As we that work in the outdoors have known for a long time now we need quality hands free lighting to work effectively when it gets dark.
And God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light 'day', and the darkness he called 'night'. And there was evening, and there was morning, the first day."
(Gen. 1:2-5)
In the beginning was the Petzl Zoom and this was the standard for many years. It had a bulky battery pack lasted about two hours on continuous and went very yellow on dimming.
In the last 28 years we have come on leaps and bounds in terms of of hands free lighting and batteries to power these beasts of necessity.
There is now talk of LED, Lumens, LUXE and Lithium Polymer and regulated outputs, its a lot of jargon but something we use as our buying power to make sense of it all.
We need something special to make darkness into light as we are not God.
I have been using a
Suprabeam V3r since last November in some very foul and windy cold conditions. On one charge I have had just over 6 hours with variable light outputs. In the package when you buy this great piece of kit. You get the head torch,long and curly cable, spare Li-Poly battery, carry case USB and car charger. A great deal for your money!
I have found its sits well on my head and have used on top of a climbing helmet. It does not sit to well my style of Biking helmet but with a bit of adjustment it does fit on.
The build quality is better than a lot of its similar looking rivals it works well with gloves on.
The beam width on wide beam does not have "saturns rings" on the outer edges like some of the other models and the copies brought in from the east.
The spot beam is very bright and without any bounce back from fog/ cloud/ rain/ snow the distance is brilliant.
The battery pack can be placed inside your pack or on your bike to keep it warmer and therefore lasting longer.
The head unit similarly will dismount from the very supple elastic and can be placed low down for a better vision perspective. If you have been out in some very poor nights you will appreciate the re positioning and placement of the main beam.
The facts for the techy folk can be found here on the
V3r pages
In brief its very light
please pardon the pun. 184gms
CREE Power chip LED
Spotlight 230mtrs
Boost 300 lumens
High light 170 lumens
Low Light 25 lumens
From being just an end user of head torches I became an informed user of
head torches and found I was able to answer nearly all of the questions that was presented to me. I feel that the quality, weight, price, and most importantly the
Suprabeam V3r brilliant light output that will last through the night, I had a potential of 12 hours light from the two fully charged batteries I had with me.
This version has a regulated output meaning that the light stays bright while there is charge. For further information on this have a look here at
Candlepowerforum this will help explain why modern batteries with circuity work better for us.
In short there is a plethora of head torches out there with a lot of jargon to dazzle us.
This
Suprabeam V3r works brilliantly and the price is right. Pack one in all year round.
