Black Diamond Headlamps and Lanterns Light the Way

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The woods are lovely, dark and deep, as the poet once wrote—so dark it can be really hard to stay on the trail as dusk approaches, or find your way around a campsite without tripping over guy lines, or change a tire on a country road in the dead of night.

We like the dark woods (and the starry skies above them), but there are times when you need to see what you’re doing. To that end, Black Diamond Equipment, of Salt Lake City, has updated its line of headlamps and camp lanterns, with features to suit a wide range of after-dark situations.

If you’re a frequent headlamp user and don’t like the cost and waste of burning through alkaline batteries, you’ll appreciate the ReVolt Headlamp. The reviewers at Outdoor Gear Labs made this lamp an editor’s pick for its long-running rechargeable battery and ample output. The OGL staff liked the Black Diamond Spot, too, declaring its lightness and brightness as good as lamps that cost twice as much. Black Diamond boosted the Spot’s output from 130 to 200 lumens for 2016, and the new model is IPX8 waterproof (submersible to 1-meter-deep for 30 minutes), so no worries about using it in the rain.

The Gizmo v.2 Headlamp has variable out ranging from a nightlight-like 4 lumens to a bright 90, a run time of up to 100 hours on three AAAs, and a lockout switch so it doesn’t get activated by accident in your pack. Then there’s the Cosmo v.2, with output boosted this year to 160 lumens, which has a red light to help preserve your night-adapted vision. It has a strobe setting, too. The youngest members of your camping party now have a Black Diamond headlamp of their own: The Wiz, with output from 4 to 30 lumens, a tilting head, auto shutoff after two hours, and a child-safe strap and battery door. It comes in coral pink, electric blue, and graphite.

You don’t always want your light shining from your forehead. Black Diamond’s Apollo Lantern (another OGL editor’s pick) has been upgraded from 80 lumens to 200 and is a good choice for setting up camp after dark or waiting for the electric company to restore power after a storm. You can use rechargeable batteries and charge them in the lantern for convenience. The versatile Voyager can be used as a 140-lumen lantern, a 50-lumen flashlight—or both at the same time. If you like the Voyager but want to save room in your pack, the Orbit v.2 is a smaller version, just 4" tall collapsed and 5.5" extended. For sheer portability, the 3 oz, tennis-ball-sized, 100-lumen Moji Compact Lantern is hard to beat; its big brother, the Moji XP, is somewhat larger, shines at 150 lumens, and boasts an impressive 200-hour run time on low power.

Headlamps and lanterns are indispensable for camping, emergency preparedness, and sleepovers. Black Diamond’s lineup offers the candlepower and configurations to meet your needs.

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