the Tikka XP is sort of like the original Acura NSX in that it was thoughtfully designed, impeccably built, it featured technology that was new at the time and deployed it better than anyone had before or arguably has since. but the problem was that after about five years, even average and much lesser cars/headlamps had more power/lumens rendering it kind of obsolete before its time. still if you don't mind the lack of power/lumens, it's good, especially if you can find one cheap.
one of my hiking buddies still uses an unmodified XP and he's still happy with it. if you pop some Eneloops in it, i think it'll run at around 20 lumens for 4+ hours which should be good enough for most night hikes. it probably won't displace the ZL as your go to headlamp or anything like that, but it still seems to be a pretty good light.
oh yeah, don't use it with lithiums. btw, last time i checked, used XP's were still fetching like $30+ on eBay.
