After my previous post, I tested the five different types of USB-C PowerDelivery (PD) chargers I own to charge a Sofirn LT1 Lantern that has the newest Rev. 5.0 driver board which supports USB-C to USB-C charging.
All five PD chargers were able to charge the Sofirn LT1 Lantern using a USB-C to USB-C cable.
Only one of the five PD chargers was able to charge the Wurkkos HD20 using a USB-C to USB-C cable.
My belief is that the USB-C port on the Wurkkos HD20 is not implemented correctly for USB-C to USB-C charging.
I don't mean to disagree but how about advertising it more as a "tool lamp" which could also be used as a headlamp?
Any suggestions how it should look like instead? Shiny ano, yes I agree with that. A matte anodizing like Convoy's or Armytek's would be awesome but I don't know how it could be realized quickly. Maybe that's a point for mid-/longterm improvement on Sofirn's/Wurkkos's lights. What's wrong with the powerbank feature, does it increase the size of the flashlight? Magnetic charging is a very disputable, controversial idea as there's a large group of people who refuse that for reasons of proprietary technology. A simple USB-cable is something that most people always have available somewhere. Just my opinion of course. Moreover, magnetic charging would require Sofirn/Wurkkos to put more efforts in design changes. I don't know if it was easy to highlight the benefits over the downsides.
I have been discussing TIR lenses with Sofirn and Wurkkos several times. It seems these are a bit difficult to get or to produce (by their own injection molding factory?). I recommended buying third-party lenses from Carclo UK oder LEDiL. Maybe this will become an option in the near future, who knows. A headlamp with 4 LED dies underneath a frosted/microlensed single TIR lens is on my mind already. Osram's LE RTDUW S2WP could emit white, blue, red and green while being extremely compact in size. I try to work on a design concept already. :-)
Thank you so much for your feedback. That might be very helpful to pinpoint the root cause. Maybe Wurkkos can let their engineers have a look at both drivers (LT1 and HD20) to check for any differences with the resistors placed onto the USB-C circuitry.
I'm not sure the comparison to the Sofirn LT1 Lantern will be that useful to Wurkkos.
The Sofirn LT1 Lantern seems to be able to be reliably charged using a USB-C to USB-C cable with any USB-C PD charger but it does not have the capability to also function as a power bank and charge other devices like the Wurkkos HD20 is able to do.
Being able to both be charged and also be able to charge other devices has to be much more complicated to implement and I compliment Wurkkos for attempting this.
The LT1 uses just two resistor to encode the power profile. I assume the HD20 has a dedicated microcontroller that implements parts of the USB standard (pretty poorly obviously). This is necessary to decide when it should charge the battery and when it should enable the boost circuit for the powerbank feature.
Regarding the design: I like it. It shares some features with other Wurkkos lights and adds interesting details like the knurling next to the switch. For a headlamp it is too big and heavy. But hanging it around your neck works fine.
The UI is not very intuitive. That’s the problem with two separate emitters and only a single button. When you turn it on you don’t know which emitter in which level you get. It really feels like this light needs two buttons.
Just started to review this light and I haven’t decided how to rate it. In some way it’s interesting, while it has also some issues.
Approximate weight comparison based on my scale and headlamps.
Sofirn SP40 Headlamp:
64 grams - Headlamp body only without the clip
46 grams - 18650 battery delivered with the headlamp
39 grams - Headband strap
149 grams - Total Weight of above components
Wurkkos HD20 Headlamp:
87 grams - Headlamp body only without the clip
69 grams - 21700 battery delivered with the headlamp
45 grams - Headband strap
201 grams - Total Weight of above components
Amount Wurkkos HD20 weighs more than Sofirn SP40:
23 grams more - HD20 headlamp body weighs 36% more than SP40 headlamp body
23 grams more - HD20 21700 battery weighs 50% more than SP40 18650 battery
6 grams more - HD20 headband strap weighs 15% more than SP40 headband strap
52 grams more - Total weight of HD20 components is 35% more than SP40 components
The total weight increase over the SP40 is only 36 grams (or 24% more) if you use the 18650 battery included with the Sofirn SP40 instead of the 21700 battery included with the Wurkkos HD20 and also use the 7 gram battery spacer sleeve included with the HD20.
The weight difference between the two headlamps is quite noticeable and would bother me when wearing the headlamp for long periods of time or while doing an activity with quick jarring movements but it is a very nice light.
What you’re saying is get rid of all the features that make it unique, just to make it more like existing lights. What’s the point of making a new light that’s just like existing lights? From a consumer standpoint, I’d rather have a different set of options - I don’t need more of the same. I’m getting this precisely for the powerbank feature and the fact that I can charge it using the same cable I charge my phone - not some special magnetic charger.
This UI is the result of a collaboration here where everyone was (and still is) encouraged to share suggestions. Alternatively, Wurkkos could have used a simpler UI like Acebeam‘s H60 but it would have lacked some nice, unique features like a direct access to turbo mode or user-defined brightness modes between throw and flood light in parallel use. I agree that HD20 would really benefit from two e-switches. That’s an approach I am pursuing with Wurkkos already, see WK30S for reference.
