Black Diamond  Spot Headlamp

I own a 2013 (90 lumen) version of this light and have used it for years. When I saw the new (130 lumen) version of this light with new features I decided to purchase a second lamp. I am overall disappointed in the changes. My biggest disappointment is the change to the red lamp. They have changed the focus on the red lamp from a flood to more of a spot. As someone who used the red lamp mainly for late night navigation to not disturb other campers (I stay up very late) and for astronomy sessions, the spot configuration is unsuitable for navigation, the light only illuminates a very narrow circle (probably 20 degrees) directly where it is pointed, so you constantly need to move the beam to see obstacles in your path. The other disappointing change was with the size of the adjustment bracket. They have made this piece about 0.5 cm larger, and it now covers the access point to the battery compartment, this is why so many people have said that the batteries are hard to change. On the older model you could get your fingers around the bottom of the unit to open the battery door. On the newer version, the bracket blocks you from doing this. I was only able to open the battery compartment with a coin, making what was once an easy operation more difficult. These two things are a deal breaker for me, while I liked the other upgraded features, the changes of the above two functions have made me decide to return this lamp and instead track down an older model. I did like that the lamp powers on to ~75% intensity, so that you can preserve some battery life, you can go to a brighter setting by tapping the powertap, or by adjusting the brightness. I did like that you can use the powertap to toggle between your current setting and the brightest setting. When adjusting the brightness when you reach the lowest or highest intensity the lamp begins to cycle the opposite direction, so you can go high to low back to high stopping at any point. I personally did not find this option very useful, you can powertap to the highest and go down again if you miss a point, but can see how someone might enjoy it. They changed the power switch so that one click activates the spot while two clicks activates the flood setting. On the older version the setting alternated with each power on so you would have to turn the lamp on and off until the desired setting was on. All in all I found that both methods required multiple pushes of the power button so this was neither an improvement or a flaw. With this all being said depending on your intended use you may find this lamp to be the perfect hiking/camping lamp. It is very bright, but the adjustable intensity makes it usable for a variety of activities that do not require the full 130 lumens. You can also adjust the angle of the lamp to illuminate just the right location. If you don’t intend to use the red lamp for navigation (the spot would probably be very nice to read without disturbing your tent partner), and are comfortable using a coin to change the batteries with then I would recommend this lamp. If however, one of those two things makes you concerned, then I would not recommend the product.

I can assure you I've never left a review like this and I'm sure there will be people who rate it as unhelpful. But I can't help but feel like I have to warn people about a very basic problem with this unit. Like how to get it open. The instructions that come with it show an illustration of the battery compartment swinging open, but there's no mention of how to make that actually happen. There are no obvious coin slots or other indicators on the body of the headlamp to show where the release is either. I'm no slouch at figuring out how things work. The people in my camping group call me MacGyver for a reason! I'm good at what I like to call "Observe, Analyze, Repair". While this lamp looked promising, I'm returning it - if for no other reason than put up my small protest to BD's putting this bit of frustration out into the world.