EVERY bushwalker needs a headlamp. We’ve come a long way since the first modern, hands-free lighting, the Petzl Zoom in 1981. While we can joke that wearing the Zoom was a bit like mounting a flickering candle in a mixing bowl on one’s head, it was the forerunner of all the models in this review. These compact units that can do so much more at the flick of a button, yet in so much smaller packages.
How far each of these offspring has diverged from the genes of their shared great-great-
(etc)-grandmother is exactly what I aimed to discover when I took the whole brood to Island Bend campsite on a mountain biking weekend in February. There, I tested them for functionality and usability. I pored over their specifications. Lumen outputs were not measured, and waterproof ratings were assumed to be accurate. In no particular order, this is what I concluded.
1 Black Diamond Storm 500R
Black Diamond may be the most visible headlamp brand in Australia, but that doesn’t of course make them the best. On paper, there’s a lot going on inside the eye of the Storm. It feels like BD couldn’t bear to leave out a single function, but they’ve done a
