Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/06/09/this-broadbeam-led-headlamp-il.html
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300 lumens? My current headlamp can do that with a single LED. It has both tight- and broad-beam settings. It can be dimmed to save the battery. And it has red LEDs available, too, to spare the night vision and not blind the people I’m camping with when I inevitably need to get up in the night.
So, meh. Happier with what I’ve got.
Now, if you were offering me a self-illuminated water bottle that I could hold up and say, “Aiya Eärendil elenion ancalima!” that would be something!
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I actually bought one of these after seeing it recommended here. I found it to be cheaply made and not very useful. I have to say if you are serious about lighting, get a Kogalla, for a headlight, it’s hard to beat a reactik+ from Petzl.
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In your own workshop, fine.
But please, don’t take this POS out into the wild, camping or hiking or — worst of all — “trail running” at night.
In the open, this is an obnoxiously self-centered piece of kit that says “I don’t care if I blind everybody I approach and scare off all the nocturnal wildlife, so long as I can see more clearly.”
(I’ve been known to break peoples’ flashlights when they wouldn’t take the beam out of my eyes. These look they’d be easy enough to frag.)
If these catch on it will be bad for horror movies.
Nothing like a late night run to ease the tension huh?
Except this is 4x less expensive.
Looks like this is made for close quarters where periphery light is nice to have and bonus… without having to adjust the beam a lot. It’s not designed to replace or compete with a traditional headlamp.
Before you complain about “only” 300 lumens, please be aware that 300-350 lumens is considered the base for seeing at night while riding a bicycle, as opposed to just being seen; it’s really not all that bright, especially distributed across several LEDs. It certainly doesn’t hold a candle (joke maliciously intended) to my 1000 lumen bicycle lamp xD!
This amount of light isn’t much of an issue for walking/jogging speeds, but the lack of focus, total ruination of the night vision of everyone around you, and (from above) shoddy build quality doesn’t bode well…
I’ve seen a number of negative comments here, but my experience has been different - until recently I had a number of teams working in the dark doing mechanical repairs on rolling stock, and issued them each one of these. You do have to be careful not to blend someone when you look at them, but these guys mostly worked spread out and the lights were perfect. The LEDs were a bright white, and best of all the field of illumination was very broad. With pretty rough use the lifespan was generally about 6 weeks - for normal everyday use cycling, camping, etc I’d expect it to be much longer. For us, they worked really well.
If one were to wear this while lying down (under a car or reading) can the battery pack be moved to the side? Or is it fixed in position?
I don’t have mine handy, but I think I remember that the battery pack does have some mobility and I think the light comes with it off to the side. Mine was attached to my hard hat, so there wasn’t a lot of laying down on my back!
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