Headlamp recommendations

The H600 does sound pretty awesome. I'd love one.

"but am not appreciating the difference between the H52 floods and the H502 floods"
H502 = 120 degree flood, no brighter "hot" spot in the center
H52 = 80 degree flood + brighter 12 degree hot spot
H52f = like H52, but frosted to blur the line between hot spot and flood, plus the flood is wider (90 degrees)

The H502 is likely the best for camp chores. The H52 is best for walking and the H52w slots in between. The H52f doesn't seem that different than the H52, but I haven't used it.

Seems the only H52 available even from the ZL website is the neutral "w" model, which is what I want. I'd prefer the floody, but it's not availabe either. I guess there's a few diffuser mods out there I could fashion if low power is still too much on the hotspot to ruin the flood effect.

A little too big for me to EDC though, I like my Maratac AAA for that. Ditched the clip and carry it in the little pocket in my work jeans. Twisty tailstander with only low/high but bombproof. Works like a charm, even straight out of the washing machine.

I have not used a Zebralight yet and the reason why, which for me is their biggest apparent drawback is they seem to have a very hard time keeping them in stock. Every time I've considered buying one they have been unavailable. Whether that is due to high demand or problems with the supply chain if availability is important to the poster this might be a drawback.

You can order any of the lights listed on their site and it'll ship out with a small-medium delay. My H51 was out of stock when I ordered and it shipped in about 5 days, while my H52 took about 2 weeks to ship out.

When an item is out of stock then it ships directly to you from the manufacturer (China). Zebralight does seem a bit lax about keeping the lights in stock, perhaps because they prefer customers using retail channels or maybe they don't see it as an issue since the backorder/direct shipping method works pretty well.

Dan, Sorry if I'm a bit unclear yet, but are you saying your short delays were when you ordered direct, or did you order through some other retail storefront distributor and got them dropshipped to you from China with only a short delay? And if you used a retail outlet, any you'd recommend in case of return issues?

I bought direct from Zebralight.com

On the page for a headlamp it often says "Availability: Back Order". My guess is that Zebralight just finds it easier to make them in small batches and ship them out directly from China (Just in Time production?) since it's been like this for a few years.

It's too bad there's not an estimated shipping time, but my experience is 1-2 weeks until it ships, and then another 1-2 weeks until you get it (sample size = 2).

I think you've been lucky Dan (to get an out of stock item so quickly from Zebralight). Probably just hit it right.

Zebralight ships your parcel for free if it's over $50 and if you are having it mailed to an address in the USA they use USPS (so not coming directly from China). If you are outside of the USA, they send it via China Registered Airmail. This is from Zebralight's website: "China Registered Airmail (2 to 8 weeks or months)"

My orders have taken many weeks even when the items are in stock, if I order directly from Zebralight. Since I'm in Canada, it's still an advantage for me to order directly from Zebralight because of the fact that it ships from China. If it shipped from the USA, I would get dinged for duty (and shipping if I ordered from a reseller in the USA).

"Zebralight's website: "China Registered Airmail (2 to 8 weeks or months)"
This excerpt is only referring to the speed of the shipping service, so it is does not include the back order time. Note that the other shipping options listed in this spot are too fast to be including back order waiting (ie. DHL listed at 3-4 days).

While Zebralight lists this service at "2-8 weeks, or months", the faster end of that is normal for China Airmail to the USA or Canada (based on a lot of eBay purchases over the years; I'm in Canada too). Zebralight lists this huge range seemingly to cover shipping times to more obscure locations or for those times when a package gets hung up at a border. In my opinion, you can safely consider the free China Airmail shipping to USA or Canada to take 1-3 weeks.

The actual back order time is unfortunately non-transparent. However in the past I've heard of people sending a quick email to Zebralight to get an estimate and they seem to respond quickly.

>> (ie. DHL listed at 3-4 days). <<

Yes, that's true… if you don't mind paying over $30 for shipping (half the price of the light… not me).

>> you can safely consider the free China Airmail shipping to USA <<

Zebralight uses USPS for orders from the USA (not China Airmail), so if the item is in stock you should get it quickly.

@Dan –

You are either up very late tonight Dan or maybe moved back to the west coast?

Just up late….I'm on the PCT this summer and then back in BC for good in September though.

Guilty – I guess. But I want to say that I agree with Eric. It's a freaking flashlight. Buy a good one and don't look back, it'll very likely do what you need and/or more. Still not sure where Uli S fits in here, but I have used a number of lights for many more years, maybe I've been lucky, but other than cheap-o's that I did not expect to do more than be a nice, temporary keychain, they've all done as advertised. On many trips, I barely even use a flashlight.

