I've just come back from a forest/mountain trek through the southern part of the Crimea where I've been using H502d as my main light. There were two of us, my girlfriend and myself; most of the walking was done during sunlight and twilight. After the sunset the 502 was mainly used as a camping light/bedlight.
The overall impression was that I never felt like I needed more light from my headlamp. The brightness—much thanks to superior tint and color rendition—exceeded my expectations by a lot. In fact, I never even once
had to use the H modes, and the flood was broad enough that my girlfriend (who had no headlamp of her own; she dislikes those) felt the ground was lit enough for her when she walked beside me.
More in-depth view on the modes I used during the trek.
- 40 lm: not the most used but perhaps the most useful mode. It lit up the ground to some 5–7 meters ahead and 1–2 to the sides. Was equally useful in twilight and complete dark. Setting up a camp was very easy with it no matter the surroundings, and no items were ever lost. Was used about 1 to 2 hours per day.
- 2 lm: to my surprise, the most used mode. Surprisingly bright despite the flood angle! It was mainly used as a reading lamp and a tent lamp in the evenings. Our tent had a mesh ceiling rack that I put the 502 down on, facing down, which made it light up the interior space completely and evenly (and made the tent glow eerily as seen from the outside as a funny side-effect). Think 1.5–3 hours a day.
- 0.06 lm: the mode the light was left on in the tent when we were going to bed—basically, the mode I switched down to from the 2 lm mode instead of turning the light off. While it undoubtedly wound up with more hours of output than all other modes combined (some 6–8 hours per day), we were asleep during pretty much all of them, so it doesn't really count as "used".
- 10 lm: the mode I mainly used for cooking and eating our evening meals. 40 lm seemed like overkill while 2 lm felt not enough. Again this was bright and broad enough that my girlfriend was able to use the sidespill to light up her meal while I was eating mine.
- 170 lm: was used a couple times just to see how ludicrously bright it was. In fact it's so bright it throws: I was able to noticeably light up objects some ~30 meters away. I never even needed that much in the first place, not from a headlamp anyway. But still this is a nice thing to have for some kind of emergency situation or somesuch. It's much brighter than what would be needed for a nighttime trail run assuming the trail is any familiar to the runner; the 110 lm mode would be way more than enough for that purpose in my opinion—I doubt one would need to run for more than two hours straight off an eneloop anyway.
All other modes were never used. When I needed to light up faraway objects I used my SC600. My girlfriend used a Thrunite Ti when she didn't need to use both hands; in all other situations I would use the 502 to light up whatever she needed. All in all the light was actively (and productively) used at least three hours a day on four modes out of the eleven, and it was used at all times it was needed. The GitD feature also was helpful on more than one occasion, although admittedly it could have been replaced by the 0.06 lm mode quite as well without any adverse effects to speak of.
A note on runtimes and battery drain. As expected, the light stepped down on modes as the AA cell was nearing depletion. Luckily enough this coincided with my usage scenario as I was setting up a camp and was ready to start cooking our evening meal as it stepped down from 40 to 10 lm, and stepped down further to 2 lm as we were about to go inside the tent, so I was able to use the cell up pretty much completely. Did I say "the cell"? Oh, right.
I used up only one, and it was an Energizer
alkaline that was only 60–75% full as we were starting the trek—it was the same cell I used back when I was toying with the light after it arrived. I changed it on the
sixth day of our trip out of nine. Before we left for the Crimea I expected to use up four Energizer L91s on this trek and had to return with three of them completely full and one about 3/4 full at worst; I wasn't particularly adamant on using the lowest modes feasible for my needs either. All in all one L91, or even one eneloop XX, would have been plenty enough for the entire trip. I wish I knew! If this isn't the testament to this light's efficiency I don't know what is. Bravo, ZebraLight! At this point I'm convinced you're doing yourself a disservice by making lights so good I don't even feel the need to eventually replace them. :laughing:
To avoid sounding like an advertising pamphlet I'll list some things I wasn't quite pleased with too.
- Exceptionally wide angle basically means nobody can look at your face without being dazzled to an extent. This, depending on the distance and ambient light, applies to every mode upwards of one lumen. Not unexpected but still an important downside to consider if you're, say, spelunking or mountain climbing in a group, when such glares could become not only annoying but also dangerous.
- The mode switch timing took a while to get used to. Part of the times I accidentally turned the light on high when I wanted it on low. A well-known problem, though. My girlfriend, not being particularly logical or tech-savvy, also couldn't get used to the interface for some time; it just appeared random to her at first.
Hope this was helpful.
