Why does the Black Diamond Spot get bad press?

I am a headlight nut but have stayed away from the Spot because of poor reviews on CPF and some here as well. I found s site that wss clearing them out for $19.99 so i snapped one up to try. Long story short, this is the best and most practical headlamp i now own. It is the newer version so they may havd madd a mistake on the price.
The closest and most popular competitor is the PT EOS of which i have the newest version and the one just before that. I have been using the EOS for the past 3 years on camping trips, travel, work, bike rides, etc. I really respect it and bought the next gen because i was happy with my first one. Never had a quality issues with it, works everytime. The Spot just came in the mail a few weeks ago and already i would toss my EOS away forever. The Spot is great. Much brighter than the EOS, has ramping modes. It also has two small leds for close up flood that are perfect for reading or finding items in your tent at night. It is smaller and lighter than the EOS and in my opinion is a better real world light for everything i can imagine. Sorry PT EOS, we had some good times and you never let me down but it is time to move over for the new (old) kid on the block.

Where did you get it?

At $20 it's a good deal. It gets bad press only because initially the Storm was only $10 more and the Storm is regulated, waterproof and was brighter both in spot and flood.

The Spot also has (had?) a yellowish spot in the center of the beam that wasn't so appealing until you remedied that with a little tape.

Both the Spot and Storm are a little annoying in that every time you turn them on they switch between spot and flood whether that's what you want or not. They also almost come on in high and it takes a while to get to low with the ramping.

O2Gearshop had them for $19.99 but now i see they are $25. Still a good deal IMHO.
I prefer ramping over modes in a headlight so I guess this light is not for everyone but i really like it. I think quality is on par with my PT EOS.

The Spot isn't a bad headlamp for $20. I think I would recommend it to anyone looking for a light duty headlamp at that price. I think I posted about it a while back (here it is). I would not recommend it at the regular price as it does have some problems. If I only had to pay a little more, I would prefer the Storm or even the PT Eos over the Spot.

I liked the Spot more than the other $40 3AAA un-regulated ipx4 headlamps like the PT Remix and Petzl Tikka Plus 2. I've briefly owned all three and the Spot was the most useful. The Remix needs more modes and needs to fix the fragile door problem. The Plus 2 needs more modes, needs to raise the PWM frequency on the low mode, and needs to fix the glare problem. I thought the Petzl had the best build quality in terms of fit and finish, BD and PT were about the same.

My two big complaints about the Spot have to do with the UI and the case not closing all the way with Eneloops.

I thought the proximity mode was kind of useless as it didn't do anything the spot mode couldn't do better IMO. But, as Mr. Bryan mentioned, the UI forces you to cycle through that mode to get to the spot mode, so it took me three clicks from off just to get to the mode I wanted every single time I turned it on. And that was before I had to press and keep the button down to ramp it to the output level I wanted. Having to do that every time kind of became a chore.

But the bigger issue for me was the case not closing all the way with Eneloops. I only use Eneloops in my headlamps and with them the Spot's latch would close, but there would be a 1-2mm gap all the way around the edge of the case. The electronics and optics inside aren't sealed at all, so keeping the case closed all the way is pretty important to keeping the insides relatively dust free. I use my headlamps in dusty environments, so that was the deal breaker for me.

I actually got my Spot (70 lumen version) for less than $15, which was just a screaming deal, but I still didn't feel like keeping it. If a Spot and PT Eos were the same price, I'd get the Eos just for the waterproofness alone.