well made and useful headlight

well made and useful headlight

The sleeper success with crazy power per pound

This isnt the brightest flashlight at the price point. Its not the longest lasting. It definitely aint cheap. I wouldnt consider this a bang for your buck if you just want a headlamp and dont sweat the cheap plastics or disposable batteries. If those are the only things of importance to you, I would forgive you for passing on it.

What it does exceptionally well though, is gather together many of the best conveniences in the flashlight market, both old and new, in a market overflowing with geriatric products that haven’t been upgraded in years, some cases even decades, producing a very durable, yet uniquely convenient and TINY flashlight. One that also fits very securely on a steel buckle and adjustable strap to make for a criminally underexposed product. Its not Bang for buck, its POWER (and modern conveniences!) per POUND!

Quick ish pro’s and cons

I am absolutely biased towards products that are compact and effortless to casually carry about. You can easily stuff the entire headlamp, strap, light, and buckle, into just about any type of casual pocket and have room for more, to say nothing of if you simply pull the entirely self contained light off the buckle, now retaining all the headlamps power and functionality in a package similar in size to your pair of wireless earbuds.
No top headstrap or bulky battery pack on the back of the headlamp. The flashlight is nowhere near heavy enough to warrant or even benefit from a top strap, something other similarly lightweight headlamps should realize. An adequately tightened strap will stay on securely without squeezing your head, and without the top strap, you don’t even need to stuff it in a pocket, as now you can just wear it around your neck when not in use. Very convenient like this.
Modern USB C power input with an attached sealing plug, alongside internal o rings give this beauty the prestigious IPX8 rating for waterproofing (I have yet to test mine in water, but I don’t doubt it).
A standardized 700mAh rechargeable 16340 battery Inside I bet you could buy replacements and quickly swap them in just fine, but i haven’t personally tested this (because i have no reason to, the thing lasts so long and charges so dang quickly). The included battery even has a micro usb port built into it in case you cant find a USB C cable.
Wide range of vertical angle adjustment. 180 frickin degrees. And itll stay exactly the angle you set it at no matter how you shake or abuse it. A bit hard of turning as a consequence, but ill take that anyday over the angle slipping down if you look in a direction too hard. It truly is 180 degrees too; you can point it straight down to illumate your nose to help practice going crosseyed, or straight up to help deter tall people from being aggressively tall near you. Or you could be practical and lock it at literally any angle between those two.
Supports charging while illuminated, while also preventing users from inadvertently overheating it by restricting the brightest settings while charging. Admittedly not many use cases for a battery headlamp running while plugged in, but the time they put into making it not only work, but work safely is commendable.
8 different light modes (not counting ‘off’), ranging from a ‘rather bright night light’, to ‘Today i will emulate being THAT person with the LED headlights that never turns off their high beams but without the car’, alongside a red and flashing red mode, all achievable with one nice, clicky button. You can also check its battery level with that same button, to see how many more days of use you have when you pick it up.
Brightness memory for both ‘modes’. Another classic premium flashlight feature, remembering what the brightness was when you last used it. Will remember low med hi brightness (if you turned it off on turbo, itll step back down to high, one click away from turbo), as well as if you were in eco white, red or flashing red last.
Good magnet on the butt of the flashlight for mounting to metal surfaces. Again rather edge case y when you can already strap the light to your head, but its a staple in more premium flashlights

It has a red blinking mode, but doesn’t have a white blinking low with blinking mode. This isn’t a purpose built cycling light, not to mention it already is doing so much with just a single button, so its excusable, but as someone using this for the purpose of cycling, kinda wish it did have one to make me better visible to drivers.
Can be a bit unwieldy to finagle with while biking and wearing gloves, most notable difficulty is adjusting the vertical angle of the lamp, definitely only do that while stopped unless you are very confident at biking one handed for several seconds. Theres no way to fix this without losing its impeccable ability to lock at any minute angle, so its a chosen tradeoff.
The controls are a bit unwieldy, seeing as theres only one button and 4 different functions assigned to it. Again, this is a deliberate tradeoff. The alternatives are making it bigger to fit more buttons… or just removing functionality, both detract from the beautiful balance it currently has.
The stainless steel backing buckle, durable as all heck it is, does not play well with being worn around the neck from an (extremely nitpicky) comfort perspective. I have to be careful when pulling the lamp down past my brow, as i’ve more than once done it a bit too fast and gotten a hunk of exposed steel smacking the bridge of my nose, as well as feeling the cold metal on your skin if you try to wear it under your shirt. All i can really suggest to fix this is trimming on the width of the buckle so it doesnt extend past the strap anymore… but i have no idea the ramifications of the durability that would have.
Doesnt have enough genuine drawbacks for me to make this not seem biased