I think I noticed several firmware bugs, but I haven’t found out how to reproduce them. One time I changed the brightness when both emitters were turned on, but their level was not in sync (meaning the spot was one or two levels behind the flood). When the light is turned off and I double click for turbo, sometimes both emitters turn on, sometimes only the emitter that was used before.
Below is a quote from a post in a different BLF thread that reviewed the Wurkkos HD20:
https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/63853/33
Thanks Fescron for the tip that while the light is on a "quick triple click" cycles the LED modes in the same way as a "click followed quickly by a hold".
Also, the moonlight mode is only memorized for a second or two on my light. I was testing that when somehow my light ended up in a state that while the light was on I could not cycle the LED modes with either of these two methods and a "hold" on the switch unexpectedly kept cycling the LED modes instead of the brightness no matter how many times I tried to change the brightness. Turning the light off and then back on again resolved the issue but I could not remember exactly what I did to initially cause the issue and have not been able to reproduce the issue.
You’re right about moonlight, in hindsight I have the same behavior! After about two seconds the light’s memory goes back to the lowest setting instead of moonlight.
I got my HD20 today. I want to spend more time with it before giving a review and testing the USB-C functionality against different chargers. But someone posted about a weak headband rubber material that holds the light to the headstrap. That happened to me too. One of the two rings holding my light broke in a similar way.
The light is slightly bigger round than most lights. Will generic headbands fit this OK?
I’m looking for something like this…This one is for dia 28-32mm, the hd20 has dia of 26mm(measured at rings)
I’ve tried holders of boruit D10 and Skilhunt h04, but they don’t fit
Yeah the biggest negative I think is also the headband. If I could get the light in easier I’d be much more inclined to use it as headlamp or handlamp but now I’m more leaning towards “once I get it in the strap I should kinda leave it like that”… I’ve already put it in twice and every time I fear I’ll break the straps, it’s too tight imo
Unfortunately, Wurkkos did not fully adopt the UI that we originally agreed upon here on BLF. In some details it is noncompliant to the manual I created for this headlamp.
Let me highlight the differences to the UI shown in the manual:
Unlike stated in the manual, there is no mode memory for the selected brightness per LED when cycling through Flood > Spot > Flood+Spot. The corresponding LED(s) will always restart on Low mode. However, there is mode memory for the last-used setting when you turn OFF and ON again. That's not an actual problem but it may be worth improving with batch #2.
The moonlight mode has a glitch in the first 5 seconds. When turning ON by pressing 2s it turns on in moonlight mode. When turning OFF and ON again within the next 5 seconds the light will still start again in moonlight mode, i.e. moonlight mode is temporarily part of mode memory (unlike intended). Normally, mode memory only works for Low-Medium-High, not for moonlight or turbo. Again, nothing to worry about but worth considering for improvement.
Unlike stated in the manual, HD20 does not always use both LEDs for turbo mode. Instead, it uses the LED mode for turbo mode that was selected before. For instance, if you used spotlight only, a doubleclick will use turbo mode for the spotlight LED only. The other LED will remain off. The same applies to direct access to turbo mode from OFF. In order to have both LEDs activated for turbo mode you need to select Spot+Flood mode before. This is the most significant difference to what's stated in the manual. I do not know if it should be kept this way as Wurkkos always wanted to use both LEDs for turbo, regardless where you start it from. To my surprise, all strobe modes work exactly as stated in the manual, i.e. HD20 always uses both LEDs at the same time, regardless of the selected LED mode.
Unlike stated in the manual, the LED mode can also be cycled by a tripleclick, not only by 2H (click, click+hold). This is actually quite useful but it's not an official part of the UI.
There’s a nasty random glitch in the firmware when using both LEDs (Spot+Flood). Sometimes when cycling through Low-Medium-High the LEDs are out of sync. That means brightness of each LED will not cycle upwards in parallel but randomly between Low, Medium or High. I did not find out yet how to reproduce this glitch - it just happens every once in while.
To be fair, none of these noncompliances are serious or render the UI unusable. I will try to post a separate, rectified manual for batch #1 lights. You may want to exchange your original manual by the rectified one.
I made a short video about the general UI behaviour when cycling LED modes or brightness modes.
I also made a short video of the UI glitch in Spot+Flood mode. Another BLF member reported the similar glitch before.
Powerbank mode / Reverse charging
I tested this feature using an USB-C to Apple Lightning cable to charge my iPhone 6 Plus as well as a 100W USB-C type C-C cable to charge my Xiaomi Redmi Note 8T. The iPhone would not charge using the HD20 as power source, only asking once to unlock for using the "accessory" and then doing nothing anymore. The Android phone however was charged by HD20 (at slow charging speed). This observation underlines that there seems to be an encoding problem between the USB-C specifications and the (reverse-)charging protocol of HD20. Many smart chargers seem to be incompatible with HD20 when using type C-C cables, probably when asking for 9V, 12V or 20V output voltage. But there seems to be more to it and only closer inspection on Wurkkos's side can resolve this issue.
There is also another bug regarding turbo. If you start from spot mode, turn off the flashlight and wait more than five seconds, it will enable both LEDs. Before five seconds it’s just the spot LED. This does not work with the flood LED.
