Are many of the older, standard headlamp brands making outdated/overpriced headlamps?

I was looking at REI's list of headlamps, and I saw the usual list of brands there, such as Princeton Tec, Petzl, Black Diamond, Mammut, etc. I looked at a few of these headlamps ranging in price from $69.99 to $430. I didnt bother with the cheaper ones. One thing I am still seeing with these brands of headlamps is that they dont ever seem to mention the brand of LED's they use in ANY of their products. I looked at the $430 Petzl Ultra headlamp, thinking that for sure it will have several Cree XP-G or XM-L's for THAT price, but nope......... All they say is what they always say.. "Comes equipped with high output LED's", but they never elaborate on what that means. The $69-$99 models I looked at mostly come with the cheap 5mm LED's and 1 "High output" LED.

The Petzl Ultra has its own fairly large, rechargeable Li-Ion battery pack that costs $200! But on high, its max brightness is 350L and the larger Li-Ion battery pack goes dead in 120 minutes on high... Thats not too good for a $430 headlamp with a larger $200 Li-Ion battery pack!

Then there's the Mammut Lucido X-zoom, which cost $100, runs on 3 -AA batteries, with a "high flux" LED and its high is 100 lumens, and the 3 AA batteries run dead in only 120 minutes on 100L....

For $150 you can get the Princeton Tec Apex rechargeable, which has its own medium sized Li-Ion battery pack that allows its "MaxBright" LED to run at 200L for 5 hours. Thats a little better than the others at least. It also has 4 of the wonderful 5mm LED's too. The ones that look blue all the time. Most of these lights have those 5mm LED's, some times alongside the "High Output" LED's.

But the thing is, the higher end flashlight manufacturers are getting into the headlamp game, and that means they are installing top quality Cree LED's into THEIR headlamps, and better circuitry, etc. Just look at the Zebralight headlamps. They are cheaper than many of the headlamps made by Princeton Tec, Petzl, Mammut, Black Diamond, and in some cases they are MUCH cheaper, but they come with much better components, circuitry, and they are probably built tougher too. They are also much brighter and have much better battery life due to much better LED's which are more efficient.

So whats taking these other larger name headlamp companies to "get with the program"?:thinking:

Good question. Educate the consumer, I suppose.

On another forum I visit, the topic of headlamps came up, and everybody's doing laps about the PT Apex (with its 4AA pack) as if it were just the latest and greatest thing out there. And...you can't tell them there's anything better. The old "I own it, I am perfect, therefore what I own is also perfect" logic sets in. I think this should be called the "Forumite's syllogism."

I think the answer is they feel they don' t have to. Most of the backpacking public doesn't know the name of any LED manufacturer and if the headlamp manufacturers don't name the LED (s) they can change them at any time without changing packaging.

They don't make something that looks/functions like a Zebralight/Spark because they have a large customer base that is used to what they do make.

They would counter that their lights have red, spot, and flood and the newer companies don't have those things.

I agree it's frustrating however!

HighlanderNorth said:

I was looking at REI's list of headlamps, and I saw the usual list of brands there, such as Princeton Tec, Petzl, Black Diamond, Mammut, etc.

So whats taking these other larger name headlamp companies to "get with the program"?:thinking:

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gcbryan said:

if the headlamp manufacturers don't name the LED (s) they can change them at any time without changing packaging.

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Replace these brands with with Maglite and Surefire and this thread would feel right at home in 2010. Then, as now, speed (latest and greatest) is inversely promotional to size and age. The more customers a company serves and the longer they've been doing it, the longer it takes to 1) shift focus, 2) shift production, and 3) shift older stock.

Princeton Tec has actually been doing a good job of updating their LEDs lately. They keep on putting better LEDs in their headlamps while keeping them at the same price. Remember, the entry level price point for PT, Petzl, et al is much, much lower than Spark or Zebralight. The mass market $20 headlamps don't measure up to a ZL, but they are well made and are fine for most people, especially kids. I wouldn't recommend a Spark to a dad for his 11 year old Boy Scout, but I would recommend a PT Remix or Byte.

The Apex is actually a solid unit too. It has 200L as its main LED, which can be greatly outclassed by ZL or Spark, but it also has a battery pack that gives it fantastic runtime as well as secondary 5mm red or white LEDs that are surprisingly useful. I'm not saying that I would take an Apex over my H31Fw, but when presented with the option, a lot of customers do.

I think the big names all recognize what is happening, which is why you see PT updating their LEDs continually. Petzl's new Nao shows that they are still plenty capable of innovation. Yes, I know the concept was done already by guys on CPF, but there is a big difference between mass market and semi-custom.

