Why We Chose The GP Xplor: Effective, good value and with clever charging options.
Have you ever reached into your backpack to find your headtorch battery is fully drained, even when you could’ve sworn that you turned the lock function on? Although spare headtorches and power banks make up a quick fix to this problem, it’s still frustrating when this happens. That’s why we like the Xplor PHR15 from GP Batteries. If this problem occurs, there’s still a solution with this headtorch.
The headtorch itself is rated to 300 lumens, offering a range of 157 metres on the highest setting. With just a single function button at the top, you’re able to cycle through the different brightnesses of 300-, 150- and 5-lumens. On the low setting you’ll get a maximum run time of 69 hours and on the 300-lumen setting you’ll get 5 hours.
“One AAA GP Batteries battery is rated to 300 recharges and can therefore theoretically replace the need for 300 single use batteries.”
Surrounding the relatively small device is a casing that is rated up to IPX 6 in waterproofing. That means it’ll hold off everything but full submersion in water. It’s also shock-proofed up to 1m.
Those figures are decent, but there are still torches with far higher performance levels. The thing is, the GP Xplor PHR15 comes with a little trick up its sleeve.
Rather handily, it utilises three rechargeable AAA batteries that come included and charged ready to go. These batteries can be recharged through the micro USB port on the headtorch, meaning that you don’t need to carry around a specific charger with you to charge the batteries – just plug in the headtorch and it’ll start charging the batteries.
These AAA batteries are worthy of a short mention in this review themselves. Featuring later this summer in our Green Gear Guide, GP are hoping that with these, they’ll be able to lure outdoor enthusiasts away from a dependance on single-use alkaline batteries (which are terrible for the environment). A single of these AAA GP batteries is rated to 300 recharges, and can therefore theoretically replace the need for 300 single use batteries.
