A headlamp is a pretty essential piece of gear. I've been through a bunch of them, having killed quite a few. Well, I tried going without one for about 6 months, instead relying on a phone flashlight, a little flashlight on my spare battery, and a keychain light, but there's something about having both hands free that just works.

And so, I did a bunch of research and selected what I thought was the "best" headlamp, and thought to share my thinking here so that maybe someone else can use this as a shortcut. It would also be cool to get a headlamp thread going, so that new tourists have a resource.

Here are my headlamp parameters:

1. Brightness - I am not using this as a "riding" light. I have a 350 lumen light for that. This is for night tasks in camp, including late-night bathroom runs in the dark woods. 70-90 lumens is about perfect for this.

2. Battery Life - This may be my most important concern. I don't like to stop to charge things, so if my lights last longer, I can keep riding and ignore the batteries. I also wanted something that would charge via USB, because I have aspirations for a dyno setup.

3. Price - I don't want to spend a fortune because, like I said, I may kill this headlamp by accident.


I looked first at Petzl, having several good experiences with them. They used to have a "CORE" rechargeable battery system, but that has apparently been discontinued and the new system has yet to be unveiled. I was very frustrated with Petzl:

- The website was very unhelpful in telling me which lights were rechargeable and which weren't.
- Some product descriptions described options (like the CORE) that are no longer available for sale.
-Some product descriptions were wrong. The Actina was described one place as being USB rechargeable, in another place as being CORE compatible, in a third place as having a prioprietary, unique rechargeable block, and in a fourth place as being USB compatible right out of the box. Ugh!
- The price of these headlamps was higher than most others.

I also looked at some other headlamp brands and manufacturers. here were some issues I ran into:

- The Amazon market is flooded with headlamps from unknown brands. Most are foreign-based. There's nothing inherently wrong with equipment made in China or whatever, but there's no knowledge of reliability, long-term durability, etc. It's frustrating having to wade through so much no-name stuff to find an actually thoughtfully produced item. And, there could be some gems in the murk, but I don't have the patience to try and weed them out. Too bad.

-Most headlamps either fall into a "cheap and simple" price point of ~$25 with no features, low lumens, bad battery life, or heavy weight. Or, they're designed for caving/night-alpinism with 200+ lumens and 1.5lb belt-mounted battery packs. In other words, way more headlamp than I need. Petzl doesn't seem to have a middle-of-the-road option that is USB rechargeable (or, it was too hard to find whether or not it was).

I looked at Black Diamond. The ReVolt checked all my boxes:

-USB rechargeable with a very long battery life
-Can run off of regular batteries in a jam
-$47, not too pricey considering rechargeable headlamps from Petzl and Princeton Tec seem to start at $85
-Simple. Nothing fancy.



So, that's the one I went with. So now I have this headlamp, and a bike light that is bolted onto the bike.

Hope this "review" is useful in some way. I'll follow up with a long-term later. Now there's one more potentially useful thread when people search "headlamps" on here - it would be great if people could chime in with what they like/dislike about their own headlamps.