aricooperdavis
Moderator
It's been a couple of weeks since the Fenix HM23 arrived (thank you once again Fenix UK and UKCaving!) and I feel like I can give it a good review.
First impressions are good: it feels robust and well made, with a firm elastic headband and a soft and comfortable rubber holder. It comes with a bog standard alkaline AA battery (which I'll swap for a lithium AA when it runs out) and Fenix's warranty.
For its first outing in the dark I took it for a run and compared it directly with my usual running torch, a Black Diamond Spot (2018). The HM23 is noticeably more comfortable to wear and doesn't bounce around on my head at all. The colour temperature is a bit warmer, and the beam shape is much better, with a more uniform coverage and less of a bright spot in the center. The programming is much simpler too, a long press to turn the torch on/off and a short press to cycle between the three brightness modes. The lowest brightness is still bright enough to be useful (even to run by). The middle brightness is slightly too bright for my liking, and I'd only ever use the high mode in exceptional circumstances. Photo attached shows the brightness levels (and my dog staring at squirrels).
I enjoyed running with it so much that I chose it for my other runs that week and a few dog walks. I used the middle brightness mode pretty much exclusively and noticed no change in the brightness until half way through a run it dropped to the lowest mode where it stubbornly remained. This was a bit sudden for my liking - I'm used to being able to roughly gague the battery life of my torch when I leave the house by it's brightness (and the LED indicator), but the HM23 doesn't do either. I walked the rest of my run. When I got home I hung the torch up, still on the lowest mode, and impressively it stayed on for about another 48 hours with very little change in brightness until just before it died.
Today I joined Tom and tamarmole, of this parish, for a nosey around a lovely little deathtrap in the Tamar valley. I took the HM23 to see how it felt around my neck. I tucked it into my buff whilst I was underground and had forgotten I was wearing it by the end of the trip. It didn't seem to mind the incredibly acidic mine water we were wallowing in either. However I did worry when putting it back in my bag that it might turn on accidentally, as it doesn't feature a lockout.
So, my advice is: take a spare battery if you're using it regularly, or treat it like a proper backup and only use it if you really need to so you know it's fully charged, which is what I'll be doing
First impressions are good: it feels robust and well made, with a firm elastic headband and a soft and comfortable rubber holder. It comes with a bog standard alkaline AA battery (which I'll swap for a lithium AA when it runs out) and Fenix's warranty.
For its first outing in the dark I took it for a run and compared it directly with my usual running torch, a Black Diamond Spot (2018). The HM23 is noticeably more comfortable to wear and doesn't bounce around on my head at all. The colour temperature is a bit warmer, and the beam shape is much better, with a more uniform coverage and less of a bright spot in the center. The programming is much simpler too, a long press to turn the torch on/off and a short press to cycle between the three brightness modes. The lowest brightness is still bright enough to be useful (even to run by). The middle brightness is slightly too bright for my liking, and I'd only ever use the high mode in exceptional circumstances. Photo attached shows the brightness levels (and my dog staring at squirrels).
I enjoyed running with it so much that I chose it for my other runs that week and a few dog walks. I used the middle brightness mode pretty much exclusively and noticed no change in the brightness until half way through a run it dropped to the lowest mode where it stubbornly remained. This was a bit sudden for my liking - I'm used to being able to roughly gague the battery life of my torch when I leave the house by it's brightness (and the LED indicator), but the HM23 doesn't do either. I walked the rest of my run. When I got home I hung the torch up, still on the lowest mode, and impressively it stayed on for about another 48 hours with very little change in brightness until just before it died.
Today I joined Tom and tamarmole, of this parish, for a nosey around a lovely little deathtrap in the Tamar valley. I took the HM23 to see how it felt around my neck. I tucked it into my buff whilst I was underground and had forgotten I was wearing it by the end of the trip. It didn't seem to mind the incredibly acidic mine water we were wallowing in either. However I did worry when putting it back in my bag that it might turn on accidentally, as it doesn't feature a lockout.
So, my advice is: take a spare battery if you're using it regularly, or treat it like a proper backup and only use it if you really need to so you know it's fully charged, which is what I'll be doing
So the lesson from tonight is, the clever brightness regulation on this torch is so clever that it gives you next to no warning that it's on its last legs (if you're using a rechargeable battery, at least).
