(Confused about burn time? You’re not alone. Such touches are user-friendly and intuitive, while also saving battery-the 200-hour burn time is tops in the test. Our mountaineering tester liked being able to tap the side of the light with a finger to get a quick burst of the maximum brightness for quick looks down the trail without losing his settings a tap on the same pad switches the Spot 350 back to its previous brightness. (Sound familiar? Fans of the Spot 325 will appreciate that the 350 is virtually the same light from formfactor to usability, but brighter.) After turning it off, the lamp remembers its most-recent brightness, so you don’t need to reset it every time. By simply holding the large button, you can dim the light to the exact brightness you want. The 350 lumens are plenty for technical predawn climbs where seeing detail at a distance is crucial, but whereas other lamps have set brightness levels, the Spot 350 is instantly dimmable. It’s not a unique story for the Spot 350, which became a quick favorite among our crew of testers for its best-in-test versatility. For one Washington-based tester, it was a sunset-to-sunrise standby, reliably giving him the light he needed for everything from bivvying along the West Ridge of the Cascades’ Forbidden Peak to slurping down a bag of dehydrated pad thai to reading his book at camp in one testing blitz earlier this summer. Max burn time on lowest setting: 200 hoursĪfter 10 long nights, five alpine starts and several summits, few headlamps would still be humming along like the Black Diamond Spot 350.Best Headlamp for Running: BioLite HeadLamp 330īest All-Around Headlamp & REI Co-op Editors’ Choice Award Winner.Best Rechargeable Headlamp: Petzl Actik Core.Best All-Around Headlamp: Black Diamond Spot 350.The result? These seven lamps, which will serve every user and budget.įind quick recommendations below or scroll down for in-depth reviews. We spent a season field testing more than a dozen models in all sorts of darkness. That’s why picking the right one is critical. These important tools help to lengthen your days outside, allowing you to have fun after dark and see places you couldn’t otherwise, and they serve as a safety net in case something goes awry. So what’s all this got to do with headlamps? Well, if you’ve spent any time browsing the shelves of an REI in recent years, you know Moore’s theory also applies to these trusty lights.īetween brightness, battery life, features and comfort, headlamps are the computer processors of outdoor gear-more powerful and affordable than ever before. And since 1965, computer scientists have affirmed that Moore was indeed correct. In other words, computer power would increase exponentially and cost would decrease as much. 87 Reviews 87 reviews with an average rating of 4.6 out of 5 starsĪt the dawn of the computer age, Intel co-founder Gordon Moore looked at the already-rampant advances in the microprocessor and theorized that going forward, the number of transistors packed onto a single circuit board would double every two years and that computer prices would halve in the sale time.