radiopej
Enlightened
For consideration for the reviews section. This light was sent to me for free by Klarus, to be reviewed.
Manufacturer's Specifications
Emitter: 3 emitters for flood, throw and red light
CREE XP-L HI V6 (Cool White)
CREE XP-E2 R2 (Neutral White)
CREE XP-E2 P2 (red)
100 m throw
Titanium body
Battery type: 1x AA (Alkaline or Ni-MH) or 1x 14500
Instant strobe (from off)
Rain and storm proof (IPX-6 standard)
Impact resistant to 1 m
Length x diameter:
Weight: 73 g (without batteries, but with headband)
ITS Smart Temperature Control System
Lock-out mode
Adjustable angle
Reverse polarity protection
Output
Primary Lamp
High (550 lumens): 55 minutes
Medium (100 lumens): 3 hours 9 minutes
Low (30 lumens): 10 hours 24 minutes
Side Lamp (White Light)
High (50 lumens): 2 hours 49 minutes
Low (10 lumens): 12 hours 42 minutes
SOS (50 lumens): 6 hours 27 minutes
Side Lamp (Red Light)
Constant on (10 lumens): 12 hours 42 minutes
Strobe (10 lumens): 127 hours
Peak Beam Intensity: 2,496 candela (100 metre range)
Included in Package
1x Klarus H1A headlamp
1x Klarus headlamp strap
1x Klarus 14500UR75 battery with built-in MicroUSB charging
1x Carrying case
1x User manual
Initial Impressions
I was quite happy to see the tiny little package this light comes in – it's decently portable and the pouch keeps the light relatively secure.
The independent switches are fairly easy to use, though I have to admit it felt a bit harder when they were on my head.
The light is decently comfortable to wear, though not as comfortable as my LEDLenser Neo due to the rigidity. However, since the Neo is a very lightweight, polycarbonate headlamp with a single emitter designed for running, this is to be expected. The titanium felt quite nice, and I started wondering if it would be fun to try and anodise it later.
Physical Characteristics
As said above, this light is a titanium shell sitting on top of a plastic battery carrier. The headlamp attaches to the strap by a rotating plate, which basically allows you to angle the light to where you need it while it's on your head. This is a welcome move – particularly to avoid getting yelled at by other campers, or to illuminate whatever's in your hands while you work on it. The headband has reflective Klarus logos so that you can be seen while out in the dark.
I know the use of titanium has been a "controversial" choice, since apparently titanium doesn't conduct heat away as well as aluminium, which is also used in some headlamps.
However, most headlamps seem to use plastic housing, which greatly limits heat dispersion. The use of titanium here makes the headlamp nice and light, while still allowing for heat dissipation. By coupling it with a plastic backing, it means the heat gets pulled out to the titanium front, while the plastic part that attaches to your forehead insulates you from any toastiness – even when the very front got to 55°C, you couldn't feel the heat on your head.
I found that the headlamp was relatively comfortable to wear – in general, I don't like things on my head, and even headphones make me feel like my head is being crushed most of the time. The slight increase in weight is just noticeable compared to plastic lights, but the heat dissipation is great. It does feel lighter on my head than some aluminium lights, but they also use 16340 and 18650 batteries so it isn't a fair fight. The surface is smooth all over, no knurling or anything.
The headlamp is controlled by 2 protruding buttons on top of the unit. Klarus was clever here, and made one button rise a little higher than the other so you can tell which button you're pushing when it's on your head. The buttons are pretty responsive.
The emitters are pretty well-centred, but there isn't a reflector – Klarus seems to have used a TIR optic (with some patterning on the top that Klarus calls an "anti-dazzling design") on the "throw" LED, while the red and flood LEDs are naked, and protected by a small dome. The use of the TIR allows the light to be thinner than it would with a reflector, so you can avoid looking like a shiny unicorn. However, there is a downside to the use of this plastic instead of hardened glass – after one of the first uses in the Parisian catacombs, it scraped very lightly against the rocks and was scratched. You can't see the scratches in the beam pattern at all, but it was a little annoying for that to happen so easily. Here it is pre-scratch.
