Cool deal. For $30 you can't beat it.
The plastic...... Heres the deal, it appears to me they went the function route instead of the form in regards to materials. Its's lightweight, but also relatively durable for what it is.
Take the PT headlamps, they feel much more "expensive" with a more texturized, more solid feeling material. They are also are known to crack at the battery door... a lot.
I have never read of a Petzl cracking with normal use and I feel their plastic would also fair better in cold weather applications. Another advantage to plastic in cold weather is it doesn't get
cold. I also believe they spent a lot of time taking weight into consideration when choosing materials. In addition, in simple real world drop tests form 3 feet, I also believe the Petzl would fair
much better than the aluminum body ZL for longer.
What I find most interesting.... The IPX rating. Petzl has an IPX4 rating, Zebralight has an IPX8. There have been many reports of ZL leaking and then going dead. It's important to note this
is due to dunk tests while people tend not to dunk test the Tikka. What's interesting is the Tikka can get wet inside and simply be dried out as the electronics are siliconed, where as the ZL is
out of luck because it relies on perfect sealing which they seem to miss from batch to batch. So in real world applications / Heavy rain / high moisture I feel the Tikka would fair better long
term than the IPX8 ZL. Who would actually swim with either light as a headlamp?
Like I said before, if you took a consensus of people who go caving in the real world and offered them a ZL or Petzl, I would be surprised if any of them didn't choose the Petzl.