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  | Petzl E43P Tikka LED Headlamp
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Average user rating:  | |
 It's a hit. | |
| This thing is great. The benefit when camping or hiking is obvious, good light right where you look and both hands free. I use it at home all the time, home improvement projects, working on the car, reading in bed, amazing how many times you will use this handy light. The light is bright enough to walk a trail at night or to read by, can be set on a table to light a small room for simple tasks. Very comfortable to wear, small and light to keep in a pocket. I've had it for about a year now and never changed the batteries, they seem to last forever, I have 80 hours or so on them now and it's still bright enough to be useful. Get one, you won't regret it. | |
| Outstanding compact headlamp | |
| This is a great little headlamp that throws out quite a powerful beam, and has a very soft, comfortable head strap. It works well as an after-dark navigational light or as a working-around-the-campsite light. It's a tiny bit too bright for me to use comfortably as a reading light, but that may just be my thing. It's a darned compact size, and according to their literature, can give up to an amazing 150 hours of light with its three AAA batteries. The comfy adjustable strap holds the lamp in place, and there's a bit of cushy padding so that it doesn't hurt your forehead. Very functional, nothing really horribly wrong with it. That said, however, there are some things I don't like about it. While the angle of the beam is a good one, it's not adjustable like the Black Diamond Ion is (however, it is more comfortable to wear than the Ion.) This is my main complaint, though; the batteries are a bit tricky to get changed, and there is often not a good, solid contact with the batteries and the terminals, which leads to a slightly flickering light, which I find really irritating. There are also smaller lamps to be had now, and when every inch of space is a consideration, that's important. However, that 150-hour burn time is hard to beat! But really, the Tikka is a perfectly fine piece of equipment, and it does its job well. The folks at Backpacker magazine just loved it, so it's obviously got some good things going for it. | |
| Not perfect, but better than most | |
| Petzl's Tikka series lamps are hard to beat for function, price, and practicality. Sure, there are lighter weight LED-type lights out there that use watch batteries, but standard AAA batteries are much easier to come by when you're camping/trekking in out of the way places than a specific type of watch battery. The burn time is phenomenal, compared to conventional incandescent lamps, and the Zipka lamp is a very ingenious little headlamp, with its retracting strap and tiny size. They both put out a good field of usable light, and it stays bright for most of the battery life (usually 100-150 hours). As for the criticism that the Tikka line does not have a multiple intensity or flashing setting, or an adjustable angle, Petzl has introduced "Tikka Plus" and "Zipka Plus" lines which offer all of those features, though at a slightly higher price, with slightly more weight and a little bit shorter burn times. They've improved the switch too, for the plus models to allow for the multiple function settings, eliminating the original less-than-perfect slide switch, and the possibility of the lamp turning itself on by mistake. I own several lights in this series, the Tikka, the Zipka, and recently, a Zipka Plus, and I use them constantly whether bicycling, reading in my tent, hiking down a trail at night, or running tv cable in my crawlspace and have nothing but praise for each light. | |
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