That said, you can pry my ZLs out of my cold, dead hands.

The big problem with the larger companies (and it should be the opposite) is that they don't seem to do any real product testing. They come up with translucent models that create glare. They come up with a UI (Black Diamond) that toggles back and forth between spot and flood every time you turn it on.

They have old fashioned hinge systems that place the light itself out away from the body (not very ergonomic).

Some have no real lows. Things that anyone actually testing a unit before the design was locked in would pick up on.

I'm not sure what a mass manufacturer has to gain by specifying LED types, since not only do most people not have much of a clue what LED is which (as pointed out above), but even thinking of customers who do, it's not clear that adding information is going to help sales overall.

For instance, if someone made a light using XP-Gs when they were the latest thing, mentioning that on the packaging could end up, after the release of XM-Ls, with some people downrating the light for not having the latest emitters even if XP-Gs were the better LED for that design.

(Currently I'm making a recently-designed module to retrofit existing lights, where even though I have freedom to use any LEDs, I'm using an XP-G and an XP-E. The XP-G (for a flood beam) because I get a wider range of nice colour bins than if I used XM-Ls, and the XP-E (for a spot beam) to get a tighter beam.
However, I'm fairly confident that in my particular target market, unless I made an effort to explain my choices in detail (which many people wouldn't read anyway), of the people who actually care at all about LED types, a decent fraction would automatically assume 'XM-L->better' since that's about the limit of their knowledge.)

I'd also wonder if, were the public actually more educated about LED types, that would just lead to the less-scrupulous manufacturers trying to make a big deal out of the type while putting in LEDs from the worst brightness bins.
If all the package says is 'Uses Cree XM-L!!', but it's a T5, some people might take that as meaning it's better than a light using an XP-G even if output is essentially the same as an R5 XP-G, at least up to 700mA or so.

And as for smaller manufacturers making lights which are:

HighlanderNorth said:

...much brighter and have much better battery life due to much better LED's which are more efficient.

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I suppose it might depend on what people's idea of 'much better' is.

Personally, for me to call an LED meaningfully better in terms of efficiency, I'd be thinking of an improvement in output of ~20% compared to some other LED at the same power consumption, and to call an LED much better, I'd be thinking of more like 40% higher output.
In that sense, to me, for operation in the sub-500mA range, an R4/R5 XPG is only just-about 'much better' than a U2-bin Seoul P4.

My wife recently went to ****'s Sporting Goods to get a few outdoor goodies for a short NCT backpacking trip she decided to join me on. She heard me talking about my Zebralight H600w and decided she wanted a headlamp of her own. She pulled a Black Diamond Gizmo out of her bag she picked up for $20 and I thought "oh no"... Turns out this thing is quite awesome! It has 2 economy LEDs in it (way better than 5mm's, but much lower intensity than an XPG), good white tint, pure flood and awesome runtimes on 2 AAA's. Best part: it's a simple press for on (turns on at max 35 lumens) and a simple hold of the button allows infinite ramping brightness choices! This thing is sweet and it was a bit humbling to see her use it this weekend and never need more than 35 lumens. Often I didn't have to use my light because her floody Gizmo was enough for both.

Bottom line: you show me a Zebralight for $20 that does all this and I'll say the usual brands are way off track. I'll agree that our specialty brands are all over the high end, but I'll say if you're going under $50 and looking for simplicity: give a good hard look at the backpacking brands.

Bolster said:

And...you can't tell them there's anything better. The old "I own it, I am perfect, therefore what I own is also perfect" logic sets in. I think this should be called the "Forumite's syllogism."

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I'd say that's more true here than anywhere I've ever seen.

michaelmcgo said:

Bottom line: you show me a Zebralight for $20 that does all this and I'll say the usual brands are way off track. I'll agree that our specialty brands are all over the high end, but I'll say if you're going under $50 and looking for simplicity: give a good hard look at the backpacking brands.

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Yep, all that matters is that the people who buy them are satisfied with them. I look at all the complaints, criticisms, and failures with all these so-called "high end" headlamps, and remember using Petzls and Streamlights for years with no problems. They didn't have the options, and the new LEDs, but they didn't have the issues, either. I'm not sure what people use as their criteria for quality any more, except appearance...

uk_caver said:

I'm not sure what a mass manufacturer has to gain by specifying LED types, since not only do most people not have much of a clue what LED is which (as pointed out above), but even thinking of customers who do, it's not clear that adding information is going to help sales overall.