To the OP – get one, check it off your list. And take a nice trip somewhere you've never been.

Having a light that is able to attach to your head is very valuable. It makes night tasks go from one hand to two.

Go with a name brand and you will be fine.

Fenix LD01. It fits on my ear or you can make an ear clip if not happy this way.

Best light I've ever owned. No need for heavy headlamp it fits on my ear like a pencil or you could make an ear clip for it very easily. Uses easily found light weight lithium AAA cell. Has no button or switch to wear out.

Cree XR-E LED (R4) with lifespan of 50,000 hours

Three output modes:
26 Lumens (3h8m)
3 Lumens (27h)
72 Lumens (1h28m)

Dimensions
       • Length: 75mm / 2.95in 
       • Diameter: 14mm / 0.55in 
       • Weight: 14 grams / 0.5oz

Made of durable aircraft-grade aluminum
Toughened ultra-clear glass lens with AR coating
Premium Type III hard-anodized anti-abrasive finish

If you stick it in a drill press and poor man's lathe turn it down with a file you can get it down to about 11g without going too thin but as is at 14g it's very very strong.

If you take the case off and just use the guts you can get it down to about 5 grams but it won't be very durable or water proof unless you spray the guts with epoxy.

I made one that just is a battery and led/reflector with no glass and no housings and it weighs under 5g including the paper clip it clamps around my ear with.

It is brighter and throws a beam further than any sub 5g flashlight out there and also most single cell lights period.

It is both a tea candle at 3 lumens and a search and rescue light at 72 lumens FYI. In a pinch that is.

You need to carry a brighter light with 12 hours of battery life to be considered a true search and rescue but this is better than nothing.

Buy a Fenix whatever you buy. Nothing else comes close to their models for the money.

I have a couple mods next to my guns in the house that are 1000 lumen lights with skull crackers that weigh 2 pounds and an LD01 for every room.

Buy a Fenix at REI and take it back k a year later if you hate it. Give them a shot and focus on maximum value. The more expensive lights are just the same guts in a different case with more expensive branding. Why pay more when all these different lights are made in the same factory?

Fenix isn't junk it's just not overpriced either. Ld01 is only about $20 and is rated accurately unlike other manufacturers.

Trust me I build reef lights and custom lighting for homes and home security. I can't build a light for free as good as a Fenix for the money. Fenix is the only flashlight you're not overpaying for on the market. Buy it at REI and you can't go wrong with their satisfaction guarantee.

I'm partial to Cree led bulbs too btw. They throw light further than any other led in the world and have punch/impact. The premium reef lights I build use Cree bulbs and I've seen the results on coral growth. Nothing else comes close but they are a bit spendy.

I also carry the Fenix LD01 in my jeans coin pocket daily everywhere I go and all day at work. It has survived longer in this hot/cold and body moisturized environment than the other lights I attempted to do this with.

The finish held up great even though it's stuffed in there with my hardened vc 17 carbon steeled lock blade and I labor all day flexing and bending that pocket hard and leaning into steel equipment on it.

I carry an LD01 as my EDC light. I got it at the REI gear garage and it was there because it had a small ding in finish. It's a bulletproof little light.

If you use a light with twist-on/off feature, get in the habit of turning it a little farther when turning it off so pocket pressure doesn't wear out the battery. I've looked down to see my pants lit up a couple times :)

Yes I had that issue at first too. I then over corrected and found there were not enough threads holding on to keep it "bullet proof". In the end I marked where I need to turn it when in the off position and found there are plenty of threads to keep it both OFF OFF and still not leave play in the threads so that torquing on it in my pocket could possibly break it over time.

I felt like a VW engineer that had a car hit 200k the first time I was bending over at work and light started shining out of my butt. The guys got a kick out of it.

Between being a slow hiker and generally enjoying night hiking, headlamp performance is really important to me. The PT Byte for example, was pretty mediocre when it came to battery life on its low setting and I think the advertised battery life is deceptive. Not a big deal for a weekend adventure but could potentially run out of battery before running out of hike on an extended trip.

Have the Tikka now and it's been a great headlamp (albeit heavier) in the few months that I've owned it.

