The Petzl Actik Core Headlamp is a high-powered 625 lumen twin energy headlamp loaded with easy-to-use, intuitive options, together with a single button management, a pink mild to protect night time imaginative and prescient, a battery meter, and an digital lock to forestall unintentional battery drain. It’s additionally a twin energy headlamp that comes with a detachable USB-C suitable Petzl Core Rechargeable battery, however can be powered by 3 AAA/LR03 batteries with out an additional adapter. This gives peace of thoughts and suppleness if you happen to’re mountain climbing or backpacking in distant places the place it’s tough to plug right into a wall to recharge a battery.
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- Product: Petzl Actik Core Headlamp (USB-C 3.5hr cost time)
- Sort: Twin Energy (included rechargeable battery or 3AAA/LR03 batteries (not included)
- Battery: 1250 mAh included (obtainable individually)
- Weight: 3.1 oz / 88g
- Max Brightness: 625 lumens
- White Runtimes: 625 lumens – 2h; 100 lumens – 7h; 7 lumens – 100h
- Headband: Reflective strap
- Execs: twin energy, intuitive management sequence, digital lock, energy meter, glows-in-the-dark
- Cons: A USB-C charging cable just isn’t included
Battery
The headlamp comes with a Petzl Core battery inside. This can be a rechargeable battery that’s suitable with different Petzl merchandise. It may be faraway from the headlamp, and you should buy a number of of them if you wish to carry extras. Nevertheless, as a substitute of recharging the headlamp, you recharge the battery, which has its personal energy meter, utilizing a USB-C plug. The earlier model used a micro-USB plug.
The Core battery holds 1250 mAh of energy, which is a bit on the low aspect in that it solely gives as much as 7 hours of burn time on the headlamp’s medium setting, which throws 100 lumens of sunshine. In most circumstances, that needs to be loads of mild for backpacking. For instance, when it will get darkish, I simply fall asleep and infrequently use my headlamp when tenting, besides to pee a couple of times at night time. In case you plan on path operating at nighttime, it’s your decision a headlamp with a much bigger battery and an extended runtime, however for the common three-season hiker, 7 hours of runtime between expenses is greater than sufficient.
Command Sequence
The Petzl Actik Core headlamp includes a single button on high, making it simpler to recollect the command sequence and cycle via it, even if you happen to don’t use the headlamp each day. I simply hate difficult command sequences, particularly ones that require a number of interdependent buttons to make use of.
The headlamp has an digital lock/unlock characteristic to forestall unintentional battery drain, which I contemplate vital characteristic on any headlamp that will likely be carried in a backpack. It has three brightness settings: 625 lumens, 100 lumens, and seven lumens, in a flood or huge beam sample, together with a pink mode and pink strobe. Whereas the headlamp is rated for 625 lumens on excessive energy, you not often want that a lot mild for three-season mountain climbing and backpacking. You’ll most likely solely use the 100 lumen setting sometimes, and the pink mode more often than not, so that you don’t need to blind your companions when sitting across the campfire at night time.
Battery Compartment
The battery compartment door on the brand new Petzl Actik 625 Core is way simpler to open than on the earlier 600 lumen mannequin: you don’t even have to make use of a fingernail, simply the tip of your thumb. Closing the battery compartment door can be simpler. It has a gasket round its periphery to maintain water out. When you see how the door suits into place, it’s straightforward to get it again in the precise place.
Suggestion
The Petzl Actik Core 625 Headlamp (2025) is a twin energy headlamp with a single management button and an intuitive command sequence that’s straightforward to determine (time and again), even if you happen to don’t use it on a regular basis. The power to make use of the headlamp’s rechargeable CORE battery or 3 AAA batteries (and not using a particular adapter) is a “core” functionality that may lengthen the utility of the headlamp in additional distant or colder locales, because it permits the usage of cold-resistant lithium AAA batteries.
Along with a modest 5-lumen enhance in mild output, the brand new Petzl Actik Core 625 lumen mannequin reviewed right here differs from the earlier 600 lumen Petzl Actik in two necessary methods:
- The rechargeable Core battery is now USB-C suitable (it’s additionally backwardly suitable with older mannequin Core-powered headlamps and gadgets).
- The battery compartment is less complicated to open and not using a software
Most battery-operated outside gear has adopted the USB-C wire adapter or is within the strategy of changing to it…every part from smartphones and headlamps to satellite tv for pc messengers and GPS receivers. As a substitute of carrying a number of cords with totally different adapters to recharge gadgets, we’re attending to the purpose the place you solely have to hold a USB-C wire, or two for redundancy, if you happen to’re paranoid. As well as, the Actik’s battery compartment is way simpler to open than beforehand.
Sadly, Petzl doesn’t embrace a USB-C wire to cost the brand new Core battery with, so chances are you’ll want to purchase one earlier than you’ll be able to recharge the battery. That’s not how I’d have packaged the product. Do this braided USB-C to USB-C as a substitute.
Disclosure: Petzl donated a headlamp for evaluate.
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