One problem that my fiancee noticed and pointed out to me – the part where the titanium connects to the plastic has a gap, and light shines back out through there. She pointed this out after our trip around Europe, so I'm not 100% sure if that was there beforehand. An earlier photo I took looks like it was there the whole time, but the headlamp was off during that photo and without light shining through you can't be 100% sure. This may cause issues with liquid ingress, so it had me a bit concerned. Even if this issue was caused while I was wearing it, it's problematic - I wasn't rough with the headlamp at all, so the fact that it may have developed an issue would also be concerning.
User Interface and Modes
Alright, so this felt a little weird at first, but it becomes relatively intuitive after a while. The throw and the flood LEDs are controlled independently – this means you can one on while the other is off, or both on, and either of them can be at different levels during this operation. This is pretty clever, and really lets you customise what comes out – for example, if you're in a boat on a river and using the low flood for most of the time, you can suddenly turn on the throw to spot something further downstream and then turn it back off without turning off the whole lamp. I know that sounds simple, but after suddenly getting stuck in pitch black a few times while adjusting other torches, it's a really clever idea. The downside is that if you quickly need to turn off the headlamp when both emitters are on, it takes longer to turn off and each emitter has to be switched off independently.
Here you have the flood and the throw emitters running together.
Then the throw and the red emitters running together.
We will start with the "throw" emitter – when you push the button on the left it turns on, on high. Pressing the button again cycles it to low, and then pressing another time puts it on medium. This pattern is a little confusing at first, particularly if you're used to sequential mode activation. However, I found it does make sense – if you're activating the throw emitter, you probably want it to put out a lot of light to briefly see something, so it gives you that first. I really like that the throw emitter doesn't just instantly flash on or off – there's a very quick ramp up or ramp down as you cycle.
The "flood" emitter and red emitter are both controlled by the button on the right. Pushing this button starts the flood emitter on low. Pushing it again takes the flood emitter to high. A third push turns off the flood emitter and turns on the red emitter to a constant on. Pushing the right button again just continues this cycle. You can also access the constant red light by holding the right button down for one or two seconds while the light is off. Double clicking the right button (regardless of what mode the light is on, or even from off) turns the red lamp on in a "strobe" mode. Now, I wouldn't really call this a strobe – it's more of a beacon that flashes every 3-4 seconds. While in this strobe/beacon mode, if you double press the right button another time, it activates the flood emitter in an SOS mode. From any mode, holding the button down for 1-2 seconds turns the light off.
So basically, the left button controls the 3 normal modes of the "throw" emitter while the right button controls both the red and flood emitters, in both regular operation and blinking modes.
As an additional feature, the headlamp features an electronic lock out. You simply hold both buttons down at the same time for 3 seconds. The red lamp will flash twice to indicate the light is locked out. Pushing any button while in lock out results in the red lamp flashing quickly a few times to remind you that it's locked. To unlock it, simply push any button 3 times rapidly. The red lamp will then flash and the lamp will be unlocked. This is also how the battery-check feature is activated – pushing any button quickly three times while the lamp is off results in a series of red LED flashes corresponding to the remaining battery percentage (1 flash: <30% capacity, 2 flashes: 30-70% capacity, 3 flashes: 70-100% capacity).
The modes are further regulated by both battery voltage and temperature. When the battery capacity runs low, the headlamp progressively switches to lower and lower modes to let the user have usable light as long as possible. When the throw emitter is running on high mode, the output is automatically adjusted to ensure that the internal temperature doesn't fry the emitter and electronics.
