Why We Chose It: Versatile, fully-featured and comfortable to wear.
When you’re hunting around for a headtorch, it’s tempting to go for the biggest and brightest one you can find. But actually, there’s more to a lamp than lumens alone. After all, any brand can stick a high-power LED and a chunky battery on an elastic strap. But the best headtorches are generally those that balance brightness with burn time, bulk and weight.
BioLite understands this, which is why the lamp and headband of their HeadLamp 330 are seamlessly engineered to work together, alleviating pressure points for long-lasting comfort, all night long.
Who Is The BioLite HeadLamp 330 For?
This head lamp is ideal for active outdoorsy types who will be wearing a headtorch on the move as well as in camp. Although it’s not the most powerful lamp out there, it still puts out a bright, powerful beam and has both flood and spot modes. There’s also a red light option to preserve night vision and provide low impact lighting. It has a USB rechargeable lithium ion battery, positioned at the rear of the lamp. It tips the scales at just 69g but the overall weight is well balanced too, so it’s a very comfortable head lamp for high-tempo activities. It doesn’t bounce around, even when moving fast over uneven terrain.
Materials and Construction
Most head lamps with a separate light unit and rear battery pack are festooned with wires running between the two components, which tend to get snagged and are therefore common failure points. BioLite have solved this issue by cleverly integrating the electronics directly into the headband.
“It’s a well balanced headtorch in every sense”
The front LED array is also part of the headband itself, rather than simply being attached to the elastic strap with a flimsy bracket, as with many other head torches. It’s a clever design that distributes the overall weight evenly so it all feels comfortable and well balanced on your head.
Features
This thing has all the features we look for in an all-round multi-activity headtorch. When it comes to lighting options, it boasts white flood, white spot, red flood and white strobe SOS modes.
You should get 3.5 hours of light on high mode and 40 hours on low. That 330-lumen headline figure is perhaps a little misleading, because it refers to total lumens (230 Lm spot and 100 Lm flood), but you can only have one or the other of the LED modes activated at any time. Still, the spot LED will project a beam up to 75 metres (in real world terms, that will light up about three quarters of the length of a standard football pitch). And the 230 lumens you get on the lamp’s highest power setting are still more than adequate for most environments.
It’s all powered by a 900mAh lithium-ion cell, which can be recharged via micro-USB. Like the best portable power banks, the battery pack supports pass-thru charging, which means you can use the headlamp while it’s on charge. The idea is that you can plug a charging cable (sold separately) into the headlamp and the other into an external power bank, which you could then tuck away into a running vest or rucksack.
Conclusion
The HeadLamp 330 puts out plenty of light and has a decent burn time, yet is comfortable and unobtrusive to wear. The pass-thru charging option also makes it more capable and versatile than many of its rivals.
It’s a well balanced headtorch in every sense – it’s lightweight and well-designed, with practical features, good all-round performance and a price tag that isn’t too scary.
