Here’s easily the most common mistake that we see first-time or beginner campers making when they start getting out camping. It’s so common but it’s also so detrimental – not taking proper LED camp lights with them! Instead, we see so many people trying to light their campsite with their mobile-phone’s in-built torch, and that’s just a recipe for disaster in our books. Here’s a MUCH better idea – quality LED camp light kits like the ones on offer at 4WD Supacentre!

There are so many reasons why it’s a bad idea to try and camp by the light of your phone torch using it as an LED camping light – not the least of which being that they are nowhere near bright enough to light much more than the immediate area in front of you. Add in the fact that the torch will excessively drain your mobile phone’s battery – which is already under strain whenever you head into an area with poor phone reception, as your phone will constantly hunt for signal – plus of course the fact that mobile phones traditionally don’t take very kindly to being out in cold, wet conditions, and it’s not hard to see why using your phone as LED camp lighting is in short a terrible idea!

Being able to see at night when you’re camping is a true game changer. LED camp lights are brilliant for so many reasons – particularly because they are so bright! But at the same time, they are also energy-efficient, with the Kings LED camping light kits only drawing around an amp per hour – that’s next to nothing! What we love about them as well is that they come with in-built dimmers – so you can set the mood – full brightness while you’re cooking and eating dinner, and then nice and dim with just enough light to pour a drink once dinner’s done and the washing up is finished.

The Kings Five Bar LED Camp Light Kit is a brilliant bit of gear. It comes with five aluminium-backed LED camp light strips that actually have small magnets built into the back of them – so you can easily position them on the side of your vehicle or hang them off your gazebo frame. You get enough connecting cables to join them together to add even more light to your campsite, and it’s as simple as using the included alligator clips or 12v cig-socket plug to power them.

Those who’ve been around camping for a long time will no double remember the old kerosene and gas-powered camping lanterns that we all grew up with. They were finicking, prone to getting broken while travelling, and most of all burned costly fuels that you had to carry with you. LED camping lights have completely changed the game here – they’re so much better that it’s not funny!

Kings LED camping lights come in different sizes and styles. The most basic is a clever little LED camping lantern with a magnet on the back that runs off AA batteries for about 12 hours runtime. It also has a clip on the back, so it gives you multiple different methods of attachment to just about anything – the side of your car, off the edge of your awning, your gazebo, even inside your swag or rooftop tent! Then you can step up to the 1.3m or 4m LED camping strip lights, which simply unwind out of their rolled-up transit bags to hang anywhere you want. They’re awesome for those Insta-worthy shots when you hang them off the edge of your awning or gazebo, or even out of a tree! You can then step up further again to either the Kings 4 Bar Camp Light Kit or the 5 Bar Camp Light Kit, which come with heaps of connectors, dimmers and cabling to give you a variety of mounting options. You can choose to use all of the LED light bars or just some of them, depending on the area you want to light up.

We’ve even used cable ties to semi-permanently mount Kings LED camp lights under the gull wings of an aluminium ute canopy – it’s the perfect way to light the cooking and camping area underneath. We then simply used the included 12v cabling including the dimmer switch to wire it semi-permanently to a Kings Battery Box, using the dimmer’s on-off function to turn the lights on or off, or dim them to the required brightness!

The ability to properly light your camp with bright LED camp lights cannot be under-stated! It’s the difference between having an enjoyable time at camp, or getting frustrated because you can’t find anything in the dark and you’re constantly tripping over guy ropes every time you get up for a drink. We’d rate LED camp lights  as important as a camping fridge when it comes time to set up your camp site, and we reckon that once you go camping with properly bright LED camp lights for the first time you’ll think the same too.

A parting note on amp-draw – while it’s true that the approximate 1 amp per hour power draw of an LED camp light kit is around on par with a camping fridge, the truth is you’re only using your camp lights for somewhere between 3 and 6 hours at night every night. That means that over a 24 hour period, the total power draw for a set of bright LED camp lights is maybe somewhere between 3 amps and 6 amps – in other words so minimal that it’s not worth worrying about. For first-time campers and those just starting out, we can’t recommend this advice enough: invest in LED camp lights for an amazing camping experience!