Beamshots
I found the throw emitter to be rather floody in comparison to handheld torches, but that's to be expected from a headlamp – compared to other headlamps, the power and the focused hotspot are definitely for throw. I was a bit disappointed with the tint – it's very, very green. I even showed the light to a few non-torch fans (including my fiancee) and asked them what they thought about the tint, even they noticed it. My fiancée usually names all of my lights, and she instantly decided that this one should be called Kermit because of it. That was really disappointing for me for one main reason – Klarus has always been spot-on with their tints (at least, in the lights I've tried). This is the first time I've ever had green on a Klarus light, and I'm hoping that it's a one-off on the sample I received. Admittedly, your eyes adjust to the tint when it's your only light source, but it's still rather annoying in a premium light. I've sent this light off to Darwin – one of my friends is an ecologist and will be using it during the wet season while doing research on fish in the field. Accurate colour is important in her work, and I'm interested in seeing what she thinks. I'll update it with her feedback in a few months (if I remember). So, on to the images.
Here are some images of the throw emitter. You might notice that it's rather green in some shots. One is more accurate than the other, and it became an issue of white balancing the phone while increasing exposure.
First is the throw emitter against the shed, around 10 metres away. I think the colour is pretty much how it looked to me here – it's rather green. It covered that distance fairly well – as I said earlier, it's got nothing on a dedicated torch for throw, but for a headlamp it's great.
Here is the throw emitter against a wall, about 3 metres away. In this case the white balance was making it a fair bit greener than it is in real life, but it's definitely not a pretty tint.
I also took the headlamp out to the park to test it out. Again, here we see that resounding theme – the throw emitter is a throw in headlamp terms (again, this is still a great thing). Although the camera couldn't pick it up, it was possible to discern an additional 10-20 metres further than what you can see in the image.
The flood emitter is very, very floody and basically pours a low level of light in every direction. The low flood mode is pretty handy for sitting around at camp – even though it puts out 10 lumens on this mode, the lack of a reflector makes the light disperse in such a way that it feels almost like moonlight mode on a light with a shallow reflector, like the Olight S1 or i3S. I like that very much, since you really don't need much light at all when camping and this gives you around 2-3 metres of vision. A true moonlight mode might have been handy though – it helps avoid the kinds of injuries you get when your girlfriend hits you with her pillow because your headlamp woke her up. The next mode up gives you 50 lumens of flood, which is pretty decent for walking through relatively dense camping trails at night. You can see decently about 4-6 metres ahead, though you may be better off pairing it with the low throw emitter if it's really important for comfortable vision after about 5 metres.
For reference of brightness, here is a shot of the flood beam on high against a shed 10 metres away. You can't really see anything at all in the picture, which I think is important to understand before I explain the picture after it.
In the following image, I left my camera on automatic. The flood beam pictured below against the wall isn't as bright as you'd think from this image, as my phone compensated to capture light. However, I needed this so you could see the beam pattern. Very, very floody. You can still definitely see the wall easily enough in person though.
I decided against further attempts for beamshots on the flood lamp and red light, as there really isn't anything to see without adjusting the aperture, which kind of eliminates half the point of it.
The beam on both white emitters was artefact free, and I couldn't see any PWM in constant operation, although for reasons I can't describe, the flood emitter felt "fuzzy" at first. I do think they use PWM during the ramp between mode changes to make the change smoother, and I think that's fine.
Runtime
I only ran runtime tests for the highest modes on each of the main LEDs. Klarus is pretty honest on their run times, and the flood LED may slightly exceed their stated run-time. You can see the voltage on the flood emitter drops gradually for 4 hours before dropping sharply. The throw emitter is very similar, with a significant voltage drop between 50 and 60 minutes. I included the drop from 3.18V (60 mins) to 3.03V (~62 mins) because somewhere in this point the light couldn't sustain the high output mode any longer.
The built-in charging only gets the light up to 4.14V – I've previously found that using an actual charger can get these batteries up to 4.2V, so if that holds true you'll likely be able to squeeze out a little more juice. I recharged it on an Xtar VC4 after the last runtime test on high, and it said that the battery capacity it charged up was around 830 mAh. Pretty cool for a 750 mAh-rated battery.
