l was guessing on the driver failures not able to diagnosis root causes of that type. Your guess is probably better on that side.
I think my experience with cables failing can be divided into two scenarios - battery in a jacket pocket vs. battery on the head strap. There definitely is a rhythmic cable movement with each stride and torso rotation when the cable goes into a pocket off your head. When I was modifying my Princeton Tec Eos 20 years ago (and talking about it here), my most useful but failure prone modification was adding a remote battery pack that I kept warm in a jacket pocket. The wires would fail about once a week, and I'd try to remake it better each time (using heat shrink for protection/strain relief). The cables on my original Magicshine also only lasted about one week, using it with the battery in a pocket. More recently, I was watching the UTMB streaming this summer, and Zach Miller, the American runner who finished second, was describing his Moonlight headlamp cable rhythmically and loudly banging on his pack, making it sound like someone was running behind him. That amount of cable movement can't be good for cable reliability.
The Gemini cables lasted longer before failure, more like a year or two, because the cables were moving a lot less since I kept the battery pack on the head strap. But they always eventually failed after about a year or two, even trying to bend them as little as possible. Maybe that was more a strain relief than vibration issue from unplugging for charging 100+ times per year.
I'm guessing cable reliability is one of the reasons why bike lights have moved away from battery cables and to self contained battery designs. Yet cables are necessary for the larger class of headlamp, allowing balance, more battery capacity, and ability to hide the batteries from the cold. Lucifer looks attractive for someone with my experience, since you are the only brand to really tout your cable durability and cold resistance.
www.blackdiamondequipment.com
