It seems that the nachteule, or Night Owl, is the perfect solution for those who do a considerable amount of nighttime reading; however, there’s just one problem: you have to wear glasses for the Night Owl to be useful. I suppose if you don’t require prescription glasses, you could go the hipster route and get a pair of nonprescription glasses for the sake of fashion – then again, not many people are going to see you while you do your nighttime reading.

Now that we have that one small gripe out of the way, we can get on to actually talking about the Night Owl and its uses, which are surprisingly diverse.

Now, imagine yourself in bed and unable to sleep. You turn on your nightstand lamp to read a few pages in order to get your eyes nice and tired, and the instant the light fills the room your wife or girlfriend grumbles something about an early meeting. What’s a guy to do? Leaving the room defeats the purpose. Turning out the light still leaves you in a lurch. And if you have one of those typical book lamps, you know how annoying those are to use.

Having the Night Owl clipped onto your glasses allows you to read at night with very little light pollution, which means very little disturbance to those around you.

Where else can you make use of the Night Owl? You can pull it out to read the latest Dan Brown work or to run through your report once more anytime you’re traveling and someone else is at the helm, whether that’s on a train, plane, boat, or in a car. If you’re a bit of handyman, feel free to use the Night Owl during the day when you’re working in a dark corner or under the hood of your beat-down muscle car. And if you’re an outdoorsman who doesn’t know to arrive early enough to set up your tent before sundown, you can use the Night Owl to help you drive in those last tent poles. If you’re a young teenage boy, you’ll love the Night Owl while your peruse your latest Playboy – ah, but nobody buys print anymore, so what I actually mean is your latest Frank Miller graphic novel.

Undressing the Nachteule (Night Owl)

What are the specs on the versatile Night Owl? To start, you get an LED that emanates light equal to about 60W and a light cone of about 45 degrees. There’s a li-ion battery on the 0.28-ounce Night Owl that’s good for roughly four months. The German-made, Bluetooth-looking device is also made of POM plastics, which contributes to its light weight.

LeuchtKraft doesn’t make clear the retail price, though there is an ordering form on the company’s official website: LeuchtKraft-gmbh.de.