My new Flood/Spot duo

[Terran]

Don’t buy them

[DirtNap]

Stefan haha you’re right it’s hard to stay “on topic”. I realized I didn’t answer your question on my preference between spot and floody. I don’t like the overly floody lights like Zebra et al, I find their beams almost useless. I like a floody with some throw. I find it easier on my eyes than a strict spot, especially for close up work. On the trail I like a spot. One of the reasons I love the Wurkkos HD15 with a 18350 tube is that it has both and you can combine them. Just wish it had Anduril.

I enjoy red and green light mostly for bugs. Not uncommon to have absolutely biblical tiny moth hatches along the Colorado/Green river corridors in spring. Other than bugs, I don’t use red or green much. I prefer a warm (not overly warm) light. I have trouble reading blue lights at night as my eyesight gets worse with, er, maturity.

[Terran]

These threads do drift as alternatives are brought up. .It becomes a discussion.  Writing an actual review, I feel it’s better for others to present a separate review of the alternatives. That’s my hike. Others may disagree.

In the choice between flood or spot. I agree with Dirtnap. It depends. I like my greenlight in certain cases. Good for in camp. Close up. The throw is only about 50′ before my eyes strain to see. The Peax may have more throw. That tends to complicate the question a little.

[Stefan H]

I hike a lot at night in the summer and in the winter I run almost always at night, in super remote rural Nevada. I would generally rather hike 30 miles than do an overnight.

Since trying a dedicated spotty, I can’t imagine not having one. If my headlamp lights up some eyes glowing across a field, or I hear a rustle, I can quickly check it out without changing my headlight or taking my eyes off the critter. Some spotlights can do over a mile, but imo, 400-600m is great, and can be pocketable.

That’s why the GT Nano is incredible. 400m throw for 1oz, smaller than my thumb, with built in charging. I had not seen that light mentioned here and it’s really a marvel. To accomplish that  throw distance at thee times the weight would be impressive. Before the gen1 version of that light, bringing a thrower meant adding 4+oz weight. Now, for me, it would be crazy not to have that ability for 1oz of weight.

You probably don’t want to use it as your primary light or you will get crosseyed and dizzy looking at just that one little spot on the trail lol. It’s just to see far away. So rather than cranking your headlamp to see down the trail, you leave your headlamp on low, use the spotty for 5 seconds. In this way it saves tons of battery life and saves you from nuking your eyeballs with your headlamp turbos.

I am going to quit raving soon I promise haha. I swear I’m not on commission. But I highly recommend that GT Nano if you spend any time in the dark. It will blow your mind and 3x the range of your headlamp, even the ones that claim to have a spotlight mode. Really any dedicated hand held thrower to compliment your headlamp….I promise you will wonder how you managed without one. I can make a huge list of good throwers if anybody cares. Can’t go wrong with Lumintop GT series, and those range from the Nano to the BLF which is roughly the size of a bus. Most makers have an option for pure throw.

 

[Volker64]

I hear you Stefan. There are way too many options even from a single brand for most people to keep up with. I made a spreadsheet to help me understand all the options from Nitecore.

I agree it’s nice to have both a flood and a throw. All throw and you have tunnel vision with a headache. All flood and you are near sighted with a hazy view of things. I’m still a little unsure whether I prefer more flood or more throw, but for my uses – I think a mix of both is best.

I don’t do trail running – so I’m not running up and down uneven surfaces after dark. I don’t need superhero distance vision. But it’s still very neat to be able to see in the distance – especially in the wild when you know it won’t disturb anyone.

I’ll talk about Nitecore because that’s the brand I’ve dived into:

I noticed on the newest MCT version of the NU25 – they got rid of a dedicated flood beam. I miss this. I use both the flood and throw beams on my older NU25 at the same time.

It seems inefficient and more complicated – but yes, you could use two separate lights – one for flood, and one for throw at the same time.

The NU43 is probably the most floody of the Nitecore line. But it has not yet been updated to have the Ultra High Efficiency LED’s and therefore it is prone to overheating. So the headlamp handles this by use of an aggressive ratcheting down in lumens for the turbo and high setting. A side effect of a floody beam which lacks a hotspot – is that the light looks “crushed”. While it offers good peripheral vision – similar to daylight – it feels like I never get a truly detailed light to focus on an area with. So while I appreciated the wide viewing area, and how it’s easy on the eyes, I found myself missing the sharpness that a throwy hotspot will give you.

The NU43 also just has a cool white light (aside from the obligatory red light). So a somewhat warmer beam would be nice.

Regarding Nitecore’s MCT tech in general – I often find the cool white too cool, the neutral too warm, and the warm way too warm. Given these correspond to 6500K, 4500K, and 3000K, I think my ideal color temp would be around 5000-5500K.

What would be really cool is the ability to do a continuous adjustment of color temperature. I think there are already some headlamps that offer this feature – but I don’t think Nitecore offers them.

[Stefan H]

Emisar has dual channel quad led lights, you pick the exact LEDs from a huge list, and the interface allows you to ramp between the two. I know what temp I want so i dont choose that option but it’s still really cool. The same quad led lights can be made single or even triple channel, including UV or red or pretty much anything you can imagine. Emisar has been the GOAT of custom lights for at least a decade. And the lead time is nothing, they ship a custom next day. It’s funny to watch the other brands try to keep up.

I do like a pure flood for work at night. I build houses, mostly framing. In that case I find anything but broad, even flood makes me a bit dizzy. But on the trail, it bothers me that the light really goes nowhere….crushed as you said. I dedomed my new little headlamp in the OP and that made it way tighter and also warmer. Pretty cool trick and fairly easy. Don’t try it with just any LED though, I got excited and tried a different one and destroyed the light.

For me, having a standalone spotty is way more efficient in every way. Because I can keep the primary headlamp on low, which means I can use a tiny light like the OP headlight. I really dislike having to put my hand kinda in front of my face, brightly lit, to change the headlight settings. Where I hike in the dark is pretty wild and scary. A mountain lion jumped out of a tree 40ft away from me and I learned that there was just no way ide be able to do anything other than mash a button in my hand. The spotty was a big weight penalty until Lumintop made that 400m itty bitty thrower. The headlights with a thrower beam are alright but pretty sad compared to a proper handheld. And it’s possible to have the best of both worlds for LESS weight, hence the OP.

The other quality of lights that people don’t usually get into is the TINT. So there’s the color temperature we all know but there’s also DUV. Two lights could both be 3500k temperature, but a positive DUV figure would be a yellow/green tint and a negative DUV would be moving towards more of the red/magenta. Since I’m now a spoiled nerd, I can’t really tolerate the lemon/lime positive DUV lights. The negative DUV, rosier ones are where it’s at for me.

[Terran]

Nitecore 6,000 powerbank with 3″ Chinese flood. Eight emitters. 3.4 oz. It’s missing an USB to usb-c adapter so probably 3.5 oz.

Compared to a 10,000 mah power bank. Two nitecore 6k pb’s are $4 cheaper,  Obviously more power. Two would weigh 1.2 ounces more than the 10K.

Two bulbs weigh 0.7 oz.,

2.9 ounces extra for two floods depending if you plan on a battery bank.

Worn at waist level would provide plenty of light, but like you said, a small spot would be handy.

 

[Author]

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