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Review: Skilhunt H150 - my favorite small headlamp
The Skilhunt H150 is a small headlamp with great color quality, magnetic charging, and the ability to use both 14500 Li-ion and AA batteries. It sets a new standard in its size class.
https://zakreviews.com/skilhunt-h150.html
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Excellent writeup. I’m stoked to see a decent and reasonably inexpensive offering that can use removable commodity cells. As you observed, the recent fixation seems to be to make “ultralight” bullshit with internal battery packs that are not user replaceable. The worst part is, the ultralight hiking community insists on lapping these things up and you’ll get ridiculed if you mention wanting a light with swappable cells. “Just carry a power bank and recharge it!”
The problem is twofold. First, there are nontrivial losses involved when you charge off of a powerbank, so you have to carry around extra size and weight in mAh just to break even on run time. Plus the ability to slap in a commodity primary cell in an emergency is helpful, or you can just carry 1-2 extra cells with you if you know your excursion is going to be long enough to warrant it. And when the internal battery inevitably wears out you can easily buy and install another one. But I’m sure Petzl or Black Diamond or whoever would much rather you buy an entire new light, instead.
At present I’m carrying a yum-cha brandless 18650 headlamp which works well enough for me, but I may have to investigate one of these instead. My current headlamp has been reliable (a lot moreso than both Black Diamond headlamps I had before it which mysteriously conked out like clockwork after about a year for no identifiable reason) but it doesn’t have any kind of mode memory nor does it have a control lockout. When it’s bouncing around in my pack during the day I stick the battery in it backwards. My usual EDC light is a Lumintop Tool 2.0 which can use a 14500 cell, so being able to use the same batteries will be nice. Although it’s not like I don’t have approximately 4.3 million spare 18650’s lying around anyway, which is why I bought a cheap 18650 light to begin with.
@dual_sport_dork I definitely have trouble relating to the ultralight crowd. I'd be more inclined to take an 18650 headlamp and an 18650 powerbank so I could swap cells between them than to recharge a headlamp from a powerbank.
There is such a thing as "stupid light." Where that line is drawn varies to some extent from person to person, but ye gods forbid you draw it elsewhere than where the hivemind does or you'll be relentlessly attacked.
Even before leaving reddit entirely I had to unsub from /ultralight because those guys had devolved into just being flat-out insane. Plus, it was the same conversation over and over again. Once you have your loadout all dialed in the way you like it there's not much left to talk about other than nitpicking other people's gear choices and generalized circlejerking. I used to enjoy researching and shopping for and, yes, buying new camping gear. But at this point in my life I really don't need yet another tent, sleeping bag, backpack, or inflatable pad. I've learned all the hard lessons and I have everything the way I want it. (Not that this has stopped me from continuing to buy knives and flashlights en masse. That's different, obviously! I mean, duh.) You're better off actually going out and using your stuff versus sitting at home obsessing over the latest headlamp with a battery too small, titanium spork that's too short to reach the bottom of the bowl, or tent made out of the next ephemeral fabric that'll disintegrate on contact with pine needles but is 0.002% lighter per square yard.
Tl;dr: I'm all for lugging less weight around if you don't need to, but not at the expense of my equipment no longer being capable of doing its job.
@dual_sport_dork I think something similar happens any time people hyper-focus on a single attribute of their gear. The brightest headlamp is as unlikely to be a community favorite as the lightest because maximizing any one attribute has costs to others.
It's just an odd quirk that a community sprang up around minimizing weight as its core principle. "I want a good X that's lightweight" makes more sense to me than "I want a lightweight X that's good".
What are some other top contenders to this one for you? What didn't you like about them. It's very cool it takes both AA and other battery type.
@Habahnow @flashlight There's really no close competition. The Acebeam H16 and Manker E02 series are superficially similar, but don't have stable output or onboard charging. The E02 also doesn't appear to have the best track record for reliability.
Oh nice. What do you feel about the zebra light head lamps?
I have their SC53c small flashlight that I have bought as my introduction to high quality flashlights, and I absolutely love it (different settings, long lasting AA batteries, bright when I need it, doesn't seem to break easily), so I thought maybe their headlamps would be good. Maybe your suggestion is a lot better, based on the info you've provided.
@Habahnow @flashlight The AA Zebralights used to cost less and support 14500. The current models don't support 14500, which is a major downside now that we have 14500 batteries with a capacity as high as 1250 mAh (4.6 Wh). That's about 50% more capacity than the best NiMH AAs and even exceeds disposable lithium (except at very low loads).
Oh how interesting, that is a shame that they've removed that feature. I definitely would appreciate that compatibility, as I enjoy being able to use any AA battery ( or any other common type) for my flashlight, but would also love being able to use other battery types. Thanks for the info!
Reddit user fnksb pointed out that the measured current, runtime, and expected battery capacity didn't quite add up for the 14500s. I tested both my Vapcell H10s on my analyzing charger and got 737 mAh and 797 mAh, which is considerably lower than the 924 mAh figure I had been using. I've recalculated efficiency numbers based on a battery capacity of 797 mAh and also reran the M1 mode runtime test.
I got a bit longer runtime this time around and of course a little higher efficiency in every mode. My overall analysis remains the same though: boost/linear is a little disappointing and I'd much rather see boost/buck or boost-only using a 6V LED like the Nichia B35AM. So far, I think only the Emisar D3AA takes the boost-only approach to the AA/14500 problem.