Final Thoughts
Based on the features, this is an incredible headlamp – a lightweight triple emitter with heatsinking that is bright as hell on a 14500, with the ability to recharge while you're out and even use disposable primaries if you can't recharge. The controls are well thought-out, and it doesn't burn your forehead. In real usage, it definitely has a number of issues – particularly a) the horrible green tint and b) the weird separation between the titanium and plastic. Even if it was caused by use (which I doubt), I didn't use this light heavily, so it should be able to put up with it without even trying. For that reason it's straddling a demographic problem. There are people who just want some light, and don't care about tint – these people would likely be happy using any $5 flashlight. Then there are people willing to pay over $100 (Australian) for a light, but these people are going to want nice tints and absolute ruggedness. It's catered towards the latter, but with some issues that would seriously make those people hesitate.
This really surprised me, as everything else I've used from Klarus is indestructible with a beautiful tint. All of that being said, the features make it the best headlamp I've ever used. Personally, because of these features I'd be fine paying money to buy another one – however, I would only do so after either asking the dealer (or checking for myself) to only send one with a nicer tint, and without a problem at the plastic-titanium interface. If that light then had similar issues, I'd return it. Going forward, I think it would be good for Klarus to modify this light to IPX8 (or at least IPX7), and increase the durability, as I think this kind of light could be pretty cool for water activity. IPX6 is pretty decent for a headlamp, but what I love about Klarus handheld lights is knowing I can do whatever I want with it without the light dying on me. The headlamp is pretty damn sleek, but I as mentioned above it could use a few little tweaks to give it that Klarus bombproof feeling.
Based on my previous experience with Klarus, I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and guess that the emitter and casing alignment problem were a one off. However, I definitely think it's something you need to look out for during purchasing to be sure you're 100% happy with the light. Klarus has built a headlamp which is almost perfect in design and covers so many possible uses, that it's definitely worth consideration.
If anybody else has one, please let me know, because I'm likely to need more – if it's a one-off problem, I suspect my friend in Darwin is going to want some more. So yes, my final recommendation is basically this: buy it, because it's a truly brilliant light, but check the actual one you're buying to be sure it's perfect.
Manufacturer's Specifications
Emitter: 3 emitters for flood, throw and red light
CREE XP-L HI V6 (Cool White)
CREE XP-E2 R2 (Neutral White)
CREE XP-E2 P2 (red)
100 m throw
Titanium body
Battery type: 1x AA (Alkaline or Ni-MH) or 1x 14500
- Comes with 1x Klarus 750 mAh 14500 ICR protected battery (protection circuit in anode)
Instant strobe (from off)
Rain and storm proof (IPX-6 standard)
Impact resistant to 1 m
Length x diameter:
Weight: 73 g (without batteries, but with headband)
ITS Smart Temperature Control System
Lock-out mode
Adjustable angle
Reverse polarity protection
Output
Primary Lamp
High (550 lumens): 55 minutes
Medium (100 lumens): 3 hours 9 minutes
Low (30 lumens): 10 hours 24 minutes
Side Lamp (White Light)
High (50 lumens): 2 hours 49 minutes
Low (10 lumens): 12 hours 42 minutes
SOS (50 lumens): 6 hours 27 minutes
Side Lamp (Red Light)
Constant on (10 lumens): 12 hours 42 minutes
Strobe (10 lumens): 127 hours
Peak Beam Intensity: 2,496 candela (100 metre range)
Included in Package
1x Klarus H1A headlamp
1x Klarus headlamp strap
1x Klarus 14500UR75 battery with built-in MicroUSB charging
1x Carrying case
1x User manual
Initial Impressions
I was quite happy to see the tiny little package this light comes in – it's decently portable and the pouch keeps the light relatively secure.
The independent switches are fairly easy to use, though I have to admit it felt a bit harder when they were on my head.
The light is decently comfortable to wear, though not as comfortable as my LEDLenser Neo due to the rigidity. However, since the Neo is a very lightweight, polycarbonate headlamp with a single emitter designed for running, this is to be expected. The titanium felt quite nice, and I started wondering if it would be fun to try and anodise it later.
