More Information
 On: 2006-12-03
I bought Icon headlamp by Blak Diamond a few days ago. Right out of the box I noticed a serious problem with the design of this headlamp. The battery compartment is seriously flawed. I was surprised and dissapointed to see this because Black Diamond products are usualy top quality. Not this POS! I hope they are not going down the road of poor quality like so many other manufacturers have.
There are several problems with the batery box: 1) it is made out of thin brittle plastic. Bump this on a rock and it is game over 2) The main head band strap is not a continous loop. One end of the strap is attached to the battery box and one end of the strap is attached to the battery box cover so when you bump it on a rock, the brittle plastic breaks, the headlamp will come flying off of your head droping batteries and parts of the headlamp all over. You could not design it to fail in a worse way! 3) The battery box cover has extremely poor fit up to the battery box. With the battery box cover installed, there is a significant gap between the 2 pieces. Even the slightest rain would pass through this gap getting the contents of the box (the batteries) wet. This also makes the product look totally un-professional. I am not sure if it is made in China but it sure looks like it.
The beam produced by the 3W spotlight LED is really powerfull! You can easily see as well as with a medium powered Xenon headlamp. However the battery box problems are so bad that you should not take this headlamp into the back country. If the battery box is re-designed with a better one, this headlamp would move from 1 star to 5 stars in my book.
|
|
