jzmtl
Flashlight Enthusiast
It's a very nice looking headlight, comes in orange, black, and camo I believe. The one I picked up is orange. The color is really down to personal preference, because of its design, camo and black will not be any steathier than orange, you'll see why shortly.
Pretty stock photo
Crappy my photo
As you can see from the above photos, it has a main power LED, and 4 5mm LED. What great about this headlight's UI is unlike most other headlights, it's not necessary to click through all of them to get to the mode you want. There are two electronic clickies under the light, each control one type of the LED. Power LED cycles through hi and lo, hold down button to turn off. 5mm LED cycle through hi, lo, and blink, hold down button to turn off. Turn on one automatically turn off the other, so it's not possible to have both power LED and 5mm LED on at the same time. Interesting thing, you can actually turn one LED off by holding down the other button. The little LED below power LED is the power level indicator. It lights up when headlight is on, and go from green to yellow to red as battery runs down. When the headlight is turned off, it continues to blink every 6 seconds or so as a locator signal for 24 hours (and it's pretty visible in the dark). Aside from this, when the light drop out of regulation whatever LED you have on will also blink a couple of times to let you know. The unit is attached to back plate via a hinge to allow it to tilt up and down for 100° or so.
Princeton tec claims 5mm LED used are from nichia, no bin is specified. Power LED is either Luxeon or SSC P4. New model that say 130 lumen on packaging is SSC P4, but there are still old stock with Luxeon going around at this time. Mine came with luxeon, but I swapped in a U2SVOH bin SSC P4.
The headlight is powered by 4 AA batteries. Alkaline, Nimh, and lithium (NOT lithium ion rechargeable) can be used, and the headlight is fully regulated on all three. All 4 batteries reside in the battery pack, which is sealed by a rubber o ring. The o ring tend to pop out when pulling the tray out so watch for that. I used a bit of Permatex ultra black RTV silicone to glue it in so there's no more problem. The slide out tray has cutout in the back so batteries are easily pushed out, no need for fingernail breaking prying. Tray is locked closed via a cam on bottom of pack, which is also sealed with o ring. Princeton Tec specified time in regulation is pretty much spot on with alkaline cells. With Nimh however you are looking at over 3 hours in regulation with main LED on high, compare to 1 hour with alkaline.
On back of head unit is the most substantial heat sink I've ever seen on any LED light, it's basically an aluminum CPU heat sink residing in a plastic cage, with emitter directly attached via thermal paste on the inside. You probably can't get any better heat management than this.
The whole unit sits on head comfortably. You can get away with not using the top strap if you don't move around, but if you do it's necessary or it slides down your head. The whole thing with battery installed does weight quite a bit, and while it's still very comfortable walking around with it, you can definitely feel the weight if you jump/run around with it.
Onto some beamshots. Keep in mind large manufacturers like Princeton Tec doesn't specify tint bin when purchasing LED so the tint you get will vary. Also the below photos are taken with DAYLIGHT color balance, so the 5mm LED appears to be bluer than perceived during use. In reality it's very similar to fenix e01 GS. However you can also see how nice the U2SVOH SSC is. Exposure and aperture are locked between photos.
The 5mm LED are quite floody, while main LED is more throwy (although still less so than most handheld flashlights). All 4 modes are quite bright actually, 5mm low is enough to move around. There is no true low mode on this light, any of them will blow your night adapted vision out of the water. I would say 5mm low is same brightness as fenix e01 GS.
Control
5mm low
5mm high
main LED low
main LED high
That's all the outdoor photo I'm going to take for now, as you can see it's already snowing, so it's cold out.
I used to not like headlight much and thought they were geeky, and a flashlight clipped to hat bill works. Now that I have one thou, I wish I had picked it up sooner, it's really handy, and works a lot better (at least this one does) than regular light clipped to hat bill.
Like:
Both throw and flood in one package
Great UI that doesn't require click through all the mode with one button
Full regulation on alkaline, Nimh, and lithium
Dislike:
The tint on 5mm LED could be whiter
Wish it had:
Option of detachable battery pack with different length of cable so it can be attached to either back of head or elsewhere on body.