For instance, if someone made a light using XP-Gs when they were the latest thing, mentioning that on the packaging could end up, after the release of XM-Ls, with some people downrating the light for not having the latest emitters even if XP-Gs were the better LED for that design.

(Currently I'm making a recently-designed module to retrofit existing lights, where even though I have freedom to use any LEDs, I'm using an XP-G and an XP-E. The XP-G (for a flood beam) because I get a wider range of nice colour bins than if I used XM-Ls, and the XP-E (for a spot beam) to get a tighter beam.
However, I'm fairly confident that in my particular target market, unless I made an effort to explain my choices in detail (which many people wouldn't read anyway), of the people who actually care at all about LED types, a decent fraction would automatically assume 'XM-L->better' since that's about the limit of their knowledge.)

I'd also wonder if, were the public actually more educated about LED types, that would just lead to the less-scrupulous manufacturers trying to make a big deal out of the type while putting in LEDs from the worst brightness bins.
If all the package says is 'Uses Cree XM-L!!', but it's a T5, some people might take that as meaning it's better than a light using an XP-G even if output is essentially the same as an R5 XP-G, at least up to 700mA or so.

And as for smaller manufacturers making lights which are:

I suppose it might depend on what people's idea of 'much better' is.

Personally, for me to call an LED meaningfully better in terms of efficiency, I'd be thinking of an improvement in output of ~20% compared to some other LED at the same power consumption, and to call an LED much better, I'd be thinking of more like 40% higher output.
In that sense, to me, for operation in the sub-500mA range, an R4/R5 XPG is only just-about 'much better' than a U2-bin Seoul P4.

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Well, your logic is that if they list the LED type, some might use that type of LED with the worst brightness/color bins. Obviously that is a possibility that would inevitably happen(as with the Lumapower LED flashlight I bought recently), but the way these big name headlamp co's do business now is even worse! Not only dont they NOT use and list better name LED's, they use crappy, outdated LED's, AND most of those crappy LED's have low to pathetic efficiency and horrible color most of the time! It seems to me that things would be better if all co's used and listed Cree or Luminous LED's, and even though a few might use the LED bins of lower quality, the rest would be offering much better headlamps than what they offer today!

Would it be better if all the 25-30 high end flashlight manufacturers stopped using and advertising Cree or Luminous LED's, and switched back to 5mm blue-ish LED's, or some half-a$$ed 3w "High-Flux" LED's, all so that a few of them wouldnt be sneaking in the XM-L and XP-G's of lesser brightness bins? I'm not sure I follow that logic... I'd rather have a lesser bin XM-L than a 5mm .5w LED that throws out a whopping 3 lumens...

Plus, its the responsibility of the industry and the individual co's to educate the consumer. When computers really finally took off in the mid 90's into the 2000's, most people initially didnt know the Pentium processor was better than the Celeron, but people learned, and then the educated consumers bought the Pentium processor, and later the AMD Athlon, etc. People will learn whats good and what isnt.

uk_caver said:

I'm not sure what a mass manufacturer has to gain by specifying LED types, since not only do most people not have much of a clue what LED is which (as pointed out above), but even thinking of customers who do, it's not clear that adding information is going to help sales overall.

For instance, if someone made a light using XP-Gs when they were the latest thing, mentioning that on the packaging could end up, after the release of XM-Ls, with some people downrating the light for not having the latest emitters even if XP-Gs were the better LED for that design.

(Currently I'm making a recently-designed module to retrofit existing lights, where even though I have freedom to use any LEDs, I'm using an XP-G and an XP-E. The XP-G (for a flood beam) because I get a wider range of nice colour bins than if I used XM-Ls, and the XP-E (for a spot beam) to get a tighter beam.
However, I'm fairly confident that in my particular target market, unless I made an effort to explain my choices in detail (which many people wouldn't read anyway), of the people who actually care at all about LED types, a decent fraction would automatically assume 'XM-L->better' since that's about the limit of their knowledge.)

I'd also wonder if, were the public actually more educated about LED types, that would just lead to the less-scrupulous manufacturers trying to make a big deal out of the type while putting in LEDs from the worst brightness bins.
If all the package says is 'Uses Cree XM-L!!', but it's a T5, some people might take that as meaning it's better than a light using an XP-G even if output is essentially the same as an R5 XP-G, at least up to 700mA or so.

And as for smaller manufacturers making lights which are:

I suppose it might depend on what people's idea of 'much better' is.

