Tag: Nitecore Headlamp

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Nitecore NU33 Review (Red & White LED, 750 Lumens, USB-C)

Introducing the Nitecore NU33 Headlamp, a light designed for those who are wanting lightweight, small packaging, and multi-color emitters. The light features a primary cool white emitter (5867k), with an auxiliary neutral white (4575k) floody emitter and an auxiliary red mode. Thanks to Nitecore for sending this to me to look at and review. 

 

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Get the Nitecore NU33 at http://bit.ly/3QPXUC4

or on Amazon at https://amzn.to/3CTfuis

 

Packaging & Accessories

The packaging here is Nitecore’s standard retail packaging. Inside the light is in a black plastic tray and has a few accessories. Included is the light itself, a strap that’s preattached, a USB-A to C cable, a manual, and a warranty card. 

 

Construction & Design

The NU33 has an aluminum outer shell, with a plastic bracket that the tilt mechanism and mount are made out of. It looks like it’s available in black and purple currently. The back of the mount is contoured a bit for comfort, and I will say this is one of the lighter-weight and more comfortable headlamps I have used in recent months. The strap is made of black elastic and is adjustable. The outside of it has silver markings for style and reflections around the entire way. It has tilt control, only down and about 75 degrees. The buttons on top of the light stand proud and have different heights and textures so they are easy to tell apart. The internal 2000mAh battery is sealed inside and non-user removable. 

 

Size & Weight

I measured the weight of the NU33 with the strap at 3.38oz, or 95.7g. length is 2.45”, width is 1.7” and it’s 1.34” thick. The light is only IP66 water and dust rated, which is less than we typically see. Light rain should be ok but I wouldn’t do much more than that. This headlamp compares nicely to some of the offerings from Blackdiamond and the like but I don’t have one of those so I picked a few headlamps to compare it to. 

 

LED & Beam

Nitecore doesn’t say which LED’s are specifically being used with the NU33. The main emitter is cool white but surprisingly neutral. On my Opple meter, I measured it at 5867k and 66 CRI and just slightly green with a good amount of tint shift. Its beam profile here is a defused spot, There is plenty of spill out of the optic as well. The axillary neutral white emitter measured at 4575k and 85 CRI. This is your short-range flood emitter, it’s pleasant but only good for short-range tasks as it only goes up to 53 lumens. One thing to note as well as there is no PWM here, it’s a constant current driver. 

Below are the outputs I measured with my Texas Ace Lumen tube. They measured slightly above what Nitecore claimed in all modes. My two comments would be I wish that the neutral white emitter had a high mode reaching 100 lumens and that the low had a lower output option instead of a blinking mode. 

 

Heat & Runtime

Runtimes for the NU33 were pretty good. Turbo is able to maintain its claimed 700 lumens for around 5 minutes while gradually ramping down. From there it was pretty flat out for 3.5 hours, before stepping down a few more times for a total runtime of 4 hours. As expected high gives you quite a bit more runtime out to 10 and a half hours, but the output is much less between 100-200 lumens during this time. For the other modes, I will have to take Nitecore’s word on the output runtimes as they were too long to graphically test. Auxiliary mode runs for 47 and 147 hours respectively and red is rated for 26 hours of runtime on its constant mode. 

 

UI

UI here is pretty simple, the large power button is your on/off button (press and hold), once on pressing the button again quickly will change brightness levels. The other smaller round button is to change the emitter mode. To get to the blinking modes long press on the mode button when the light is on. The light does have lockout just hold both buttons together when the light is off for about 4 seconds and the main emitter will flash a few times to let you know it’s locked. 

 

Recharging 

The light does have a built-in non-user replaceable 2000mAh li-ion battery. Nitecore says this is equivalent to 3x AA batteries or 9X AAA batteries. The light recharges via a USB-C port on the bottom hidden behind a flexible plastic cover that stayed in place nicely. 

The total charge time I saw was 1:13:00 which is a little faster than Nitecore claims. Charge speed was under 1C but just barely for most of the charge and that’s probably why. There are 4 power level indicator LED’s on the left side of the light, each one representing 25% power and if the light is off you can just press the round mode button to turn them on. You can also use the light while charging. 

