Thanks, degarb, I too am impressed with these for the price.
I found two packs of 4, laying on top of the other Brinkman multi-pack headlamps. One package has two black and two red, one each of a slightly different shape bezel but a simple foil backed, clear lense. The other pack has two black, a red and a blue, all the same sort of rakish style bezel, with focusing lenses in front of the two white LED's, plain lense in the center over the red LED. I bought them both to see how they compared.
The focusing lenses don't really do much other than add some minor artifacts, but the lights look a bit cooler, IMO, so pretty much a wash there.
The best news is they all work without a hitch, which is better than the Husky 1xAA 2-for-$5 flashlights would do, most folks had about a 1 in 3 or 4 return rate on those, and with eight of these, I think it is safe to say the quality is a bit better.
Brightness is not staggering, just what you would expect from a 2x5mm light that will run all night on a single AA battery. They are remarkably consistent from light to light for both brightness and tint. The tint is really decent for 5 mm's, not very much blue at all. I think they will make very nice night readers, as the "hotspot" is wide enough, and smooth enough to light most of a page at once, and the brightness is plenty up close as when reading. For around the campsite, they should be plenty, but I would not want to hike with one. For in-tent and late night wanders, they are too much, and the red LED, while an expected narrow blotch of light, is much better suited.
I also took battery current measurements on several with a fresh NiMH, and got in the 250 - 300 mA range for the white LED's and 70 -80 mA for the red. So the 7 hour rating on the package seems very realistic, probably much more diminishing light on an alkaline, but the 14 hour claim for the red LED is probably quite pessimistic, I would expect about double that.
Of course, I took one apart. Easy to mod, just two screws to open it, a little spring tension from the springs on the PCB contacting the battery compartment strips, no worry. One could easily solder in a couple of Nichia DS's or GS's, but these LED's have such nice beams, I am in no hurry. The switches are actually soldered components on the board, with the slider button pressed over them, as opposed to cheasy sliding brass strips that always glitch, which I was expecting.
The very light weight of these makes them very comforatable to wear, especially with the simple single headband. The headband has plenty of adjustment, and I did not need to max it out even for my very fat head. The tilt mechanism works very positively, but must be put in one of the detents. They are not overly close spaced, but I found that the beam was wide enough that I was quite comforatable with the second to the top notch for walking about, and the next notch down for reading and working on close projects.
Thanks again, degarb. Hopefully others can still find some of these at the Home Depot stores that want them before they are gone.