Physical Characteristics
As said above, this light is a titanium shell sitting on top of a plastic battery carrier. The headlamp attaches to the strap by a rotating plate, which basically allows you to angle the light to where you need it while it's on your head. This is a welcome move – particularly to avoid getting yelled at by other campers, or to illuminate whatever's in your hands while you work on it. The headband has reflective Klarus logos so that you can be seen while out in the dark.
I know the use of titanium has been a "controversial" choice, since apparently titanium doesn't conduct heat away as well as aluminium, which is also used in some headlamps.
However, most headlamps seem to use plastic housing, which greatly limits heat dispersion. The use of titanium here makes the headlamp nice and light, while still allowing for heat dissipation. By coupling it with a plastic backing, it means the heat gets pulled out to the titanium front, while the plastic part that attaches to your forehead insulates you from any toastiness – even when the very front got to 55°C, you couldn't feel the heat on your head.
I found that the headlamp was relatively comfortable to wear – in general, I don't like things on my head, and even headphones make me feel like my head is being crushed most of the time. The slight increase in weight is just noticeable compared to plastic lights, but the heat dissipation is great. It does feel lighter on my head than some aluminium lights, but they also use 16340 and 18650 batteries so it isn't a fair fight. The surface is smooth all over, no knurling or anything.
The headlamp is controlled by 2 protruding buttons on top of the unit. Klarus was clever here, and made one button rise a little higher than the other so you can tell which button you're pushing when it's on your head. The buttons are pretty responsive.
The emitters are pretty well-centred, but there isn't a reflector – Klarus seems to have used a TIR optic (with some patterning on the top that Klarus calls an "anti-dazzling design") on the "throw" LED, while the red and flood LEDs are naked, and protected by a small dome. The use of the TIR allows the light to be thinner than it would with a reflector, so you can avoid looking like a shiny unicorn. However, there is a downside to the use of this plastic instead of hardened glass – after one of the first uses in the Parisian catacombs, it scraped very lightly against the rocks and was scratched. You can't see the scratches in the beam pattern at all, but it was a little annoying for that to happen so easily. Here it is pre-scratch.
One problem that my fiancee noticed and pointed out to me – the part where the titanium connects to the plastic has a gap, and light shines back out through there. She pointed this out after our trip around Europe, so I'm not 100% sure if that was there beforehand. An earlier photo I took looks like it was there the whole time, but the headlamp was off during that photo and without light shining through you can't be 100% sure. This may cause issues with liquid ingress, so it had me a bit concerned. Even if this issue was caused while I was wearing it, it's problematic - I wasn't rough with the headlamp at all, so the fact that it may have developed an issue would also be concerning.
User Interface and Modes
Alright, so this felt a little weird at first, but it becomes relatively intuitive after a while. The throw and the flood LEDs are controlled independently – this means you can one on while the other is off, or both on, and either of them can be at different levels during this operation. This is pretty clever, and really lets you customise what comes out – for example, if you're in a boat on a river and using the low flood for most of the time, you can suddenly turn on the throw to spot something further downstream and then turn it back off without turning off the whole lamp. I know that sounds simple, but after suddenly getting stuck in pitch black a few times while adjusting other torches, it's a really clever idea. The downside is that if you quickly need to turn off the headlamp when both emitters are on, it takes longer to turn off and each emitter has to be switched off independently.
Here you have the flood and the throw emitters running together.
Then the throw and the red emitters running together.
We will start with the "throw" emitter – when you push the button on the left it turns on, on high. Pressing the button again cycles it to low, and then pressing another time puts it on medium. This pattern is a little confusing at first, particularly if you're used to sequential mode activation. However, I found it does make sense – if you're activating the throw emitter, you probably want it to put out a lot of light to briefly see something, so it gives you that first. I really like that the throw emitter doesn't just instantly flash on or off – there's a very quick ramp up or ramp down as you cycle.