So I'm in the camp that perceives quality differences in lights. What I value in an outdoor lamp (aside from basic durability and efficiency) is tint. Newer emitters are being produced that are "High Color Rendering Index" aka High CRI, and they don't have that flat look on leaves and bark. They look more like incandescent lights, with a fuller spectrum range. You can just "see" better with them, especially in the outdoors, compared to the common, inexpensive flat blue-tint LED lights. Consider these two photos taken by CPF member PJAndyHo, both with high quality LED lights, but one is HCRI and the other is not:

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Interesting back story: police forces were slow to adopt brighter, hardier, longer-running LED lights. Why? Police complained they couldn't "see" very well with them — they couldn't distinguish colors well. A suspect mostly obscured behind a tree would be really hard to spot with a bright blue-tint LED, whereas that same suspect would be readily visible with a dimmer incandescent light. Since the common blue-tint LED drops a lot of the spectrum around aqua, orange, and red (which has implications for human skin tones), police would complain it was like searching in black and white–sort of but not quite.

Fortunately the newer natural, warm, and high CRI tints are making up a lot of ground in this area. They generally aren't as bright, but offer better "seeing" in outdoor conditions. It's a difference you need to see for yourself. Once a friend showed me what he saw at night with his high CRI light, I've never been able to go back. Yeah, that makes me a "tint snob," (even though CRI and tint are different) but I generally get called that only by people who've not seen the difference a good tint can make.

If there is anybody who does not understand this color spectrum problem, let me make a suggestion. Go look at city street lights. Many that were installed fifty years ago are sodium vapor, and they make the scene look kind of yellow or orange. Many that were installed just after that are mercury vapor, and they make the scene look kind of blue. Now go look for some very modern ones that have a broad spectrum, and you can see normal colors better. I am not aware of any city street lights that use broad spectrum LED lights, but the day is probably coming.

–B.G.–

Here's a graphical image of the problem with the common "white" LED emitter. Notice how it drops important parts of the spectrum, and over-saturates others, primarily blue. An incandescent lamp, and sunlight, has a distribution along a normal curve. There's a perfectly good reason many people dislike LED lights, and here it is. A high CRI light goes a good way toward correcting this. Not perfect (ie, not incandescent full-spectrum), but a good deal better than the common LED.

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I've had Black Diamonds and Petzls go out on me after less than 20 hours of use, forcing me to go to my back up. Maybe I just got bad ones, but I stopped buying them. I picked up a cheap Coast headlamp from Lowes and its lasted me over a year and quite a few hours. At 4.4 oz with alkaline batteries, its not the lightest, but at 175 Lumens, it lights up the trail nicely.

For my UL kit, I have an 25 lumen eGear eQ2 headlamp at 1 ounce (including batteries). I don't mind using it for short distances at night or early morning, but its not adequate for a sustained night hike IMO, although I've done it.

My reef lights use varying voltage dimmable ballasts on each spectrum to overcome the issue of a given single led emitting a specific spectrum.

The reason led's are so efficient is they target a very specific given wave length, not wasting off light like incandescent or other bulbs.

Lights utilizing multiple led spectra are available from Fenix and address this issue without giving up the efficiency and light throwing (par rating) of led.

It's a good thing they have lower resolution because this equates to more usable light and less waste light. Ie less battery weight for same hours of light.

My reef lights do not grow algae because the light spectrum simply isn't there to support it. I target the spectrum that coral or tomatoes or whatever uses and don't waste light off in the process of supplying it.

This can be achieved by blending led spectra for home or back country as well.

> Lights utilizing multiple led spectra are available from Fenix and address this issue without giving up the efficiency and light throwing (par rating) of led.

Which Fenix headlamp does that?

Well, I finally got a ZL H52 ordered, and it was no easy task! All i have to say is the dang thing better work, cuz' I'm already fed up with their customer service and website. After trying to order through their site, all I would get was a message telling me my Credit Card couldn't be billed, try later. So I did, and it didn't. I contacted customer support and the reply I got back was along the lines of "You need to enter your information exactly as it appears on your statement" Really?!?! Gee, I never ordered nuthin' over them thar internets before. Can you even buy a ZL from a brick and mortar shop? So anyway, over the next day or two, I tried again, and again…. A total of eight times with varying incantations of zip code extensions, middle initial, etc,… No luck.

So I went hunting again and I found a place to order through Knife Center and they say 2-4 weeks out, like Dan was saying previously. So we'll see how long it takes.

I guess my CC works just fine still, like it has always done.

Ok, thanks for bearing with my rant. I really just wanted to kind of take a note of delivery time per the discussion I was involved in before.

No idea which head lamp. I don't use headlamps because they're heavy in the wrong places.id rather carry battery weight than light batteries and extra straps. It's easy enough to strap a light to your shoulder or clip onto your ear. I don't believe headlamps are useful since the light weight batteries are expensive, inefficient, and the straps are heavy and bulky.

Try emailing Fenix about it I've never looked into an actual head lamp sorry.