Fenix HM65R SuperRaptor headlamp

You need a headlamp when hiking. Sure, midsummer in Lapland doesn't get real dark ever, but on occasion you may be staying in a wilderness hut without huge windows, or stuck inside a tent on a dark and rainy day, and want a bit of extra light to read by. Also, the Sun does actually begin to set already around the end of July. And a headlamp is much more convenient than a hand-held flashlight, so that's what I prefer.

	For over 20 years I used a simple Petzl Tikka (or maybe "Tikka Plus", I forget) with a row of four standard white LEDs, running off 3×AAA batteries, with a single button to switch between high, medium, low and flashing modes, as well as off. The Tikka served me well. Mostly I just used its low setting while reading, or high when searching for some lost object. Neither one was especially bright—but on the other hand, a single set of batteries easily lasted a six week hike. However, as the batteries wore down, all modes would gradually get dimmer and dimmer. Occasionally I did wish for more light, e.g. on the rare occasion when looking for a flat space for my tent in the dark. The PWM flicker at low brightness was just noticeable with the Tikka. It made falling droplets of liquid fascinating to watch at night.
	Finally I went ahead and upgraded to a more modern headlamp, the ridiculously powerful and overly fancy Fenix HM65R SuperRaptor. It has two LEDs, one of which gives a wide floodlight with Low, Medium and High modes, the other gives a narrower spotlight beam with Low, Medium, "High I", "High II" and "Turbo" modes. (Since a turbo is an air compressor used in internal combustion engines, it is an entirely logical name for a lamp's brightness setting, right?) The two LEDs have their own buttons and the interface is sensible: long press to switch on and off, short press to cycle through the brightness settings. The light remembers which setting was last used on each LED, and either LED or both can be used. There's also a lockout mode to prevent the light accidentally switching on and eating up the battery. I don't see any PWM flicker or hear any SMPS whine in any of the operating modes. The lamp has a normal headband just like the Tikka, plus another one across the top. The latter may be good e.g. when running or otherwise bouncing around, but I didn't like it (or need it) so I simply removed it (nondestructively). On a longer hike, I mostly just use the lowest floodlight setting for reading. On that setting, the lamp is advertized to have a runtime of 300 hours, but that doesn't seem to be true. I only got about half of that in my test. But it is a respectably long runtime regardless.
	The wide floodlight of the SuperRaptor is wider and more uniform than the Tikka's, which is nice. The Tikka is also incredibly blue, but of course that's really obvious only in a side-by-side comparison. The SuperRaptor is a bit on the greenish side, also not really obvious in actual use. The photo here was taken with daylight white balance, the SuperRaptor on low power floodlight quite close to the furry cow on the right, the Tikka on high power and placed quite a bit further back from the baby moose on the left, in order to make both beams roughly the same size. Yeah, the lowest setting of the SuperRaptor seems to actually produce more light than the brightest setting of the Tikka! Can that be right??? Or have the Tikka's LEDs degraded that much over two decades of use? About time I got a new headlamp!  :)

150 hours runtime (not 300 h!)

I contacted the retailer Varusteleka, and inquired if they have any knowledge of this issue. They did not, but were appropriately concerned about the perfomance of the product they sell, and offered to exchange my lamp for another one of the same model, and send the first one to the manufacturer for analysis. (That's what I call service! Maybe I could have bought the SuperRaptor elsewhere for a 1% cheaper price, but Varusteleka's customer service is always top notch! Also, dealing with manufacturers directly is sometimes frustrating, so I'm very happy Varusteleka took care of that on my behalf. Still waiting to hear the manufacturer's comments.) So then I tested the replacement unit's battery and got 3268 mAh—very close to the previous one. Then I did the same runtime test, and got 10 hours more—but still nowhere near the advertized 300 h!

So what could be the problem? It seems that the SuperRaptor is some wacky "special edition" model of the HM65R that's only available in Finland (wtf???), and one of the major differences between the two is that the standard HM65R is designed to slowly decrease the lamp's brightness during use—claiming that your eyes will adapt and never notice the change. That increases the runtime numbers significantly, but many people seem to hate this feature. The SuperRaptor model does not do this, though it is otherwise pretty much identical. So could it be that Fenix's marketing division simply forgot to update the numbers for the SuperRaptor's sales blurb? There are odd discrepancies in the specified runtimes of higher power levels as well, but I never tested those so thoroughly. I also noticed that, with a single blinking indicator left, the three brightest spotlight modes became equal in brightness—the lamp begins to limit the highest power levels before the battery is completely depleted. That's quite reasonable in my opinion.

Update:

I have since then tested the medium power runtime on the wide floodlight of my lamp (that power level is very nice for walking in the forest after dusk), and clocked 10 hours to a single blinking indicator (not constantly blinking). Based on my earlier results on low power, there might seem to be maybe an hour's worth of battery still left, but at this point the lamp began to switch down to low power on its own. I don't know what the original runtime spec was, as I can't find the old version's specs on the Internet anymore, and I've certainly lost any paper docs that came with my lamp... :) But the same power level on the Superraptor 2 is specified at 15 hours, which is high in comparison, but at least in the same ballpark as the 10 hours on mine.

Battery indicators

Indicators	Capacity (according to manual)	Capacity (measured)
4 indicators	100% – 80%	100% – 82%
3 indicators	80% – 60%	82% – 66%
2 indicators	60% – 40%	66% – 51%
1 indicator	40% – 20%	51% – 13%
1 indicator blinking	20% – 0%	13% – 5%
1 blinking constantly	"charge immediately"	5% – 0%

So in the beginning, the indicators fall off way too rapidly—when one single indicator out of four is reached, half of the battery capacity still remains! And then there's no change until the battery is down to 13%. This is unfortunately typical of battery status indicators in a variety of devices (except, maybe, modern phones). The discharge curve of a Li-ion cell is quite well behaved, so how hard can it be to make a battery status indicator that actually gives a useful indication???

But to be fair, just having a rechargeable battery is a boon, as I can just top it up anytime, instead of having to consider installing fresh batteries or risk having the old ones run out mid-hike.

My final verdict

Some people complain that on high power this headlamp soon overheats and reduces its power (yes, there's also thermal protection built in). Well, doh, that's what will happen with a high-power LED without a sufficient heat sink! This lamp is designed to be small and light. The high power modes are quite astonishingly bright for such a compact unit, but you shouldn't even presume to use the absolute maximum power for extended periods because (a) it will soon get hot, and (b) the battery will soon wear down! If high power for long periods is what you need (e.g. for extended night time hiking, with the objective of ruining everyone's night vision for miles around), then a small stand-alone headlamp is the wrong tool for the job! For that purpose, you'll want a bigger headlamp with better heat sinking and a separate big battery pack on your belt or in your backpack. But for setting up camp in the dark, this lamp on medium power will do just fine!

Li-ion batteries have a poor reputation for performance in cold weather. Maybe that's not really an issue here, because at high power the lamp does keep itself warm, and at low power you don't need super high current output from the battery. On a two-night outing at −15°C the lamp was happy as a clam with its stock battery, at any power level. Regardless, when I take this lamp on its first real winter hike in Lapland, I'll definitely take two CR123A primary (non-rechargeable) lithium batteries as spares. They can be used instead of the single 18650 cell, and primary lithiums shouldn't mind any kind of sub-freezing temperatures in the least.