I'd like to hear from someone that has ridden it hard and put it away wet.
Ok, here you go. I took the Nao up with me to test it out. I typed up my thoughts...
For those who want a visual on what the Reactive lighting is:
http://youtu.be/FZb3k_x067w
My real world testing of the Petzl Nao, and quick thoughts on the Fenix PD32UE tested on a real deep wilderness hiking trip.
Location and conditions for real world use test:
Cucamonga Wilderness, San Bernardino National Forest (SBNF), CA
Entry point was at the Middle Fork Trailhead 6W01 (3,983 ft and light snow dusting on ground) using the upper trail past Third Stream Crossing (5,600 ft, 2-4" of snow) to Icehouse Saddle (7,600 ft). From there I headed North to Telegraph Peak (8,985 ft, 6-10" of snow). Getting to Telegraph peak was done in daylight, and coming back was after sunset. Weather conditions ranged from 41 degrees at the Middle Fork Trailhead to 19 degrees at Telegraph Peak after sunset. Some stream hopping and heavy foliage and huge boulder climbing/descending was necessary.
I'll skip right to the part where I started testing the lights.
The Fenix PD32UE puts out a WALL of light. I do not doubt the specs pushing 740 lumens. It was a wide spot so it did not penetrate very far in the pitch dark wilderness. But closer range it just completely lit up the area. It is (in my opinion) an average performing light for hiking good as a secondary unit. Mainly due to the side switch. The placement of the side switch (mode switching) is exactly where my pinky or palm falls when using gloves. And sometimes I would hit the switch accidentally switching modes unintentionally. The 2 raised sided around the tailcap is annoying and made it harder to use with gloves. It was hard to sense where the raised spots were and could not reliably push the button. Also, the 3 minutes on Burst mode was annoying as I surveyed the area and/or looked for eye shine for longer than this sometimes and would kick down to a lower level. Also, the 30 minutes or so on Turbo limit makes it pretty much a 3 level light with limited Turbo/Burst use. This is not my first choice for deep woods hiking. Great EDC light though. Performed flawlessly being dunked in the ice cold stream and thrown around in snow.
Petzl Nao:
It started getting dark right around 6:00 PM, (the Mountains and heavy trees cover the sun losing light earlier than in the city.I put on my Nao right around 6:15 and turned it on. I programmed the light using the Petzl Provided "Hiking" profile and tweaked it a bit. In reactive mode, I have it set for 5 levels of lighting ranging from 15% flood to 100% spot/40% flood. The Reactive mode performed very well, staying at level 1 most of the time I was cooking up my meal before heading down. The deep woods do play mind tricks on you with strange noises and unidentifiable animal sounds, so I kept looking up and around the area. The levels changed fast and reliably, as I scanned around for any eye shine to worry about since the Ranger I spoke with before heading out said his truck was chased by a Mtn Lion a few days prior.
This is where the reactive mode really helped, because normally I would flip through the different modes frequently. Having the handsfree option was nice. Also, I had 3 profiles stored in the headlamp and was able to switch from very low light profile to max output profile easily when I needed to. For example, when I was out collecting dry firewood I would have it on Reactive on a high profile I had programmed for doing tasks such as this. Then when I returned to my little area I switched to a low output profile except for Level 5 which I had set at 100% spot in case I looked up to see far.
When I needed to climb over some boulders and navigate through heavy foliage, I set it to my low light hiking profile because I didn't want to be accidentally blinded by 350+ lumens bouncing back at me.
Here are my thoughts on some pros and cons after taking it out for half a day, half of which was in pitch darkness in deep woods, sometimes away from any sort of trails.
Pros:
-User programable light levels from 1%-100%. This is the #1 feature in my opinion because one person's opinion of "low" is different from another. One person might want 5 lumens for low while another might want 10 lumens, etc. With other Headlamps I have used, you get what the company provides you. so if low is set at 15 lumens, med at 60 lumens and high at 200 lumens... its what you get and have to live with. So if you want specific programmability for output levels, this is the headlight for you.
-Reactive lighting. Yes, it worked very well. Better than I expected. As I hiked the trail, and looked down at my feet, it triggered level 1 which I had set at 20% flood only. Then as I looked up the light recognized this and progressively went to Level 2,3,4, and finally 5 which I had set at 100% spot and 40% flood. Level switching was very smooth and ramped up and down rather than an abrupt switch as I navigated through heavy forest landscape.
-Water Resistant. I wouldn't use this under water, but the rubber gaskets kept the moisture out. I did dunk it in the stream and drop it in snow. a quick wipe down and it worked fine. This will survive in rain and splashing conditions.
-Head strap. The 2 bungees on both sides actually work better than my band type head strap. Especially when it got wet, I felt the effects less. It was comfortable to wear for my 4 hour hike through and out of the wilderness.
-Battery Life in Reactive mode. Battery life totally depends on your programming of levels and light intensities at those levels. At 100% output, this is rated at just over an hour of runtime. After 4 hours of real world use in rugged terrain, the indicator showed 2 bars out of 3 lit so runtime is excellent. With the right programming, you can achieve 12+ hours of reactive lighting or a little over an hour depending on your needs.
-Live runtime estimates and test feature for the programming software. You can program and set levels while watching the estimated runtime estimate adjust based on your programming. And you can hit "Test" and the light will fire up at the level you are setting. At any time you can move the Spot and Flood intensity setting and the Nao will respond accordingly live so you can see the light produced at that current setting. Very nice feature. I played with it and tweaked the Flood/Spot mixture til I got the settings I liked.
-Switch. I wore Camelbak's cold weather gloves and I was easily able to operate the switch. Switching between Reactive levels and Constant and profiles is simple.
Cons:
-Power design. Well this thing uses a 18650 Li-ion battery, but in a proprietary "Petzl" setup. It would have been ideal for the end user if Petzl would have placed the necessary small electronics to the battery case so the 18650 could be popped in and out easily. With some gutting and soldering and shrink wrapping, a savvy user can upgrade this battery. But the point is we shouldn't have to do all that. As it stands, if you do not want to mess with anything, you will have to buy $50 spare battery units and you only get 2300 mAh, frustrating when there are better 3400 mAh choices out there.
-Price. At $175 retail, this is expensive for a headlamp. I would like to see 2 versions of this, one as is for a little less, maybe $149.99 would make it more competitive and another version without the reactive feature but keeping the programmable profiles/ output levels reducing the price even further for those that do not need or want reactive lighting.
-Heavy fog interferes with the reactive sensor. I don't know if this is really a "con" because it's not the fault of the headlamp. But it did do some funky level changes while I hiked through some heavy fog. Also, even without fog, the moisture from my breath would flicker the light as it passed over the sensor. Again, I don't know if there is anything Petzl could do to fix this, it is just the nature of how the reactive mode works...
Overall, after using it this will be my #1 headlamp for night hiking due to the #1. Programmable Profiles and #2. Reactive lighting reducing the need to manually adjust to almost never. In some situations, I'd say about 10% of the time, I did manually adjust Spot/Flood/Lighting output. This is not for everyone as there are very nice alternatives. So this can be summarized by saying that the Petzl Nao sets itself apart from its competition by being programmable and having Reactive lighting.
My trusty Subaru got me to there and back..... never have needed chains