Nitecore vs Fenix

A 3,400 mAh 18650 at a nominal 3.6 V is 12.2 watt-hours. That is more energy than a Petzl NAO RL carries, in a lamp 5 g lighter, because a bare 18650 is a more efficient package than a molded pack.

It is also the only headlamp in this set whose battery you can replace at a checkpoint for three dollars, because 18650 is a standard cell and not a proprietary brick.

IP68 rather than IPX4 is the second real difference. This one survives being dropped in water; most of the running lamps here do not.

Skip this ifyou count grams. A Swift LT does the camp job at 43 g; you are carrying 97 g extra for reach and a removable cell.

A metal body is the reason to buy this rather than the NU43. Plastic headlamps survive drops; metal ones survive being stepped on in a truck bed.

Three emitters — white, red and a dedicated reading light — is more useful than it sounds. The reading light is a low, wide, close-range flood, which is the mode people actually leave on.

As with the rest of the Nitecore range, we could only reach the brand's retail listing, so the spec table stops at the two figures it states.

Skip this ifyou want it for running. The mass that makes it durable is the mass that makes it bounce.

A 5,000 mAh 21700 at 3.6 V is 18.0 watt-hours — nearly three times what the ProTac HL-X carries. That is the case for the 21700 format in one number.

380 m of reach on 2,800 lumens works back to about 36,100 candela, almost identical to the ProTac's 35,000 from 1,300 lumens. The Fenix is spending its extra output on spill, not on distance.

169 g including the cell is only 7 g more than a ProTac on CR123A, for nearly triple the energy. That is what four years of cell development buys.

Skip this ifyou need a shelf-stable light. A rechargeable cell self-discharges; for a drawer light, CR123A primaries are the right answer.

1,000 m implies 250,000 candela. That is seven times the ProTac HL-X's intensity from 1.5 times the lumens, and it is only achievable with a large, deep reflector.

A beam this tight is close to useless for anything within ten meters. It is a search-and-identify tool for open country.

21700 is the right cell for it — a beam this intense needs current, and an 18650 would sag.

Skip this ifyou want one light for everything. This one does distance and does nothing else well.

1,400 lumens at this price is the whole pitch, and it is a real pitch: nothing from Petzl at the same money publishes a number that high.

A spot and a flood emitter together is the right architecture for a general-purpose lamp. One beam shape never covers both map-reading and trail-finding.

Everything except output and charging is unpublished in the source we could reach, which is why this sits below the Fenix and Petzl picks despite the bigger headline.

Skip this ifthe runtime matters more than the peak. Without a published runtime table you cannot plan a night around it, and we will not estimate one for you.

1,900 mAh at 3.7 V is about 7.0 watt-hours. That is 83 percent of a Swift RL's tank in a lamp 11 g lighter and considerably cheaper.

The AAA fallback is unusual at this weight and it is the reason to pick this over a sealed running lamp: a flat pack at 2 a.m. is a battery change rather than the end of the night.

IP66 is a step up from the IPX4 that most running lamps ship with. It will not survive immersion, but it will survive a downpour.

Skip this ifyou need to identify things at distance. Without a published beam distance we cannot tell you how far it reaches, and the aperture suggests it is not far.