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Reviews > Lighting > Headlamps - LED > Princeton Tec Quad > Roger Caffin > Long Term Report
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Reviewer Details
| Reviewer: | Roger Caffin |
| Age: | 61 |
| Gender: | M |
| Weight: | 63 kg (139 lb) |
| Height: | 167 cm (67") |
| Email address: | r dot [surname] at acm dot org |
| Home: | Sydney, Australia |
I started bushwalking at 14 and took up rock climbing at University with the girl who became my wife and my permanent walking partner. Ski touring and canyoning followed. Winter and summer, we prefer long hard trips by ourselves: about a week in Australia, up to two months in Europe/UK. We prefer fast and light in unfrequented trackless country. We would be out walking and skiing for at least three months a year. We have now moved to lightweight gear, much to our backs' relief. I designed and made much of our lightweight gear myself.
I am also the maintainer of the Australian aus.bushwalking FAQ web site www.bushwalking.org.au/FAQ/.
Product Information
| Manufacturer: | Princeton Tec | |
| Manufacturer URL: | www.princetontec.com/ | |
| Year of manufacture: | assumed 2006 | |
| Country of manufacture: | China | |
| Colour: | Blue & Yellow housing, black and grey headband | |
| Batteries: | 3 AAA, any sort | |
| Listed weight: | 96 g (3.39 oz) | |
| Actual weight: | 96 g (3.39 oz) | |
| MSRP: | na |
Product Claims
Long Term Field Performance
The Princeton Tec Quad has been on every trip I have done over the four months since I filed the Initial Report. In total it has been used for six nights summer camping in the Blue Mountains (sea level to 1000 m or 3,300'), and it has been taken on about ten day walks in the same area as well. It was seldom used on the day walks as we normally managed to get home before dark, but it survived all that crashing around in my day pack in just a little silnylon bag. It has also had a fair bit of use at home on several occasions when I was crawling around in the roof space (don't ask): this would amount to about an hour's continuous use. Basically, it has continued to function very well.
Batteries
Despite being quite economical with the use of my headlamps I have had to replace the batteries once in the limited period of this Test. This makes the Quad very hungry on batteries in my opinion, in comparison with the LED headlamps I make myself. I should explain this comment. The Quad carries three AAA cells while the ones I make carry only one AA or AAA battery. The single battery in one of my headlamps would normally last me a year or two of use on trips, while the three batteries in the Quad have only lasted for a few months. The very high brightness of the Quad on all settings is responsible for the very much shorter battery life.
Brightness Settings
I mentioned in the Field Report that I found that the lowest brightness on the Quad was more than sufficient for me when camping and that I would have been happy with a much lower brightness than the headlamp can offer. I stand by that statement. For camp use this headlamp is too bright, and a much lower intensity option would be better, and would make the battery life longer. I understand and agree that the high brightness setting can have some uses, so my preference would be to have the lowest brightness setting running at about 4 mA and the intermediate setting at about 10 mA. I do not know whether this sort of change is possible with the chip being used in the Quad headlamp.
I have used the Quad headlamp on high beam a couple of times while probing the far corners of the roof space of my house. The high brightness was useful for this, but I was able to do most of the work there on the low setting. Basically, I think the drive towards high brightness is being driven mainly by marketing competition rather than by real user needs in the field. However, others may find more use for the high beam.
Mechanical
The O-ring seal in the battery case has given no trouble, but I haven't tried using the headlamp underwater. One light shower did not seem to affect it all, and inspection afterwards showed no water had got inside. I do not think this was a definitive test of the seal, but it was quite enough for my purposes.
The tilt mechanism continues to hold the preset angle satisfactorily. The 'steps' in the adjustment or bumps seem quite definite. The broad headstrap has remained fully elastic over time, and it works well. There is no strap over the top of the head, but the light weight renders this unnecessary in my experience.
I have found it a bit tricky finding the switch in the dark as it has virtually no protrusion sticking up. I reported in my Field Report that I could find it by rubbing my finger across the top surface to sense the compliant rubber yellow seal. Well, that method is how I do it, although sometimes I have had to resort to finding the adjustment screw first in order to locate the rubber seal. However I don't think I am going to make this into a criticism: the rubber seal does do a good job of protecting the switch, and I have always been able to turn the headlamp on in the dark after fumbling around a bit.
I did report that the almost-recessed on-switch had managed to get turned on in the bottom of my pack once. With just a shade more care in packing this has not happened again. I find it helps if I wrap the elastic head strap around the switch: that seems to buffer it well enough. I haven't tried to put an interlock into the circuit, and I can't see how that might be done without opening the battery case or at least damaging the waterproof sealing.
Low Battery Light
There is a little red LED which flashes when I turn the headlamp off if the battery voltage has got low. This is more of a gimmick than anything else as it is quite unnecessary: I can very easily tell when the batteries are getting low from the dim light beam itself. But arguably worse is the fact that there is no way to turn off the flashing red LED once it starts, short of removing the batteries. So my wife and I endured a whole night of the red LED flashing by our bed when I used the headlamp in the evening during a storm and power failure. No, I was not about to get out of bed to change the batteries, and no, I did not want to play around with the batteries in the dark when I was trying to get to sleep. This is not a smart design: it should have a timer on it to turn it off after a minute or so. As far as I can see it really serves no useful purpose.
That Not-So-Small Annoyance
I mentioned in my Field Report that the headlamp does have one feature which is very annoying: the sequence of intensities displayed when I switch it on. It starts on the brightest setting, which irritates me greatly. This seems to be a function of the electronic chip used inside as other headlamps have been reported by their users to have the same sequence of brightnesses, and those users reported being equally irritated by it. This is really bad ergonomics. Also, I still think the flash mode is useless: I could simulate it by waving my hand in front of the headlamp or just waving the headlamp up and down, and it is so annoying when triggered accidentally. I have been told it is a 'helpful safety feature'. I think that is just an excuse for a bad design. I find the flash setting a nuisance and a menace in the field!
Summary
Things I have looked at include the following. Some stand as they were in my Field Report. Overall, it is a nice headlamp, works quite light, but has some annoying quirks.
Recommendations for Improvement
