Discussion: Headlamp bought. Did I go wrong?

Is this night-o gear purchase a waste of money?

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B018G937PQ/ref=o...

It's perfect if your aim is to blind your opponents.
But the price is right.
Wear that around town and they change the name of the town from New Brighton to Now Brighter!

In Europe, quite bright headlamps are used for night orienteering (and other night sports). Extra light does help a bit.

Very high lumen rating. Often this is overstated, but even if overstated the lamp will likely be quite bright. And if it really gives off 5000 lumens, the case will get hot. Two batteries will give you very short life at high, longer at the lower setting. Should be enough for a regular night-o, but not enough life to last overnight in a rogaine.

Good luck and enjoy.

Todd .... you may temporarily blind yourself under 2 conditions : 1) you look at your map (especially if it is in a polybag or 2) if the park has highly reflective signs and you look at them !

I've given family members lights like this (or that look very much like it) for Xmas presents, and they've been very pleased. It's hard to imagine that a $25 purchase can be a waste of money -- I've seen similar lights on ebay for less, but they didn't necessarily come with all of those accessories. If you're aiming to be a top competitor in a Scandi event, you'd probably want something fancier, but this will be appropriate for anything in North America. I go out running in the dark with something similar all the time.

(My brother had one of these catch fire (sort of), but they sent him a replacement for free.)

(My brother had one of these catch fire (sort of), but they sent him a replacement for free.) The hothead in the family, no doubt.

in reality 1x10W LED and 2x~3W LEDs, so theoretically output could be 1500 lumens, if properly cooled. you still can do night-O, but really too narrow beam for this purpose. good starting point for DIY project, first step to replace optics

I am sue that 5000 lumens is a lie. I am betting it is closer to 1500 or even less. Looks like harness is better than the Magicshine I used to run with. At $25, even if it catches fire I will not be so sad. Unless it catches fire on my head!

I have the same light (the Innogear version on Amazon). I've used it maybe 20 times for mountain biking after dark, and will be using it for it's second Night-O tonight. There are three intensity settings:
- low (just the narrow-beam center light)
- med (just the two wide-beam side lights)
- high (all three)

As nerimka states, the narrow beam is narrower than ideal for orienteering (or biking). The wide beams add that peripheral vision you need. So I run mine on high almost all of the time. Battery life is around 2 hours on high, and it doesn't just cut off - the light gradually gets dimmer as you run out. I don't believe it's 5000 lumens either, but it's BRIGHT. You don't want to look directly at your map, or at a reflective sign closer than 50 feet away.

I love mine, and my only wish was that there was an actual dimmer circuit that let you run all three lights at 10-25% power for all-night battery life.

Mine hasn't caught fire, but I never charge it unattended.

Todd: rest assured we will have a fire extinguisher standing by at the next MNOC Night O ! ;- )

I have a very similar one, and it works great. It's quite bright, and hard to beat the price (I think I paid about $15-18). Be careful pointing the light directly at your map, because it's blindingly bright, but there is enough peripheral light to read the map fine.

Very latest hi-tech can produce about 100 lumen / W at max. This uses older tech and is cheap, so it most likely produces slightly less.

There is two cells 2.2 ah 3.7V cells. That is 2 x 2.2 x 3.7 = 16 Wh. With that 100 lumen/W you would get 1600 lumen for one hour at max. With 5000 lumen output would mean battery would be empty in 19 minutes. So if it stays on longer than 20 minutes we can safely say the output is nowhere near 5000 lumen :)

I'd guess it starts somewhere close to 1000 lumens or slightly over and starts to dim gradually from there as the battery voltage drops, averaging about 700 lumens for 2 hours. It' isn't that bright really compared to today's standards and O headlamps typically used these days, but sure fine for O. But it is a bit bulky and heavy for the output, some tiny compact 2 x cree xml lights has same or even slightly better output but are smaller and lighter. But may be slightly more expensive too. So I'd say even if there is false marketing and it may not be the best buy out there it is just fine really.

+1 on the comment about optics. Lumens are great, but a good lens makes a huge difference.