New Silva Runner headtorch chucks out a whopping great 550 lumens with a choice of beam patterns.
This is the new Silva Runner headtorch, which puts up some serious numbers, like 550 lumens output with a 110-metre beam range, a weight - without battery - of a very reasonable 62g and, unfortunately, a price tag of £159.99.
If that seems an excessive amount of light for a running-orientated head torch, just imagine hurtling down a rough hillside at 1am halfway round a Bob Graham. That's the kind of scenario when you really do need as much light as possible if you're going to move safely at anything approaching daylight speeds. And 550 lumens is genuinely a lot of illumination.
Never Mind The Quantity
It's not just about quantity though, quality counts too and Silva has used a four-mode variation on its Intelligent Light System. One of the high-powered LEDs is a spot, the other is a flood and you can combine the beams to give both a handy pool of peripheral close-up light and a piercing long-distance beam for picking out distant landmarks. Or both. Probably.
The battery is a rechargeable lithium ion item that can either be attached to the headband, carried on a belt to minimise weight on the head or stashed in a pack or bum-bag for convenience. It's also waterproof to IPX6 standard.
Finally, quoted burn time from the 2.5AH battery ranges from 2 hours 30 minutes on max through to ten hours used purely on wide, so judicious beam mode switching should give enough lighting duration for most night runs.
On The Money?
Last but not least, £159.99 obviously isn't cheap for a headtorch, but we've used Sila's Intelligent Light System in the past and found it gives an excellent lighting pattern for running and even fast walking, you're getting a lot of power and a rechargeable battery pack too and it's pretty much what we'd expect to pay for a quality bike light chucking out equivalent amounts of light, so if you're a serious runner, it's definitely worth a look.
More details at silva.se/products/sport/runner.
