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 On: 2008-08-26
Always been a fan of Petzl headlamps. Needed an upgrade for a brighter light w/ longer battery life and bought this model. DEFINITELY got what I was looking for. "Blast" feature is incredible. Blinding to others. Really like the batter life indicator. Recently returned from a trip where I used the light extensively. W/out even looking at the indicator, the light itself blinked when only 25% battery life remained. Pretty cool. Only downfal I have experienced is that there could be a longer plate at the bottom of the light to help keep the light out of your eyes.
 On: 2008-06-12
A few assumptions first: my requirements were a reliable source of light that could give me long beam lighting in hilly woodsly terrain for an entire night. Did not want to be dependent on rechargeable batteries, nor the expensive Lithium batteries. While many other products advertise the "WATT"age of the light bulb used, from experience I found that sometimes that is definitely NOT an indicator of the luminiscence of the light (in fact, in a different test, a 1-WATT bulb flashlight provided better and stronger lighting than a 3-WATT bulb flashlight). Plus, the more wattage a product is advertised, the more drain on the batteries will have, thus less battery life. The Petzl website and tech spec do not provide any information on the WATT level of the bulb used, which probably for me that is a good thing, since it doesnt mean anything, given the other test mentioned earlier. I used different alkaline batteries, some cheaper and some more expensive. Yes, the results given the battery brand are different, but even with the cheaper batteries, the lamp produced light for 10 hours, albeit at a lower intensity towards the last two hours. The battery life indicator is useful. The boost beam is produced by pressing (and keeping pressed) a small button on the top, and the boost beam did very lightly shine a building that was 80 meters away. The fact that it uses AA instead of AAA seemed to be a concern at the beginning, in regards of a feel of weight on the head, but actually it feels very light. The tilting of the head lamp feels a bit weak, and I suspect it may break when using a "heavy hand" when tilting the lamp. For the price, I feel the product should be at least be offered as waterproof, instead of just water resistant. Another design choice that I would have preferred is to offer red light LED mode for case in which battery energy conservation is an absolute must. A second design choice I would have liked is to offer a set of normal LED lights to switch to (like the Black Diamond Spot and Icon) because if I am reading a map with only the very strong bulb available, my eyes get "blinded" from the strong light reflected from the map, and if I had the option of switching from strong light to weak light when I had to stop and consult a map, that would be great. Readers of this review could argue that this lamp does offer three levels of lighting and one could press the tiny little button to change mode, but it is a very small button, and if I am doing it often while trekking in the woods, that is a pain.
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