LightBench: A Laboratory Testing Procotol for Comparing the Performance of Flashlights and Headlamps

[Ryan Jordan]

Companion forum thread to: LightBench: A Laboratory Testing Procotol for Comparing the Performance of Flashlights and Headlamps

In this technical brief, we quantitatively evaluate the performance of lights considering brightness, battery life, and weight into an objective Lightbench Index.

[Terran Terran]

I think the lightest would be the light on my phone, which I’m already carrying. Perhaps something that plugged into a power bank that hung from your belt or sternum strap. Dual led headlights I think would be lighter than carrying an extra battery.

[tkkn c]

Headlamps have come a long way.  I think LED’s were the  biggest  improvement.  This was state of art in the late 70’s early 80’s.   You could run it on 4 AA batteries or a single Lithium D cell.   The Lithium D cells were expensive.

[John K]

One of the things I found manufacturers doing is ramping down brightness very slowly so the eye doesn’t notice. Example is the new nitecore NU20 classic ramps down in medium after one minute to some intermediate brightness. I noticed this when I was doing run time videos between old NU25 and new NU20. When I sped them up I noticed the shift in brightness.

[Marcus]

Nice inital scope. I’d like to see the NU25 (non-UL) and the NU20 Classic tested for comparison

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