# Mammut Lucido X-Zoom Headlamp?



## wrath (Feb 25, 2009)

Has anyone ever played with one of these headlamps?

*Mammut Lucido X-Zoom Headlamp




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*http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001FBPRQK/?tag=cpf0b6-20






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## Marduke (Feb 25, 2009)

*Re: Headlamp ?*

Have you tried searching for it?


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## tnforever (Feb 25, 2009)

*Re: Headlamp ?*

btw, you have to upload your pictures onto a website before we can see it, you can't just link it from your computer


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## yowzer (Feb 27, 2009)

I've looked at the light in stores, but for $99 or so retail, it doesn't seem worth it. I _think _the LED is still a luxeon like Mammut's 1-watt headlamps (The TX1 and TXlite (The latter at least is a great light despite that, and would be really sweet with a modern LED))... it's hard to tell through the optic, though. Considering you can get Petzl's RXP for less money, and in it get more flexibility when it comes to output modes, and a smaller light to boot... I'm passing this one up when it comes to time to get a new high-power headlamp.

To the guy who suggested searching: Did you try first? It's not a headlamp that's gotten any discussion here. None of the Mammut ones have had any to speak of.


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## PhantomPhoton (Feb 28, 2009)

I've seen this one at REI.com, but I haven't gone into REI yet to see if there's one on display. I intend to investigate though as soon as I can. Hopefully I can find out what kind of emitter is in there. I wonder if they'll look at me funny if I sit in the store for a few hours with it on to determine if it's well regulated. 

If you're an REI member every once in awhile you'll get a coupon for 20% off an item, so if you wait a bit you may be able to score one a bit cheaper than retail that way. I don't know of many other places in the states to find Mammut stuff.


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## gooseman (Feb 28, 2009)

PhantomPhoton said:


> I've seen this one at REI.com, but I haven't gone into REI yet to see if there's one on display. I intend to investigate though as soon as I can. Hopefully I can find out what kind of emitter is in there. I wonder if they'll look at me funny if I sit in the store for a few hours with it on to determine if it's well regulated.
> 
> If you're an REI member every once in awhile you'll get a coupon for 20% off an item, so if you wait a bit you may be able to score one a bit cheaper than retail that way. I don't know of many other places in the states to find Mammut stuff.



According to a Mammut customer service rep in the UK, the light is not regulated.


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## PhantomPhoton (Feb 28, 2009)

gooseman said:


> According to a Mammut customer service rep in the UK, the light is not regulated.





Another good potential light goes down the drain due to cheap design if this is true. I'm okay with a $25 headlamp not being regulated, but for something over the $75 mark... One would think Mammut would add a bit of shielding and a circuit that regulates for most of the battery life before dropping down to a lower level. Seriously, this isn't rocket science.


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## yowzer (Mar 6, 2009)

yowzer said:


> I _think _the LED is still a luxeon like Mammut's 1-watt headlamps ...





I looked at one in a store again today, and it sports a TFFC-ized Rebel LED, not a Luxeon I (or III? I don't know how to tell them apart) like the other Mammuts.


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## yowzer (Mar 6, 2009)

PhantomPhoton said:


> I don't know of many other places in the states to find Mammut stuff.



There are a few outdoors stores in the greater Seattle area that carry Mammut gear and clothing, including the headlamps; when it comes to those, Feathered Friends and Marmot Mountain Works have more models in stock than the downtown REI.


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## PhantomPhoton (Mar 7, 2009)

I'll have to go searching the smaller shops in the Portland area. REI doesn't have any of the Mammut stuff out on display yet.


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## kwieto (Mar 8, 2009)

I bought this headlamp recenty, and I found in the manual nice table containing informations about the light distance at certain times.
I couldn't find it when I was searching for the data about this headlamp before, so maybe it will be usefull for others:






Interesting is comparison with Myo RXP - even though Myo is regulated, after 10 hours the light range is about 3 times shorter than in X-zoom


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## wrath (Mar 8, 2009)

So are you saying that the Mammut is brighter than the myo rxp?


