You have bought the same lighter twice and you are not sure why the first one failed
Most people buy a lighter twice. The first one is whatever was by the till; the second is bought after the first failed at something — wind, a cigar, a barbecue, a cold morning. This is the short version of what actually separates them, so the second purchase can be the first.
The three kinds, and what each is for
A soft flame is the ordinary yellow flame. The fuel leaves the nozzle and burns where it meets the air around it, which is why the flame is loose, flickering and easy to blow out. It runs at roughly 800 to 1,000°C, it is gentle, and it is perfectly good indoors.
A jet flame mixes the butane with air before it burns and forces it out under pressure. That is why it is blue, narrow, noisy and roughly a third hotter — call it 1,300°C. It also will not blow out, because the flame is not sitting on top of the fuel, it is being driven. Every lighter sold as "windproof" is a jet lighter. There is no such thing as a windproof soft flame.
A torch is a jet scaled up: a bigger fuel chamber, a trigger instead of a thumbwheel, and a flame you can hold on for a minute at a time. It is a tool rather than a pocket item.
Which one you actually need
- Indoors, dry, nothing unusual. A soft flame is fine. Do not pay for a jet you will not use.
- Outdoors, on a doorstep, in any wind at all. A jet. This is the single most common reason people replace a lighter, and a pocket-sized Spray Gun Torch Blue Flame Jet Gas Lighter is the straightforward answer to it.
- A cigar. A jet, held a little further back than feels natural. The flame is hot enough to scorch the wrapper if you touch the foot with it — toast the foot from about a centimetre away, turning it, until it glows evenly. A twin-jet like the Honest Double Fire Direct-Pulse Cigar Lighter does it faster and more evenly than a single. Some cigar smokers prefer a soft flame for exactly the scorching reason and they are not wrong; a jet used carelessly does taste like a jet used carelessly.
- Cooking, a barbecue, soldering, jewellery work — anything that needs sustained heat rather than a light. A torch. A pocket lighter used for these gets hot in the hand and runs dry in minutes. A large-chamber spray gun lighter is built for the job, with a trigger and enough fuel to finish it.
- A single jet or a double? A double lights a cigar faster and more evenly, and drinks fuel about twice as fast. For anything smaller than a cigar, one jet is enough.
Why refillable matters more than which lighter you buy
A disposable lighter is thrown away with fuel still in it, because the flint wears out before the butane does. A refillable jet lighter is a metal object with a valve — the fuel is the cheapest part of owning one, and a single can of butane refills it many times over.
Two things decide whether that goes well.
Purge it before you fill it. Hold the refill valve open with a small screwdriver until it stops hissing, pointing it away from you. Skip this and you are pushing new fuel against trapped air: the tank fills perhaps a third of the way, and the lighter gets blamed for something the filling did.
Then leave it alone for five minutes. Butane goes in cold — cold enough to frost the base. A cold lighter lights badly, sputters, and earns a reputation it does not deserve. Fill it, put it down, come back to it.
Two smaller ones worth knowing. Use filtered butane. The cheap unfiltered stuff leaves residue in a jet nozzle narrower than a pin, and a clogged jet is the usual reason a good lighter stops working. And turn the flame adjuster down before you fill, then back up. A jet set to maximum on a full tank throws a flame considerably longer than you were expecting.
The cold-weather thing nobody mentions
Butane stops behaving in the cold. Below about 0°C its vapour pressure drops far enough that the lighter either will not light at all or produces a weak, orange apology of a flame. It is not broken. Keep it in an inside pocket for a few minutes and it comes back. If you are regularly lighting things in genuine cold, that is the one real argument for a soft flame with a flint over a jet.
Keeping the lighter with everything else
The most common complaint about any lighter is not that it failed — it is that it was not there. A rigid case with a seal keeps the contents from going stale or getting crushed, and one with a lighter built into the lid, like this aluminium case with a rechargeable lighter, solves the fourth problem, which is that the lighter is never where the rest of it is.
Before you fly
Worth checking rather than discovering at security: most airlines allow one ordinary lighter, carried on your person rather than in a bag, and torch or blue-flame jet lighters are usually forbidden entirely — in the cabin and in the hold alike. Rules vary by airline and by country, so check yours. But if you are travelling with a jet lighter, assume the answer is no until you are told otherwise.
The short version
Buy a soft flame if you light things indoors. Buy a jet if you light things outdoors or you smoke cigars. Buy a torch if you need heat rather than a light. Whichever you buy, buy one you can refill, purge it before filling, and give it five minutes afterwards.
Read next
Looking for the kit? Browse the lighters and torches, or see the full smoke range. Over-18s only.