Petzl Actik Core Headlamp Review

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 purple 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 can be powered by 3 AAA batteries with out an additional adapter. This offers piece of thoughts and suppleness in case you’re mountaineering or backpacking in distant places 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)Kind: Twin Energy (included rechargeable battery or 3AAA batteries (all kinds))Battery: 1250 mAh includedWeight: 2.9 oz / 82gMax Brightness: 600 lumensWhite Runtimes: 600 lumens – 2h; 100 lumens – 7h; 7 lumens – 100hHeadband: Reflective strapPros: twin energy, intuitive management sequence, digital lock, energy meterCons: not-USB C appropriate, battery compartment takes observe to open/shut

The Petzl Actik Core Headlamp is a finely made, high-powered headlamp with a number of quirks which are 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 buy a number of of them if you wish to carry extras. Nonetheless, 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 shifting towards.

The Core battery holds 1250 mAh of energy which is a bit on the low aspect 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 infrequently use my headlamp when tenting besides to pee a couple of times at evening. If you happen to plan on path operating at midnight, you might have considered trying a headlamp with a much bigger battery and an extended runtime, however for the common three season hiker, 7 hours of runtime between costs is greater than sufficient.

Command Sequence

The Petzl Actik Core headlamp has a single button on prime which makes it pretty straightforward to recollect the command sequence and cycle by it, even in case you don’t use the headlamp each 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 take into account a must have 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 purple mode and purple 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 every so often, and the purple 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 a number of go-rounds to acclimatize to. It’s a bit of tough to open and get shut once more. However when you do it a number of instances, you’ll see that you need to use a good quantity of drive to open it with out breaking the door. You do want a robust thumbnail although.

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 appropriate place.

Advice

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 in case you don’t use it on a regular basis. The power 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 too can use cold-resistant lithium AAA batteries.

Whereas these are very worthwhile options, it’s a pity that the Petzl CORE battery just isn’t USB-C appropriate, since most hikers and backpackers and plenty of gear producers try to standardize on USB-C to attenuate the variety of recharging wires that folks 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 are USB-C succesful, having a twin energy functionality on a light-weight headlamp remains 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 believe it’s a call level price contemplating relying in your circumstances. 

Disclosure: Petzl donated a headlamp for overview.

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