 

Conclusion

I was pleasantly surprised by this headlamp. It’s very light, yet feels well-built in the hand. It’s super comfortable to wear. I’m not a runner so I didn’t test that but I would expect it would do well here if you had the strap reasonably tight. I was pleasantly surprised the cool white LED here wasn’t cooler, 5800 CRI is workable, especially with the NW flood emitter for more up-close work. 

 

I will give it dings for the sealed battery, making it a disposable product and not very sustainable, as well as the red mode not having a low output mode. 18 lumens is fairly bright. 

I can recommend this one and think it’s a pretty good option for the average person. It’s probably not the best option for a flashaholic though. At the time of filming, the price is around $50 which is an ok value, you can certainly find this size of a headlamp for less with not as many features, etc and you can certainly spend more on similar lights from headlamps often used in the backpacking/climbing world running on alkaline batteries often. 

 

Let me know what you guys think of the NU33 in the comments below, if I have any discounts or coupons I will link to those in the description too. Thanks for watching this review, and supporting the channel, I will catch you on the next one.

Get the Nitecore NU33 at http://bit.ly/3QPXUC4

or on Amazon at https://amzn.to/3CTfuis

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Nitecore HC35 Review (2700 Lumens, Quad LED, 21700 Battery, Headlamp)

Nitecore has a new large format headlamp on the market, with 4 LED, and a diffused lens. It runs a 21700 battery, and has onboard microUSB for recharging. While designed as a headlamp I am going to come at this one from the angle of a worklight too. Thanks to Nitecore Store for sending this to me to look at and review. I will have a link to them in the description below. 

 

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Packaging and Accessories

Packaging is a large yellow retail hanging box, with photos of the lights and lots of stats throughout. Inside the light and accessories site in a plastic shell.

Accessories include the HC35 with the Nitecore button top 21700 4000mAH battery (NL2140HP), pocket clip, Nitecore branded headband, spare o-rings, micro USB cable, manual, warranty, 18650 adapter. Somewhat strangely no extra USB port cover was included and I actually broke mine during testing. (My fault, not Nitecore’s)

 

Construction

The light is made from anodized aluminum, and machining here is pretty good. Starting at the tail cap, it’s flat, magnetic and labeled accordingly. The tailcap has shallow diamond knurling on it that doesn’t add a ton of texture but enough. 

The body tube features the same knurling and is not reversible. The clip only attaches at the head of the light. 

The light is attached to the headband on one side via a spring steel clip, similar to how a clip on clip works. It’s easy to take on and off and allows for the light to be attached without taking off the pocket clip (Nice) which makes charging easier but it doesn’t take a ton to make the heavy light come loose from an accidental smack or bump. For hiking or house work it’s ok, but I want to see something more secure ideally especially if you were caving/climbing with the light. That said when using this more as a work light rather then a headlamp it’s a handy feature to be able to remove it easily. I used it to change some brakes on a car recently and it was nice to pull off and use as an area flood light. For heavier duty situations a zip tie or even rubber band on the other end of the light would make it more secure.

The head features a fairly large lens, with the 4 LED’s under it. It has a optic sitting on top of the LED with a textured diffuser on top to really even out that beam pattern. Everything is surrounded by a silver aluminum bezel. On top there is a textured rubber button, with a pround silver bezel to help locate it. This does allow the light head stand. This button is a little hard to push if you have on larger gloves. On the back there are 3 deeply milled groves for heat dissipation. Lastly the microUSB port is on the light covered with a gray silicone rubber cover. The head has minimal labeling of just the serial number, model number and various regulatory symbols.

Size and Weight

I measured the length at 128mm, minimum diameter on the body was 26mm, maximum diameter at the head was 30mm. Weight with the battery, came in at 172.3g. The headstrap alone weighs in at 41g. This is fairly heavy. It’s a big headlamp, especially when you put it next it’s 18650 counterparts kind of like the Olight Perun I recently reviewed. 

Comfort when used as a headlamp is ok for a couple of hours. Past that the weight kind of starts to get to you in the forehead. Nitecore could add a bit more padding on the back of the bracket to help with this. I do like that the headbands webbing has ventilation holes. 

