Be careful what you wish for. I’ve often wished for at least three hands. One to hold a torch while delving behind an AV stack, and two more to plug and unplug cables; or one to hold a torch, one to hold a magnifying glass, and two to get a button cell into its tiny dark and shady slot inside a digital watch.

Holding a torch between your teeth is often the only practical answer, and it’s not much fun.

I recently solved the small dark slot problem with a 4x magnifying glass surrounded by ring of white light LEDs that Maplin currently has on special offer for a cheap-as-chips £4, including batteries.

Everyone who sees mine wants one for soldering, needlework, map reading or reading the small print someone doesn’t really want us to read. So I’ve bought half a dozen as presents.

Why am I sharing all this with you? Well, because Duracell now has a nicely engineered and more expensive (£25) solution to the three-hands problem.

The Daylite Headlamp is part of Duracell's new range of white-LED torches and it straps round your forehead, with a nicely engineered tilt mechanism to keep the light from a single large white LED pointed on the work zone. It focuses too, with 3:1 zoom between a fairly wide beam and right spot.

Three AA cells in a little back-of-the-head pack put out a surprising amount of light, for the simple no-magic reason that LEDs convert electricity into light more efficiently than filament bulbs, which waste power by getting hot.

Unfortunately – perhaps because Duracell is now being part of the Procter and Gamble detergent and such-like group – the company does rather overegg the advertising for the Daylite range of torches.

Indeed Duracell's competitors may already be sharpening their Advertising Standards complaint pencils after reading that “patented TrueBeam Optic technology captures 100% of light produced by the LED bulb, creating a light that is 20x brighter than a regular LED torch”.

I was always taught to steer clear of claims like 100 per cent, but I particularly like Duracell’s claim that its optics “capture up to 100% of light”.

Up to? That could, of course, include none.

Barry Fox