The Petzl Actik Core Headlamp is a high-powered 600 lumen twin energy headlamp loaded with easy-to-use intuitive options together with a single button management, a crimson gentle to protect night time imaginative and prescient, a battery meter, and an digital lock to stop unintentional battery drain. It’s additionally a twin energy headlamp that comes with a detachable Petzl Core Rechargeable battery, however may also be powered by 3 AAA batteries with out an additional adapter. This offers piece of thoughts and adaptability in case you’re mountaineering or backpacking in distant areas the place it’s tough to plug right into a wall to recharge a battery.
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- Product: Petzl Actik Core Headlamp (micro-USB , 3hr cost time)
- Sort: Twin Energy (included rechargeable battery or 3AAA batteries (every type))
- Battery: 1250 mAh included
- Weight: 2.9 oz / 82g
- Max Brightness: 600 lumens
- White Runtimes: 600 lumens – 2h; 100 lumens – 7h; 7 lumens – 100h
- Headband: Reflective strap
- Professionals: twin energy, intuitive management sequence, digital lock, energy meter
- Cons: not-USB C appropriate, battery compartment takes follow to open/shut
The Petzl Actik Core Headlamp is a finely made, high-powered headlamp with a couple of quirks which can be straightforward to adapt to when you get used its operation.
Battery
The headlamp comes with a Petzl Core battery inside. It is a rechargeable battery which is appropriate with different Petzl merchandise. It may be faraway from the headlamp and you should buy a number of of them if you wish to carry extras. Nevertheless, as an alternative of recharging the headlamp, you recharge the battery, which has its personal energy meter, utilizing a micro USB plug. It’s unlucky that the battery isn’t USB-C appropriate, which many manufacturers and merchandise are transferring towards.
The Core battery holds 1250 mAh of energy which is a bit on the low facet in that it solely offers as much as 7 hours of burn time on the headlamp’s medium setting, which throws 100 lumens of sunshine. In most circumstances, that must be loads of gentle for backpacking. For instance, when it will get darkish, I simply fall asleep and barely use my headlamp when tenting besides to pee a couple of times at night time. For those who plan on path working at midnight, it’s your decision a headlamp with an even bigger battery and an extended runtime, however for the typical three season hiker, 7 hours of runtime between prices is greater than sufficient.
Command Sequence
The Petzl Actik Core headlamp has a single button on high which makes it pretty straightforward to recollect the command sequence and cycle by it, even in case you don’t use the headlamp on daily basis. I simply hate sophisticated command sequences, particularly ones that require a number of interdependent buttons to make use of.
The headlamp has an digital lock/unlock characteristic to stop unintentional battery drain, which I contemplate a must have characteristic on any headlamp that will likely be carried in a backpack. It has three brightness settings: 600 lumens, 100 lumens, and seven lumens, in a flood or vast beam sample, together with a crimson mode and crimson strobe. Whereas the headlamp is rated for 600 lumens on excessive energy, you not often want that a lot gentle for three-season mountaineering and backpacking. You’ll in all probability solely use the 100 lumen setting now and again, and the crimson mode more often than not, so that you don’t need to blind your companions when sitting across the campfire at night time.
Battery Compartment
The battery compartment door on the Petzl Actik Core takes a couple of go-rounds to acclimatize to. It’s a bit tough to open and get shut once more. However when you do it a couple of instances, you’ll see that you should use a good quantity of power to open it with out breaking the door. You do want a robust thumbnail although.
Greg P. says to make use of the sting of one of many headstrap adjustment buckles to lever the battery compartment open, as an alternative of your thumbnail. Good! That works nice.
Closing the battery compartment door is simpler. It has a gasket round its periphery to maintain water out. When you see how the door suits into place, it’s straightforward to get it again in the correct place.
Suggestion
The Petzl Actik Core Headlamp is a twin energy headlamp with a single management button and an intuitive command sequence that’s straightforward to determine (repeatedly), particularly in case you don’t use it on a regular basis. The flexibility to make use of the rechargeable battery or 3 AAA batteries (with out a particular adapter) is a “core” functionality that may prolong the utility of the headlamp in additional distant locales, or colder ones, as a result of you can too use cold-resistant lithium AAA batteries.
Whereas these are very worthwhile options, it’s a pity that the Petzl CORE battery is just not USB-C appropriate, since most hikers and backpackers and lots of gear producers are attempting to standardize on USB-C to reduce the variety of recharging wires that individuals want to hold. I’ve little doubt that Petzl will make the CORE battery USB-C succesful sooner or later sooner or later; the query is whether or not USB-C is essential for you now, and whether or not you’ll keen to pay for a brand new CORE USB-C battery when and if one turns into accessible. Whereas there are a rising variety of rechargeable headlamps which can be USB-C succesful, having a twin energy functionality on a light-weight headlamp remains to be comparatively uncommon and might be worthwhile to have. Carrying a number of charging cords isn’t an enormous deal for me, since I’ve been doing it for years now, however I feel it’s a choice level price contemplating relying in your circumstances.
Disclosure: Petzl donated a headlamp for assessment.
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