Personally, for me to call an LED meaningfully better in terms of efficiency, I'd be thinking of an improvement in output of ~20% compared to some other LED at the same power consumption, and to call an LED much better, I'd be thinking of more like 40% higher output.
In that sense, to me, for operation in the sub-500mA range, an R4/R5 XPG is only just-about 'much better' than a U2-bin Seoul P4.

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Actual;ly, many of the Cree LED's ARE more than 50-100-200-300% more efficient in the same brightness range. In the OP I gave examples of that. If a light with only 100L(Mammut Lucido) has battery life of only 120 minutes on 3 AA's, thats pretty poor! My new Jetbeam Pa-10 runs on only 1 - AA at 140L for 90 minutes. Do the math, thats almost 300% more efficient, and with an XM-L. Not only that, but the PA-10 cost me $62, whereas the Mammut Lucido cost $100, so that seems MUCH better. Even my little $38 Jetbeam BC-10(XP-G) runs at 270 Lumens on 1 CR123 for about 90 minutes....Or 30L for 18 hours. so at 100L, the BC-10 would last somewhere around 5.5 hours, compared to 2 hours with the Mammut(which cost 3 times the price)


I have an older LED hadlamp bought in 2007, but put on the market around 2005 or so, and it has 3-5mm LED's, and 1-Luxeon LED. I think the Luxeon puts out 30-35lumens or so, and the - 5mm LED's put out significantly less than 35 lumens. But, when I first took it out on a few multi day backpacking trips(before I had even heard of Cree LED's), I though it was pretty darn good. Especially for $35. It runs on 3 AA's. But compard with the new Zebralight headlamps which cost $40-$70 or so, it isnt nearly as bright, and only a fraction as efficient. But it does work so.......

HighlanderNorth said:

Well, your logic is that if they list the LED type, some might use that type of LED with the worst brightness/color bins. Obviously that is a possibility that would inevitably happen(as with the Lumapower LED flashlight I bought recently), but the way these big name headlamp co's do business now is even worse! Not only dont they NOT use and list better name LED's, they use crappy, outdated LED's, AND most of those crappy LED's have low to pathetic efficiency and horrible color most of the time! It seems to me that things would be better if all co's used and listed Cree or Luminous LED's, and even though a few might use the LED bins of lower quality, the rest would be offering much better headlamps than what they offer today!

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But surely, the important thing is the actual output and/or beamshape?
Particularly away from the 3xAA/AAA or single lithium cell lights (where there's generally a limit to how bad driver efficiency can be, with the worst-case for a linear regulator being ~75%), someone could put a good model of LED in a light with a crap driver and a customer basing a choice on led type could end up being misled far more than just by a lumen figure.

HighlanderNorth said:

Would it be better if all the 25-30 high end flashlight manufacturers stopped using and advertising Cree or Luminous LED's, and switched back to 5mm blue-ish LED's, or some half-a$$ed 3w "High-Flux" LED's, all so that a few of them wouldnt be sneaking in the XM-L and XP-G's of lesser brightness bins? I'm not sure I follow that logic...

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Well, don't blame me, since that isn't my logic, but a seeming strawman distortion of it.

HighlanderNorth said:

Plus, its the responsibility of the industry and the individual co's to educate the consumer.

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Why?
And how are they to educate the average consumer (let alone the below-average consumer) about all the finer points of one LED version compared to another, even ignoring things like output bins.

HighlanderNorth said:

When computers really finally took off in the mid 90's into the 2000's, most people initially didnt know the Pentium processor was better than the Celeron.

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Though in that case, they could probably have got some idea from the fact that the one manufacturer would offer a range of cosmetically similar boxes, with different prices that to a fair extent, reflected the differences in performance.
Also, there were all manner of magazines around providing plenty of information for anyone who could be bothered to buy one in their local newsagent.

HighlanderNorth said:

Actually, many of the Cree LED's ARE more than 50-100-200-300% more efficient in the same brightness range.

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To be 100% better, you'd have to compare a light with the best XM-L with one using something of XR-E P4 performance or worse.
Excluding really low-end ones, are there really many of those around now in current lights, and even where there are, wouldn't decent lumen/runtime figures be sufficient to show the difference?

HighlanderNorth said:

I have an older LED hadlamp bought in 2007, but put on the market around 2005 or so, and it has 3-5mm LED's, and 1-Luxeon LED. I think the Luxeon puts out 30-35lumens or so, and the - 5mm LED's put out significantly less than 35 lumens. But, when I first took it out on a few multi day backpacking trips(before I had even heard of Cree LED's), I though it was pretty darn good. Especially for $35. It runs on 3 AA's. But compard with the new Zebralight headlamps which cost $40-$70 or so, it isnt nearly as bright, and only a fraction as efficient. But it does work so.......

