Another (kind of) bright idea from Petzl
Written: Jul 21 '05 (Updated Jul 22 '05)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Small and lightweight, enormous battery and bulb life.
Cons: Too many light settings (strobe is horrible), inadequate light for night navigation.
The Bottom Line: A decent headlamp for backpacking, although I probably should have bought the plain Tikka (3 LED vs. 4) that doesn't offer the exceptionally low light level and strobe features.
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| plilikoi's Full Review: |
I finally broke down and bought an LED headlamp. I’d previously adapted my Petzl Zoom to utilize LED’s, but I decided that it was still too bulky and heavy for my backpacking requirements.
The big advantages of the super-bright white LED headlamps are their smaller size (and weight), along with greatly increased battery and bulb longevity vis-a-vis regular, incandescent (or halogen) bulb, headlamps.
The Petzl Tikka Plus weighs just 78g with its 3 AAA batteries. In comparison, the Petzl Zoom weighs 170g with its 3 AA batteries. Battery life is much greater with the Tikka Plus, 100 hours on its medium brightness setting vs. only 3 hours for the Zoom with AA batteries and its halogen bulb. So there may also be an additional weight saving because you wouldn't need to carry so many batteries on a longer backpacking trip. The trade-off is brightness. The LED lights are great around camp, but are very poor for night time hiking/climbing.
There are many LED headlamps out there, but the Tikka Plus shines in the relative simplicity of its design. The headband is a single band that goes around the head. Because the Tikka Plus weighs so little there is no need for the strap on top of the head that would prevent a heavier headlamp from sliding down your head. The batteries are located up front, obviating the need for wires to carry the power from the back of the head to the front. This is important because these wires are one of the major causes of headlamp failure -- their constant flexing eventually causes one of the wires to break. One drawback of the simple strap is that it is easy to put the headlamp on upside down. On the other hand it’s much easier to untwist the strap before placing the headlamp on your head.
The Tikka Plus has a single push button on top that cycles the light through four different settings, i.e., low, medium, bright and strobe. I just don't understand the utility of the strobe. It's completely idiotic to have a strobe light in a headlamp. I would prefer the headlamp to have just two settings, normal and bright. The low light level is too low and the strobe effect drives me bonkers when I make the mistake of activating it. Once the desired setting has been selected, a further push of the button, after some delay so that you don’t cycle through more settings (and activate the hated strobe), turns off the headlamp.
The angle of the beam is adjustable in five steps, which is a nice feature.
This is a great headlamp for backpacking so long as you plan on reaching camp before dark. On the other hand, the regular Tikka with only 3 LEDs and a single light setting may be just as good for my purposes. For route-finding in the dark, however, you just can't beat a halogen headlamp.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
plilikoi
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 - Top 1000 |
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Location: San Diego, CA, USA
Reviews written: 76
Trusted by: 6 members
About Me:
Raised in Scotland, living in San Diego. Getting older and wiser daily, older for sure!
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