The Petzl Nao was just released this month. It features reactive lighting. It incorporates a sensor that measures ambient light and instantly (7 lumens up to 355 lumens within a millisecond) adjusts to your surroundings. This means much lower battery usage. It’s a rechargeable lithium battery that uses a USB port to recharge. Additionally, you can program the headlamp utilizing OS by Petzl with up to 40 performance profiles. In an emergency you can even power the light via two AA batteries.
The Ultra Vario is being reviewed here for the very first time in the US. It debuted commercially earlier today at Friedrichshafen. It was designed for area lighting and incorporates 3 separate lamps with specialized lenses that help project the beams in different ways.
It offers incremental lighting of 45 lumens, 180 lumens and 450 lumens with all 3 lamps as well as 280 lumens for a distance beam that projects 160 meters. Additionally the Ultra Vario offers multiple mounting options including headband, direct to helmet and belt mounts.
The Ultra Rush is an updated version of the Ultra which improves the previous version’s 350 lumen performance with 700 lumens. The battery runtime is now 4 hours vice the 1.5 hours of the older Ultra.
