Looking for simple wide beam headlamp

Any recommendations?
Looking for a everyday working headlamp with the following features in order of preference:

  1. Wide smooth beam to fill entire eye view.
  2. Adjustable focus not needed, alternative color or tight beams not needed.
  3. Single removable 18650 battery.
  4. Left/right balanced/centered (not right angle flashlight type).
  5. Single unit (not separate battery pack).
  6. Variable or several well spaced steps brightness from moonlight to 800 lumens or so.
  7. Starts in a dim setting at power on.
  8. No turbo in normal mode sequence.
  9. No blinky in normal mode sequence.
  10. Close to 5000k color.
  11. High CRI.

I would be willing to pay more than “budget” to get all these features, or do some customizing.

I hope you have fun here, Lichtkopf!

What you want is the YLP Panda 2M CRI, which meets almost your entire list. But you probably can’t get it because it’s Russian (unless you live there or. . .). Maybe someone is willing to sell theirs.

Welcome, You can always DIY D10. To change LED and optics is quite easy.

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Other than number 4.
You want the Armytek C2 pro nichia. 4500k. High Cri.
If you turn on the advanced UI you can turn it on in Firefly group or medium group. And it has memory so wherever you turn it off that’s where it comes on unless you press and hold to come on in the lowest firefly mode. Or double click to come on in whatever last medium mode you used. Three levels of Firefly and three levels of medium. Two different turbo modes the lowest one is 750 lumens. Three clicks to get there.
And even number 4 doesn’t come into play because it has an extremely smooth wide beam pattern out to 120° so you don’t notice that it’s not centered on you forehead except for 1 to 2 ft in front of you. So it really meets all of your realistic “wants”.

Thanks for all your fast replies! I ordered 2x boruit g10. I will see what I can do with them

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After you’re done with the D10, you can look for Sofirn HS40. It’s got a nice buck driver for efficient, stabilized, long runtime.

In the end, presented with cheap options, some people forget about some of the numbers between one and 11 on their list.
Please come back and let us know how it stacks up
before and after you attempt to modify it.

EMISAR DW4 in mule version. I guess, you need to ask Hank Wang by email for a mule version after you made your order. You could choose the Nichia 519 at 5000K with dome. If it’s the first Time you order an Emisar, first time with Hank’s" hidden menu" and first time with configurable UI (Anduril 2), then you should ask a few questions here. And the end, I think you will check every box.

Review here

Headband

Ok, the two boruit D10s and some parts arrived.

For the first one I replaced the reflector with a pebbled tir optic. It required a little diameter filing to fit in the ring, and a little length filing and a thinning of the led gasket. I kept the clear lens window in place.

The result is a very useable light with a broad feather edge beam, 90% the same as my $40 Nebo Transcend. The color is a little cool, the ui is not perfect, but works well enough to get dim and bright as needed.

For the second D10, I will try an emitter and driver upgrade.

To address the other commenters: I really wanted a centered balanced housing. I already have an Emisar and a Convoy right angle light, and I don’t like them on my head.

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Because they are too heavy.

And where you will get “upgraded” driver?

You can ‘upgrade’ the driver the red neck engineering way by swapping the mosfets with 7135s. I did it and it improved the usability of the light quite a bit. :joy:

Also agree with headlights being too heavy. The D10 is light and that made it very comfortable to wear.

So how does this stack up against the emisar and the wide beam? That was your first priority. That’s why I threw out the armytek lineup because they do 'wide beam" better than almost everybody else. And many have plenty of mode choices for a light level for any task.
And once you’ve used the armytek smooth wide beam it is irritating to use lights that don’t have that widespread for many but not all tasks.

We put in a Convoy S21e driver (also fits H3 H2). Some filing on the board, and trimming of a spacer ring was needed, and the the fit is still a little wonky.
The USB C charging port works. It is nice and bright with a XHP50.3 HI.

You put S21E driver into a D10? That’s something new. With this possibility you can put together a B35AM D10… Yummy!

Assuming it is this driver. There is no any info on it so i newer looked closer . I guess it have Convoys “standard” 4 mode UI and modes are set definitely not for small headlamp :face_with_diagonal_mouth: If it had Anduril it would really interesting ;)) Here is Anduril driver… but Fet+1 :laughing:
Probably its possible to fit it in, if to remove charging board and place new driver instead, remove all components on old drivers one side and use pcb as a switch only

Any pics? Interested.

That’s some very invasive mod. You also need to drill holes on the new driver to pass the LED wires backwards through the host.

Also yes, a 16W driver and LED in this dinky host is just asking for trouble. With the driver so far from emitter the temperature control won’t work correctly and it can easily burn you forehead. Now I’m not sure what to do to the D10 anymore…

Dont forget about resistor modd… ;)) but anyway mode spacing mweeh.

That’s what I suspect. I tried to use Convoy’s 6V 5A boost driver to drive 4 519A’s in 2s2p and the mode spacing is completely screwed up. Instead of Low-Mid-Hi-Turbo, it went like Hi-Turbo-Turbo-Turbo. I suspect the Vf difference has a lot to do with it.

The host was Convoy’s S21F. I tried to stuff a XHP70.3 driver from M21F into the S21F. It physically fits and I was able to wire the emitters up in 2s2p since S21F comes with a 2 channel MCPCB. It was an interesting experiment but it failed to meet my expectation because of the screwed up mode spacing and at max output it became unbearably hot immediately.