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So what?

Given simple lumen information, if such a light was on sale now, it'd be fairly easy for people to compare with other models they might be thinking of buying.

Most people seem fairly unlikely to care about led models in lights. I don[t see why I should expect the average guy or gal to share the interest I might have in them.

Having sold a few hundred caving lights and light inserts over the last 8 years, the level of interest in the actual LED type among people I sell to is extremely low, and that's for people who are actually going to depend on the light for safety and enjoyment, as the only thing they're intending to use for extended travel in complete darkness. Excluding actually developing an extra passion for lighting for its own sake, I'm not sure that many groups could be expected to be much more motivated.
They are interested in the brightness/beamshape/runtime, but not to any great precision.
If I come out with an upgrade, they're interested in how bright it is, or how much brighter it is than what they have, but pretty much never what's inside it, and that includes a fairly hefty fraction who are science/engineering graduates and students - their lack of interest doesn't stem from any lack of ability to understand.

I'd expect that most average headtorch buyers are not likely to be any more interested than they are.

Owen said:

I'd say that's more true here than anywhere I've ever seen.

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I see plenty of people here at CPF who like particular brands, but are still open-mindedly critical of them. (And then you have your slavish fanbois, too.) And your average CPF reader can be a little more opinionated about lights because he or she knows a whole heckuva lot more about lights than does your average poster on the cooking forum, or whatever.

The posts I was referring to on other forums were of the sort:

"I bought it, it's the only headlamp I've ever owned, and it is the best, and you should go buy one just like mine."

If you bring up tint, brightness, efficiency, or CRI, you get,

"What you talkin bout boy? I done tole you this here 1999 vintage headlamp with the huge battery pack is the best, end of story."

You don't see that much here at CPF. Opinions? Yes. Ignorance? Not so much. So, no, it's not the same sort of commentary as you get here on CPF.

Owen said:

Yep, all that matters is that the people who buy them are satisfied with them.

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In other words, "ignorance is bliss?" Shoot, I could still be happy strapping a MiniMag to my head (as I used to do), if I hadn't joined CPF and learned about better lights.

I like the fact that most mass market headlamps are under-powered or over-priced. If you have ever gone camping and had the misfortune of having your campsite be next to some idiot who had a bright headlamp or flashlight and treated it like a toy, you know what I mean. Imagine how much worse it would be if every headlamp had up-to-date technology and was affordable.

It does seem to take the larger brands much longer to update their lines. To be clear though I own mainly Black Diamond and Princeton Tec headlamps at the moment with an Icon and an old River Rock thrown in for variety. Price is a relative thing, the most expensive one that I own was my first Apex at $65.00, and I've yet to pay more than that for a headlamp.

I don't know if fanboy is the right word for me but I am on my fourth model of the Princeton Tec Apex and I have yet to find anything to replace it with, though I have tried to find a more compact model for certain situations (BD Spot (2008) did a good job at the time, Spot (2010) is poor substitute. I need a headlamp with both spot and flood in the same package as I don't always have a free hand to grab my LX2 out of my vest. Just having one led with a spot or flood capacity is not going to work for me and I sold my Surefire Saint for that very reason.

To the OP though. I do think that the big brands are still relevant, though if you want ultralight and compact then you're probably not going to be able to look to them. Just comparing outputs and leds does not always show the full picture and how useful a headlamp really is.

I completely agree with the original post. I was at REI yesterday to look at headlamps. Even "high end" models like the Petzl Ultra Belt Accu 4 look and feel like toys. It's not even waterproof. I guess with a low low price of $500 they could not find a way to waterproof it. Do you suppose it might overheat with a 350 lumen output and a plastic body? And no, this headlamp is not useful for reading maps, the lowest setting is rated at a 30m beam.

I've check the BD headlamps recently, and found that they start using the XML now, yet still a little overpriced to me.

Keep in mind a lot of us enjoy modding lights and many of these lower cost lights are remarkably easy to mod. For example, I've modded several of my old Luxeon-based PT EOS headlamps through several generations of LEDS. These mods can be completed in only a few minutes. And, I have been able to hand pick the LEDs and reflectors to obtain a desired result.

This was state of the art in the 80's and 90's. I can't tell you how many times it got jerked off my head when the wires snagged on something. I am enjoying the leaps and bounds made in technology since then.