Zippo brushed chrome lighter > Reviews (6)

Review of the Zippo Brushed Chrome Lighter.

Zippo lighters have been around for many years and are renowned for being sturdy, durable lighters. The box-like styling is very traditional and functional in appearance.

I have owned my brushed chrome Zippo for about 4 years now and overall, have been pleased with it. It was purchased for me as a gift. I am a smoker and usually use cheap, disposable gas lighters. The drawback with these is that the flint part often wears out before the lighter fuel is finished and is impossible to replace, leaving a frantic, frustrated smoker struggling to light up!

To avoid the foul language and temper tantrums that this scenario can cause, my non-smoking other half bought me the Zippo.

The Zippo In Use, Price and Maintenance

I am not going to insult readers intelligence by getting into a lecture on smoking, lighters and keeping them away from children. Suffice to say, I am sure anyone capable of reading this knows that smoking is bad for you and lighters can be dangerous to old and young alike!

The Zippo lighter is a roughly oblong shape. It consists of a flip up, hinged lid which then reveals the mechanism, a wheel which you spin to create a spark, which in turn ignites the fuel, to produce a flame. To douse the flame, simply close the lid which obviously cuts off the air supply, putting out the flame.

I have found that the Zippo lights well even in windy conditions and is a handy thing to have even for non smokers. These lighters are great to take with you on camping trips and for lighting candles indoors.

Maintenance of the Zippo lighter is easy. Flints do require renewing every so often, it is impossible to say how often as of course this depends on usage! To replace a flint, simply remove the small screw over the flint housing, tap the lighter gently to remove any residue of the old flint and slide a fresh flint into place. Flints can be purchased from most cigarette kiosks in supermarkets.

Refuelling the lighter is easy too, simply slide off the bottom section of the chrome housing, turn upside down and squeeze the fuel into the wadding until damp. Do not over fill as this will cause spillage, which WILL ignite when you strike up the lighter!

The lighter is quite chunky, but does not weigh as much as you might think it would. I would say that is is about twice the weight of a disposable lighter. The size is around 2 ½ ins x 1 ½ ins. Zippo do make these lighters in a variety of designs and the price can vary according to where you buy. Mine was a present, so I am unsure exactly how much it cost, but a quick web search brought up prices of around £8 - £10 from a variety of stockists, Amazon being one of the cheapest.

For the purposes of this review I have been studying my lighter and I cannot see where it was made anywhere on the casing. This may of course, be due to the age, wear and tear and so on

My Thoughts and Conclusion

As mentioned, I have owned my Zippo lighter for several years now. The brushed chrome casing still looks good, it does have a few 'battle scars' from being dropped, bounced around in my bag and pockets.

I do like the lighter but do not use it regularly any longer.

The main reason for this is that I am a little uncomfortable about using a petrol fuelled lighter. I am sure that it is safe, but I am not that keen on carrying something containing petrol on my person. My secondary reason is that I was finding it increasingly difficult to buy lighter petrol in my area. I used to get it from the cigarette booth in my usual supermarket, but they stopped stocking it. I did find some in the local 'Pound shop' but it was not particularly effective as it seemed to dry out very quickly.

This and the safety issue has meant that my Zippo is languishing in the back of a drawer more often than not. However, I was recently at a boot fair and spotted some branded lighter fuel for sale and I bought some, so I must get around to giving the Zippo another go!

I am actually pondering as to whether I would recommend this lighter to other consumers. I think the answer has to be 'yes', as the lighter is easy to use, easy to maintain and is very sturdily made. I am awarding the Zippo Brushed Chrome lighter a 4* rating in view of the difficulty I have had with locating fuel and the safety issues of carrying a petrol fuelled lighter.

Thank you for reading
©brittle1906 December 2011

N.B. My reviews may be found on other sites under the same user name.