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## tnuckels (Mar 9, 2009)

I think often a larger (up to a point) reflector will achieve better results gathering and especially throwing light. You’ll sometimes see a different front end listed as a turbo-head for a light because it does a better job than the standard head, though both use the same guts and tail end to produce the light. The cost is a larger and heavier front end. Also I noticed that the X-Zoom lists a 5° angle in spot mode, which is quite narrow. Narrower beams also tend to throw farther. So, it’s quite possible that at 30h the X-Zoom can throw 3x farther than the RXP, though possibly illuminating a smaller swatch in the process. It's all a mater of compromises and trade offs.

Don’t mean to knock the X-Zoom at all, but every manufacturer presents their figures in the most flattering light, so to speak. It’s up to us to then figure what degree of slight of hand they are using and what the numbers really mean.


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## kwieto (Mar 9, 2009)

wrath said:


> So are you saying that the Mammut is brighter than the myo rxp?



I don't have Myo RXP, so this are only my supposings. I am telling about Myo RXP because I considered that model against X-zoom, so I did some comparisons "on the paper".

Surprisingly (for me) on fresh batteries (included alkalines) X-zoom reaches the distance about 120m easily. I tested it yesterday in the "city night" (so there was no full darkness, but street lamps, lights from cars and buildings), and the spot was pretty visible on the building which is c.a. 120-140m far.

Then compare the table which I presented before, with similar about Petzl:






As you see, the light is regulated quite short time for higher output levels. 
In fact, according to the specifications, regulated times above level 4 are pretty shord (4h for level 5 and only 1h for level 7)
After 30 minutes of lighting, X-zoom on the LOW selection should achieve similar distance as Myo RXP on the level 5 (MID)
And the light is lasting about 3 times longer than RXP (300h for the lowest and 120h for the highest setting, comparing to the 97 and 50h for the RXP)

This may make this headlamp very good especially for longer camping - you can take one or two replacement battery packs less :")

Funny thing is that the light on the narrowest setting is square... with very sharp edges.


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## yowzer (Mar 10, 2009)

tnuckels said:


> Don’t mean to knock the X-Zoom at all, but every manufacturer presents their figures in the most flattering light, so to speak. It’s up to us to then figure what degree of slight of hand they are using and what the numbers really mean.



Mammut takes the 'X distance at which the light still generates .25 lux' approach. The maximum runtime is calculated based on .25 lux at 2 meters distance. 



kwieto said:


> Funny thing is that the light on the narrowest setting is square... with very sharp edges.



The only rebel-equipped flashlight I have has a square hotspot too (Riverrock Nightfire 2AA focusable from Target.) It might be an artifact of the LED, like cree rings...


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## PhantomPhoton (Mar 10, 2009)

A square hotspot comes from an optic or very focused reflector which projects an image of the die. All aspherical mods and such as well as very focused optics and parabolic "recoil" reflectors do this. It has nothing to do with the rebel LED just the optics used in the light.


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## yellow (Mar 11, 2009)

as to regulation <-> non-regulation.
Sure, I like regulation too, but we all know to handle it.

99 % of headlamp users wont notice (or even understand the concept) but would notice and rant, if their lamp "stops working at just 3, 4, 5 hours of runtime"

Thats why most of them behave direct-drivish, even when they have drivers inside


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## kwieto (Mar 11, 2009)

I think it depends on the needs of the user.

For those who need to have good light during a night run or other activity like that, the regulated light will be more suitable - they will get constant light for some time (the less long as the more bright setting is used). 
Looking at The Myo RXP specification - the LOW/MID setting (level 4) gives 10 hours of the constant lighting, which means more or less one whole night of usage. Then you replace/recharge batteries and you are ready for the next night adventure.

From the other hand, the regulated light drains batteries faster than the non-regulated, because it need to take more power to step it up when the batteries become more and more used.

So for those whose priority is the time of lighting, non regulated lamp can be better solution. OK, the light starts to be dimmer from the very begining, but it lights longer as a total.
The second reason is that the light is regulated only for some time - then it becomes to behave as non regulated. So you have very bright light for some period, and then accidentaly the light drops its range rapidly (depending on the level of lightness set) when exhausted batteries went out from the "regulated period".
In fact, when the regulated lamp gets batteries too drained to keep the regulated light, you can see the advantage of the non regulated lamp, which should be brighter at the same time.

This is why for me the interesting test would be to compare different lamps after certain times of usage - i.e. t=0 t=5h, t=10h, ....