The "flood" emitter and red emitter are both controlled by the button on the right. Pushing this button starts the flood emitter on low. Pushing it again takes the flood emitter to high. A third push turns off the flood emitter and turns on the red emitter to a constant on. Pushing the right button again just continues this cycle. You can also access the constant red light by holding the right button down for one or two seconds while the light is off. Double clicking the right button (regardless of what mode the light is on, or even from off) turns the red lamp on in a "strobe" mode. Now, I wouldn't really call this a strobe – it's more of a beacon that flashes every 3-4 seconds. While in this strobe/beacon mode, if you double press the right button another time, it activates the flood emitter in an SOS mode. From any mode, holding the button down for 1-2 seconds turns the light off.
So basically, the left button controls the 3 normal modes of the "throw" emitter while the right button controls both the red and flood emitters, in both regular operation and blinking modes.
As an additional feature, the headlamp features an electronic lock out. You simply hold both buttons down at the same time for 3 seconds. The red lamp will flash twice to indicate the light is locked out. Pushing any button while in lock out results in the red lamp flashing quickly a few times to remind you that it's locked. To unlock it, simply push any button 3 times rapidly. The red lamp will then flash and the lamp will be unlocked. This is also how the battery-check feature is activated – pushing any button quickly three times while the lamp is off results in a series of red LED flashes corresponding to the remaining battery percentage (1 flash: <30% capacity, 2 flashes: 30-70% capacity, 3 flashes: 70-100% capacity).
The modes are further regulated by both battery voltage and temperature. When the battery capacity runs low, the headlamp progressively switches to lower and lower modes to let the user have usable light as long as possible. When the throw emitter is running on high mode, the output is automatically adjusted to ensure that the internal temperature doesn't fry the emitter and electronics.
Beamshots
I found the throw emitter to be rather floody in comparison to handheld torches, but that's to be expected from a headlamp – compared to other headlamps, the power and the focused hotspot are definitely for throw. I was a bit disappointed with the tint – it's very, very green. I even showed the light to a few non-torch fans (including my fiancee) and asked them what they thought about the tint, even they noticed it. My fiancée usually names all of my lights, and she instantly decided that this one should be called Kermit because of it. That was really disappointing for me for one main reason – Klarus has always been spot-on with their tints (at least, in the lights I've tried). This is the first time I've ever had green on a Klarus light, and I'm hoping that it's a one-off on the sample I received. Admittedly, your eyes adjust to the tint when it's your only light source, but it's still rather annoying in a premium light. I've sent this light off to Darwin – one of my friends is an ecologist and will be using it during the wet season while doing research on fish in the field. Accurate colour is important in her work, and I'm interested in seeing what she thinks. I'll update it with her feedback in a few months (if I remember). So, on to the images.
Here are some images of the throw emitter. You might notice that it's rather green in some shots. One is more accurate than the other, and it became an issue of white balancing the phone while increasing exposure.
First is the throw emitter against the shed, around 10 metres away. I think the colour is pretty much how it looked to me here – it's rather green. It covered that distance fairly well – as I said earlier, it's got nothing on a dedicated torch for throw, but for a headlamp it's great.
Here is the throw emitter against a wall, about 3 metres away. In this case the white balance was making it a fair bit greener than it is in real life, but it's definitely not a pretty tint.
I also took the headlamp out to the park to test it out. Again, here we see that resounding theme – the throw emitter is a throw in headlamp terms (again, this is still a great thing). Although the camera couldn't pick it up, it was possible to discern an additional 10-20 metres further than what you can see in the image.
The flood emitter is very, very floody and basically pours a low level of light in every direction. The low flood mode is pretty handy for sitting around at camp – even though it puts out 10 lumens on this mode, the lack of a reflector makes the light disperse in such a way that it feels almost like moonlight mode on a light with a shallow reflector, like the Olight S1 or i3S. I like that very much, since you really don't need much light at all when camping and this gives you around 2-3 metres of vision. A true moonlight mode might have been handy though – it helps avoid the kinds of injuries you get when your girlfriend hits you with her pillow because your headlamp woke her up. The next mode up gives you 50 lumens of flood, which is pretty decent for walking through relatively dense camping trails at night. You can see decently about 4-6 metres ahead, though you may be better off pairing it with the low throw emitter if it's really important for comfortable vision after about 5 metres.