Retention

For me this isn’t a light I want to EDC in my front pockets, it’s just too big for that. The pocket clip can mount on either end of the light. When mounted nearest the head about 25mm of the light sticks up, when mounted at the tail, the clip extends past the tail and renders the magnet less useful. The balance point of the light is nearer the head so to keep from having to move the clip each time you mount the light to the strap, it really should go at the tail. 

LED | Beam Shots | Heat

The light is using 4x Cree XP-G3 S3 LED. Tint is pretty cool white. The S3 varient has less green tint, but at lower powers it’s still noticeable. The optics and diffuser here do a very good job of making the 4 leds one uniform floody beam. Perfect for this type of application. I didn’t detect any PWM via eye or my scope. 

Official modes and spacing are listed at 

  • 1 Lumen – Ultra Low
  • 40 Lumens – Low
  • 270 Lumens – Mid
  • 800 Lumens – High
  • 2700 Lumens Turbo, Strobe, Beacon, SOS

 

Runtime

This is really a light designed for longer outputs. Turbo starts decreasing at the 30 second mark and it declines pretty rapidly down to high at 800 lumens. This is disappointing that it’s so short, I would have hoped to get a couple minutes out of turbo output here given the size of the light and relative conservative heat values. From here it mostly maintains this while sagging a little for about 140 minutes, then over the next 20 minutes or so you see 2 large stepdowns and the light runs in low and ultra low for the remainder of time about 475 minutes, till it LVP kicks in at 2.947v. Heat was fairly well controlled, at 1 minute I saw 95F, at 5 minutes 97.8F, and at 10 minutes 101F. 

 

UI

UI here is different different, with fewer shortcuts. It’s a quick press to turn on, and then quick single presses to go up in brightness, and all solid modes are available, ultra low through turbo. Long press to turn off. You have short cuts to low when the light is off, a short press gives you 1 lumen. To directly access turbo from off press the button for more then 1 second. When the light is on there is no way to access turbo directly. 

 

To access the blinking modes double press the button when the light is off, then short presses changes the mode. Long press to exit blinking modes. 

 

Recharging

Charge time from LVP at 2.947V to Full at 4.12V on the included Nitecore 4000mAh 21700 battery was 2 hours and 41 minutes at a maximum of 2.1A via MicroUSB. Charge curve here looked normal, and I have no complaints. It’s nice here that with the included cell adapter the light will also charge an 18650 battery. During charging the blue LED on top will flash, and when charged it goes solid. This LED is also used as a voltage indicator when the light is in use. 

I do wish the light came with an extra port cover (my first time needing one due to my mistake). Also being a new design and a large capacity battery the light would see a benefit from USB-C.

 

Pro’s

  • Blinking modes are not part of the normal operating modes.
  • Very even diffused light but quite cool tint.
  • Direct access to low from off
  • Nice it can run off of 21700, 18650 and 2x CR123 with the included adapters. 
  • No proprietary cables or batteries needed, but it’s still MicroUSB 🙁

 

Con’s

  • Cree XP-G3 emitters isn’t what I would expect to find on something in this price range and I am not a fan of the tint.
  • Turbos 2700 lumen output has a very short duration, only 30 seconds.
  • Long press to turn off keeps tricking my brain. 
  • Wish it had an additional clip to secure the light in the headband for added security
  • Anodizing doesn’t seem to be the most durable, especially around the clip.

 

Conclusion

The Nitecore HC35 is a big bright light. I tend to think of it more as a worklight then a headlamp but it does both jobs fairly well. It’s a bit heavier than I want to use as a headlamp longer term, but what you pay for in weight you get in runtime. With the strong magnet and very floody beam it works good as a work light to stick onto a metal object or tail stand on it’s flat base. 

 

UI here is easy but different from a lot of other lights so I can see people fumbling a little around on this one initially. It’s different having turbo as part of your main mode. I do wish turbo could sustain itself for longer, 30 seconds just isn’t very long. Overall this is an interesting combination of headlamp and worklight. Let me know what you think of the HC35 in the comments. 

 

Full Image Gallery https://imgur.com/a/HWZh9yX

To purchase the Nitecore HC35 Headlamp, visit Nitecore Store at http://bit.ly/2HGp8rP