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## kwieto (Mar 11, 2009)

PhantomPhoton said:


> A square hotspot comes from an optic or very focused reflector which projects an image of the die.



You are right. If you get the light close enough to the wall, you can even see the delicate net of the darker points - same as you see on the Rebel die:


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## yowzer (Mar 12, 2009)

PhantomPhoton said:


> A square hotspot comes from an optic or very focused reflector which projects an image of the die. All aspherical mods and such as well as very focused optics and parabolic "recoil" reflectors do this. It has nothing to do with the rebel LED just the optics used in the light.



That's interesting. I have a headlamp (A mammut one, to make it vaguely on topic) with the same style optic as that flashlight and it doesn't have a square beam. I don't have a camera handy, and don't know what the proper name for the shape is... It's a concave dish with a convex hemisphere bulging out of the center, basically.


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## kwieto (Mar 13, 2009)

yowzer said:


> I have a headlamp (A mammut one, to make it vaguely on topic) with the same style optic as that flashlight and it doesn't have a square beam.



Hmmm, but Only LED headlamp with that kind of optic (Zoomed Fresnel's lens) is the X-zoom model?
What kind of Mammut lamp do you have?


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## yowzer (Mar 13, 2009)

kwieto said:


> Hmmm, but Only LED headlamp with that kind of optic (Zoomed Fresnel's lens) is the X-zoom model?
> What kind of Mammut lamp do you have?



Sorry, got off topic. I'm not talking about the X-zoom, other in that it has an optic that produces a square beam. My (non-square) mammut is the TXlite. Come to think of it, I think the TX1, which has a similarly shaped optic, does the square beam too. It's interesting how two very similar designs produce two wildly different beam patterns.


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## kwieto (Mar 13, 2009)

Hmmm, I've just read that the TX1 gives square beam. but the optics seems to be little different than TX Lite.

TX1 have three leds, 1x HiFlux and 2x "definition LED" The HiFlux is responsible for spot light, and the two others for flood light.

TX Lite gives two modes (spot/flood) at the same time with usage of only one LED (HiFlux) and the range is much smaller - 41m.
So there should be different kind of optics, which keep one part of the beam concentrated (spot) and the other part flooding around. This explains why the total range is much much lower (41m compared to 105m given by TX1)

And remeber, that in X-zoom the light is square only in most concetrated setting. When you zoom it out, the shape becomes round, as in typical lens.


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## kwieto (Mar 21, 2009)

wrath said:


> So are you saying that the Mammut is brighter than the myo rxp?



Back to this question again:
I am just after the tests comparing X-zoom against Myo XP (blue one) modded with the same LED As it is in RXP (SSC P4 bin U)
And yes, X-zoom is definitely brighter.

Myo Has the stronger led, but it is visible only when illuminated object is in centimeters range ;")
When the distance become larger, but still even less than 1m, you see that the light from X-zoom is stronger. This is because the light in Myo is more wide and big ammount of energy "goes to the whistle" in comparision to X-zoom's more concentrated beam.

I am working on the detailed review, but from the user point of view - so don't expect any photos presenting what chips are inside, or measurements how much mA it takes on each lighting level :"P


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## yellow (Mar 22, 2009)

looks like both are driven by 3 AA batts, 
so the easiest way to _guess_ brightness were to measure current draw and compare


PS: both are crap - for headlamps - because without the center rubber strap, any headlamp this "big"/heavy is useless.


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## kwieto (Mar 22, 2009)

yellow said:


> looks like both are driven by 3 AA batts,
> so the easiest way to _guess_ brightness were to measure current draw and compare



No. This way you can only measure the power of the LED, but remember that there is optics, too.
Poor optics will make your lamp lighting everywhere, but not where you want :")
More precise optic will make more concentrated beam and less part of light is wasted.

One of my test photos (from the left: reference photo; Myo XP "blue" before modification; Myo XP after installing SSC P4 bin U - making it "2008" model; Mammut X-zoom)






Shoots were made from the distance of 27m

And remember, both lights are comparable if you will measure only the power (c.a. 85 lumens)




yellow said:


> PS: both are crap - for headlamps - because without the center rubber strap, any headlamp this "big"/heavy is useless.



There is a top strap for Myo XP an it is quite comfortable.
Mammut is more designed to work with a helmet, where you don't need the top strap.


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