What is an actual survival tool supposed to do? Sure, having a Swiss Army knife is all fun and games until you find yourself wanting to see in the dark, start a fire, drink water straight from a stream, or heck, even charge your phone!
Enter the Lifesaber. It's a handheld, kitchen-knife-sized survival tool that features a USB power generator, flashlight/lantern, UV water purifier, plasma firestarter, and a panic button that triggers an SOS siren and blinding strobe light to ward off any attacker … all with the ability to charge with or without a power source.
That’s not me trying to sell you the thing. It’s the actual description of the Jedi-named tool. And I have to admit, it does do almost everything it's claimed to.
But I have a confession to make – I've been sitting on the Lifesaber sample unit for a while now. It arrived in my mailbox a few weeks ago, but I didn't want to crank out a review just for the sake of it. I wanted to use the Lifesaber in its intended location – out in the wild, to find out if it actually does what it says in the instructions.
So, out I set, on an overlanding trip with my wife across India. I strapped the Lifesaber on the back of my Suzuki Jimny and traversed across varied landscapes … from the hot plains to wet grasslands, crossing high mountains and eventually ending up on the coast. All the while, testing out the Lifesaber under the open sky. Sure, it’s not exactly wilderness survival, but it gave me a pretty good idea of what the tool can do.
The very first thing I tried on the Lifesaber was its UV water purifier. I admit, it’s not something out of the ordinary. Portable UV purifiers have been around for a while now, but having one integrated into a multi-use tool, such as the Lifesaber, is pretty darn handy.
Now I’m no biologist, nor did I have any test equipment to measure how effective the UV purifier is. But I did as the instructions said – filled about half a bottle with some running freshwater, treated it under the UV purifier for precisely 120 seconds until the countdown went off, and drank the water – and I seem to be alright after a few days.
Since then, I used the water purifier a couple of times more when filling up from freshwater streams, and it worked flawlessly.
The next thing I did was to use the 2,000 °F (1,093 °C) plasma firestarter. I was in a rain-hit region during that time, which meant everything was damp when I was testing the device. But I did try setting the instruction manual on fire, and was successful at that.
The Lifesaber also serves as a power bank, housing an upgraded 5,000-mAh rechargeable battery (the earlier iteration came with a 2,200-mAh unit) that features a multi-tip USB-C cable to accommodate all types of devices. In my testing, while the Lifesaber didn’t support fast charging, it did charge up my phone at slower speeds, which in a make-or-break situation could be vital.
Now, in normal conditions, you can charge the device through a Type-C cable. But what’s perhaps the most unique aspect of the Lightsaber is its ability to charge through its patented hand crank generator.
A telescopic handle extends from the top and can be cranked at five different angles for the sake of convenience. I found the whirling motion – like spinning a jump rope – to be the most useful, as it requires just one hand and the least effort. But perhaps it would make the most sense to use both your hands and crank the tool to produce three times as much power.
The company states that two and a half minutes of cranking is enough to generate a Quick Charge of 900 joules (250 mWh), which is sufficient to restart your dead phone to make a lifesaving emergency call. What’s especially useful are the five levels of torque/resistance (from 0.6 to 5.7 W), which you can choose to charge the device faster.
The lantern/flashlight also works as it says. There’s a powerful 3200-lumen LED flashlight that doubles as a lantern and an 8-Hz strobe light to ward off potential danger in the wild and seek help. It also features a powerful 132-dB emergency siren that is loud enough to wake your neighbours in the middle of the night.
I used the lantern particularly rigorously while fixing a flat on my Jimny in the dark, and I grew very fond of it. It's definitely replacing my camp lantern.
And for all of these features, I found that the Lifesaber doesn't really weigh a lot. At 1.2 lb (544 g), it's light and compact enough to strap onto your backpack while going hiking.
Now comes the most important bit – the US$179 price. It doesn’t come cheap, and there are few outdoor survival tools that do some of the things the Lifesaber does, but none that do them all together. So that figure does make sense when you look at the broader picture.
The Lifesaber is currently available as an InDemand product on Indiegogo, meaning that its crowdfunding campaign has been completed and was successful. You can even go as far as making a donation to help with further iterations and production.
Source: Indiegogo
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