Have you considered using a headlamp? I find they make better book lights than anything that clips to a book. It doesn’t get in the way of turning pages or weigh the book down. Plus the light is more even, and it’s generically more useful since it’s a headlamp.
I have a good rechargable one with several brightness settings and a beautiful warm white LED. It lasts a very long time on the lower settings that are good for reading. Read on if you want to know why I chose the specific one I did, buy honestly, and headlamp will work. The one I have is not cheap.
On the other hand, some book lights have multiple color temperatures, and using one that limits the blue light can help with sleep when used near bed time.
Armytek Wizard C2 Pro Nichia warm white headlamp.
Price: $99
- The battery is an easily swappable, super common 18650 Li-ion. If it stops holding a charge, you can easily replace it very cheaply, but it should be good for years. Plus you can swap it out for a freshly charged one if you have spares and a secondary charger.
- It has a custom, durable magnetic USB charging cable, not some tiny USB port that’ll just break. It literally plugs itself in. You just hold the headlamp base near the cable and it jumps on. (After twisting the base CCW 1/4 turn.)
- The color temperature is a warm white with 95% color rendering index. (That’s really good.) If you read a magazine or comic with it, the colors really pop! Seriously, I was blown away when I first looked at something colorful with this headlamp. Cheap headlamps often have a blueish tint which is terrible. Same with cheap booklights, too.
- The lamp pops off and you can use it as a flashlight, plus the base is magnetic so you can stick it onto things.
- It’s a flood light, not a spot light, and has a wide beam with very even illumination.
It makes a superb book light while also being an excellent all-around headlamp.
I just thought I’d mention a headlamp as a choice, and a good one is worth the money, IMO.
The biggest downside is it’s not super comfortable for more than an hour of use. I took off the top strap, and that makes it even worse I imagine. If I really needed to use it for a long time, I would wear it over a bandana or something.
I’ve been using this for a few days and it’s pretty good, but not perfect as a music player. It sometimes forgets what I was playing when not in use, and I have to re-pick a playlist, and of course it loses my position in it when that happens.
I also tried it as a video player when tapping a video in my gallery app (Fossify Gallery) after I had recently used VLC for music, and it resumed the music instead of playing the video! Twice! I had to explicitly exit the app before it would play the video. (I realize Fossify Gallery has a built-in video player, but it’s not very feature rich, and I was simply trying out VLC.)
I also had to turn off the feature for rescanning my library every time the app opens because that’s on by default, and with my large music library and dozens of playlists, it would take literally 25 seconds to open every time. No idea why that’s on by default when “Refresh” is one of only two options in the three-dot menu, easily accessible on-demand.
I also just learned, much to my chagrin, that you can accidentally pull down from the top to refresh. Another feature no one needs. Not for something that can take 25 seconds, and is right there in the menu besides. I can’t find any way to turn that off.