New Zebralights

I was just ogling the email myself. Those are some insane lights.

I love my H51 headlamp!

What do you suppose the throw is on the H600 at max output?

"The S series is also pretty wild….2400 lumens? Is that legal?"

You can land an airplane with two of these… For whatever the runtime might be. I expect it's pretty short on Turbo mode. But I still want one!

The H600 headlamp looks more useful, however.

I've been thinking about getting the H600 or another similar Zebralight. I like the simplicity of having just one AA battery. Can it be dialed down enough to read without going snow blind from the reflection off the paper? Do those of you who have a Zebralight read successfully with it? I have a Petzl Tikka XP2, and with the diffuser it works fine for reading, which I like to do at night, but I don't like fumbling with three AAA batteries.

reading w/ my H31 is no problem- just need one of the low settings (you don't want the high one for that duty :))

Yum!

Can't think of a reason to buy any other brand of headlamps… Wonderfully constructed, excellent electronics, flood or spot + flood beams, great assortment of goodies in each package (extra o-rings, glow-in-the-dark clips and buttons, and multiple headbands), and of course, the option for warm-tint LEDs (great for outdoor use).

18650 batteries are 3.7V Li-ion rechargeables that are like the stretch-limo version of rechargeable CR123A batteries (aka RCR123A). (14500 batteries are the AA Li-ion equivalent.) They are roughly the same size as 2 CR123A batteries on top of each other. The whole idea of an 18650 is they provide really long runtimes at a voltage that neatly matches the requirements of a modern LED (unlike two RCR123As: ~7.2V). AFAIK, there is no non-rechargeable version of an 18650, so don't expect to find them at a 7-11 on a thru hike. (Some 18650 lights will take two RCR or CR123A batteries in a pinch, which would be a great bonus for the H600.)

The SC80 reminds me of the Gerber Omnivore, a light capable of using AA, AAA, or CR123A batteries (one at a time), the logic being you could salvage whatever you had at home (or could find in a gas station) in an emergency. Now that makes sense for the thru-hiker, but I'm more interested in a headlamp version.

Spark presents a good alternative to Zebralight offerings. Where the 18650 ZL light can only use a rechargeable 18650 battery, the Spark ST6 headlamps will also allow the use of two CR123 batteries. That makes it much more viable for long distance hiking. Also, Spark is releasing the SD52 next month that takes either a pair of AA's or a pair of 14500's. There are two things I really like about ZL's though, and that is that they offset the head so that it can be used more effectively as a headlight or a handheld flashlight, and they produce a spot+flood beam.

Regarding Zebralights, they have a design flaw in the switch of the SC series of pocket lights which has a history of turning on in your pocket, and running the battery dead.
If you carry the light, you must partially unscrew the tailcap, to lock-out the functioning of the light while it is in your pocket. Then, when you want to use the light, you first tighten the tailcap, and then you can use the normal switch.
This is a known issue, and it's a dealbreaker for everyone that I know who wants a light that they can turn on right away.

This issue does not seem to affect the H-series headlights becuase the switch isn't on the side of those lights, it's on the end.
I don't know if any switch corrections have been made on these new lights such as SC80 or others.

Zebralight has a very good circuit for optimizing max brightness(200 lumens) out of a single AA Eneloop rechargeable. That is in their favor.
The rest of the light may not quite match up to the circuit.

If it were $30, it would be fine for the money as a low cost bright light. For $65, it's way overpriced.
IMHO.

Wow, that much money for a flashlight? I'll stick with my expensive battery BD Ion for a while longer.
Duane