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 pink gentle to protect evening imaginative and prescient, a battery meter, and an digital lock to forestall unintentional battery drain. It’s additionally a twin energy headlamp that comes with a detachable Petzl Core Rechargeable battery, however will also be powered by 3 AAA batteries with out an additional adapter. This gives piece of thoughts and adaptability if you happen to’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 (all sorts))
- 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
- Execs: 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 just a few quirks which might be straightforward to adapt to when you get used its operation.
Battery
The headlamp comes with a Petzl Core battery inside. This can be a rechargeable battery which is appropriate with different Petzl merchandise. It may be faraway from the headlamp and you should purchase a number of of them if you wish to carry extras. Nonetheless, as a substitute 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 shifting towards.
The Core battery holds 1250 mAh of energy which is a bit on the low facet in that it solely gives as much as 7 hours of burn time on the headlamp’s medium setting, which throws 100 lumens of sunshine. In most circumstances, that needs to 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 evening. In case you plan on path operating in the dead of night, you might have considered trying a headlamp with an even bigger battery and an extended runtime, however for the common 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 via it, even if you happen to don’t use the headlamp day by day. 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 function to forestall unintentional battery drain, which I think about vital function on any headlamp that shall be carried in a backpack. It has three brightness settings: 600 lumens, 100 lumens, and seven lumens, in a flood or extensive beam sample, together with a pink mode and pink 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 most likely solely use the 100 lumen setting from time to time, and the pink mode more often than not, so that you don’t wish to blind your companions when sitting across the campfire at evening.
Battery Compartment
The battery compartment door on the Petzl Actik Core takes just a few go-rounds to acclimatize to. It’s somewhat tough to open and get shut once more. However when you do it just a few occasions, you’ll see that you need to use a good quantity of pressure 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 a substitute 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 best 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 (many times), particularly if you happen to don’t use it on a regular basis. The flexibility to make use of the rechargeable battery or 3 AAA batteries (with no 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 plenty of gear producers try to standardize on USB-C to reduce the variety of recharging wires that individuals want to hold. I’ve little question that Petzl will make the CORE battery USB-C succesful in some unspecified time in the future sooner or later; the query is whether or not USB-C is vital 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 might be USB-C succesful, having a twin energy functionality on a light-weight headlamp continues to be comparatively uncommon and could be worthwhile to have. Carrying a number of charging cords isn’t a giant deal for me, since I’ve been doing it for years now, however I feel it’s a choice level value contemplating relying in your circumstances.
Disclosure: Petzl donated a headlamp for overview.
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