by Treas Manning

Black Diamond my have lost a few battles in the headlamp wars but the new ReVolt has put the company back on the frontlines. At one time Black Diamond owned the rechargeable headlamp market but in recent years the giant had lost its edge to competitors like Petzl.

I recently took Black Diamond's new ReVolt headlamp up into the White Mountains to photograph the bristlecone pine under a moonless night. Once you have trekked in well beyond the winter closesure gate your recharging sources are pretty limited and to make things even more difficult, the area is so far from the influences of city lights, if your power is drained you are at a standstill until dawn. This pitch black environment is perfect to product test a headlamp, and Black Diamond's new ReVolt passed with flying colors.

The ReVolt has two settings, high and low, which allowed me to switch back and forth as my need to see requirements dictated, saving me valuable battery power. On high using alkaline batteries estimates were at 70 hours and on low as much as 300 hours of usage, so if I couldn't get my shot the first night I would be able to hang out for an additional night or two without recharging. There is also a lockout function when your headlamp is not in use to save on battery drain. If you didn't know, even when a battery operated device is in the off positon the battery, albeit slowly, still suffers battery drain.

Black Diamond pretty much thought of everything when designing the ReVolt headlamp. The lamp can be powered by three sources; alkaline or lithium batteries, standard rechargeable batteries, or the batteries that come with your purchase which are Black Diamond's proprietary NiMH batteries. You can use any USB port to charge the NiMH batteries and that's a big bonus if you have a fully charged laptop or a USB power outlet in your truck, which I do, (though try as I did I could not ram through the winter closure gate), so I was left to cautionary power conservation if I needed to stay out multiple nights to get my shot.

Because I carry a lot of camera gear I am always concerned with weight, down to the ounce. The ReVolt weighs in at 96 grams, a small unit with plenty of bright light, more than enough to find my way without breaking a leg. Most important to me, the light is clean enough to illuminate my subject and create strong contrast so that my auto focus could find sufficient detail to grab on to.

All in all, I was extremely impressed the the Black Diamond ReVolt; good power supply options, long battery life, and lots of lighting variations. The ReVolt is perfect for night hiking, hanging out in the tent, and heaven forbid the strobe setting can aid in a search and rescue. There's also a three level charge indicator to help with managing your power and the unit is water resistant.

-One triple power LED

-Two single power white LEDs

-Two single power red LEDs

-Maximum brightness 110 lumens

-Beam distance 70 meters with alkaline batteries and 66 meters iwth NiMH

-and of course everything else mentioned in my review

-and if you don't believe me, Black Diamond's ReVolt headlamp won the Backpacker's Editors' Choice Award