Pretty stock photo
Crappy my photo
As you can see from the above photos, it has a main power LED, and 4 5mm LED. What great about this headlight's UI is unlike most other headlights, it's not necessary to click through all of them to get to the mode you want. There are two electronic clickies under the light, each control one type of the LED. Power LED cycles through hi and lo, hold down button to turn off. 5mm LED cycle through hi, lo, and blink, hold down button to turn off. Turn on one automatically turn off the other, so it's not possible to have both power LED and 5mm LED on at the same time. Interesting thing, you can actually turn one LED off by holding down the other button. The little LED below power LED is the power level indicator. It lights up when headlight is on, and go from green to yellow to red as battery runs down. When the headlight is turned off, it continues to blink every 6 seconds or so as a locator signal for 24 hours (and it's pretty visible in the dark). Aside from this, when the light drop out of regulation whatever LED you have on will also blink a couple of times to let you know. The unit is attached to back plate via a hinge to allow it to tilt up and down for 100° or so.
Princeton tec claims 5mm LED used are from nichia, no bin is specified. Power LED is either Luxeon or SSC P4. New model that say 130 lumen on packaging is SSC P4, but there are still old stock with Luxeon going around at this time. Mine came with luxeon, but I swapped in a U2SVOH bin SSC P4.
The headlight is powered by 4 AA batteries. Alkaline, Nimh, and lithium (NOT lithium ion rechargeable) can be used, and the headlight is fully regulated on all three. All 4 batteries reside in the battery pack, which is sealed by a rubber o ring. The o ring tend to pop out when pulling the tray out so watch for that. I used a bit of Permatex ultra black RTV silicone to glue it in so there's no more problem. The slide out tray has cutout in the back so batteries are easily pushed out, no need for fingernail breaking prying. Tray is locked closed via a cam on bottom of pack, which is also sealed with o ring. Princeton Tec specified time in regulation is pretty much spot on with alkaline cells. With Nimh however you are looking at over 3 hours in regulation with main LED on high, compare to 1 hour with alkaline.
On back of head unit is the most substantial heat sink I've ever seen on any LED light, it's basically an aluminum CPU heat sink residing in a plastic cage, with emitter directly attached via thermal paste on the inside. You probably can't get any better heat management than this.
The whole unit sits on head comfortably. You can get away with not using the top strap if you don't move around, but if you do it's necessary or it slides down your head. The whole thing with battery installed does weight quite a bit, and while it's still very comfortable walking around with it, you can definitely feel the weight if you jump/run around with it.
Onto some beamshots. Keep in mind large manufacturers like Princeton Tec doesn't specify tint bin when purchasing LED so the tint you get will vary. Also the below photos are taken with DAYLIGHT color balance, so the 5mm LED appears to be bluer than perceived during use. In reality it's very similar to fenix e01 GS. However you can also see how nice the U2SVOH SSC is. Exposure and aperture are locked between photos.
The 5mm LED are quite floody, while main LED is more throwy (although still less so than most handheld flashlights). All 4 modes are quite bright actually, 5mm low is enough to move around. There is no true low mode on this light, any of them will blow your night adapted vision out of the water. I would say 5mm low is same brightness as fenix e01 GS.
Control
5mm low
5mm high
main LED low
main LED high
That's all the outdoor photo I'm going to take for now, as you can see it's already snowing, so it's cold out.
I used to not like headlight much and thought they were geeky, and a flashlight clipped to hat bill works. Now that I have one thou, I wish I had picked it up sooner, it's really handy, and works a lot better (at least this one does) than regular light clipped to hat bill.
Like:
Both throw and flood in one package
Great UI that doesn't require click through all the mode with one button
Full regulation on alkaline, Nimh, and lithium
Dislike:
The tint on 5mm LED could be whiter
Wish it had:
Option of detachable battery pack with different length of cable so it can be attached to either back of head or elsewhere on body.