For reference of brightness, here is a shot of the flood beam on high against a shed 10 metres away. You can't really see anything at all in the picture, which I think is important to understand before I explain the picture after it.
In the following image, I left my camera on automatic. The flood beam pictured below against the wall isn't as bright as you'd think from this image, as my phone compensated to capture light. However, I needed this so you could see the beam pattern. Very, very floody. You can still definitely see the wall easily enough in person though.
I decided against further attempts for beamshots on the flood lamp and red light, as there really isn't anything to see without adjusting the aperture, which kind of eliminates half the point of it.
The beam on both white emitters was artefact free, and I couldn't see any PWM in constant operation, although for reasons I can't describe, the flood emitter felt "fuzzy" at first. I do think they use PWM during the ramp between mode changes to make the change smoother, and I think that's fine.
Runtime
I only ran runtime tests for the highest modes on each of the main LEDs. Klarus is pretty honest on their run times, and the flood LED may slightly exceed their stated run-time. You can see the voltage on the flood emitter drops gradually for 4 hours before dropping sharply. The throw emitter is very similar, with a significant voltage drop between 50 and 60 minutes. I included the drop from 3.18V (60 mins) to 3.03V (~62 mins) because somewhere in this point the light couldn't sustain the high output mode any longer.
The built-in charging only gets the light up to 4.14V – I've previously found that using an actual charger can get these batteries up to 4.2V, so if that holds true you'll likely be able to squeeze out a little more juice. I recharged it on an Xtar VC4 after the last runtime test on high, and it said that the battery capacity it charged up was around 830 mAh. Pretty cool for a 750 mAh-rated battery.
Final Thoughts
Based on the features, this is an incredible headlamp – a lightweight triple emitter with heatsinking that is bright as hell on a 14500, with the ability to recharge while you're out and even use disposable primaries if you can't recharge. The controls are well thought-out, and it doesn't burn your forehead. In real usage, it definitely has a number of issues – particularly a) the horrible green tint and b) the weird separation between the titanium and plastic. Even if it was caused by use (which I doubt), I didn't use this light heavily, so it should be able to put up with it without even trying. For that reason it's straddling a demographic problem. There are people who just want some light, and don't care about tint – these people would likely be happy using any $5 flashlight. Then there are people willing to pay over $100 (Australian) for a light, but these people are going to want nice tints and absolute ruggedness. It's catered towards the latter, but with some issues that would seriously make those people hesitate.
This really surprised me, as everything else I've used from Klarus is indestructible with a beautiful tint. All of that being said, the features make it the best headlamp I've ever used. Personally, because of these features I'd be fine paying money to buy another one – however, I would only do so after either asking the dealer (or checking for myself) to only send one with a nicer tint, and without a problem at the plastic-titanium interface. If that light then had similar issues, I'd return it. Going forward, I think it would be good for Klarus to modify this light to IPX8 (or at least IPX7), and increase the durability, as I think this kind of light could be pretty cool for water activity. IPX6 is pretty decent for a headlamp, but what I love about Klarus handheld lights is knowing I can do whatever I want with it without the light dying on me. The headlamp is pretty damn sleek, but I as mentioned above it could use a few little tweaks to give it that Klarus bombproof feeling.
Based on my previous experience with Klarus, I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and guess that the emitter and casing alignment problem were a one off. However, I definitely think it's something you need to look out for during purchasing to be sure you're 100% happy with the light. Klarus has built a headlamp which is almost perfect in design and covers so many possible uses, that it's definitely worth consideration.
If anybody else has one, please let me know, because I'm likely to need more – if it's a one-off problem, I suspect my friend in Darwin is going to want some more. So yes, my final recommendation is basically this: buy it, because it's a truly brilliant light, but check the actual one you're buying to be sure it's perfect.
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