be good for around 400 uses, but I can’t verify that only because I personally haven’t used it that many times yet.

I like to use aromatic candles when taking a long, leisurely bath, and this device is absolutely perfect for lighting those candles reliably and safely, far more so than wooden matches. Some matches don’t light when you strike then on the matchbox, they always leave an unpleasant odour of burning wood that I don’t particularly like, there’s always a risk that the flame might burn your fingers before it’s extinguished, and there’s always the potential for dropping the match inadvertently and igniting a dangerous fire in the home. Furthermore, if you’re using matches outdoors, they can get blown out by the wind. This arc lighter has no such drawbacks.

The product comes in a glossy back, sturdy cardboard box, with a soft, transparent plastic top panel that lets you see the contents inside. A handy instruction leaflet is enclosed, written in plain English and easy to follow, and repeated in German on the reverse side.

In summation, this is a modern looking and highly reliable kitchen gadget which, in my own experience, has allowed me to continue using a malfunctioning gas cooker instead of spending several hundreds of pounds on a new cooker, and gives me a much safer user experience when I’m lighting my fragrant scented candles. Highly recommended.