STORM 400 HEADLAMP

Product Information

An IPX rating of 67 gives this headtorch protection against water immersion down to >1 metre for 30 minutes, giving you the peace of mind that it can handle the worst mother nature has to offer. I’ve been in the market for something a little lighter and less bulky for a while, and the SPOT 400-R definitely fits that bill. We would prefer that we don't need to bring a print-out of the manual to understand a headlamp, but the Storm, and other lights from BD like the Spot, seem to require constant access to a manual to make use of the advanced functionality. The SPOT 400-R is a deceptively compact, lightweight and comfortable headtorch that’s good looks belie its power, functionality and durability. The powertap feature where you can can tap the side of the unit to go from full power to dimmed is pretty cool, however I’ve never really been in a situation where I’ve desperately needed to use it.

The torch will remember the dimmed output you previously had it set to, and I don't know if this reduces or adds to my faff factor. Aesthetics aside, it’s a comparatively compact number when sat beside my partner’s STORM model, and its housing does look rather less robust. I think it’s worth losing 50lm to gain being able to dunk the headtorch in water for and hour and a half.

I was skeptical of Black Diamond’s claims that this torch’s battery could hold up for 4 hours at maximum output with a 1 hour reserve for low intensity activities, but observing the battery meter after a good couple of hours of scrambling and rigging abseils in the dark, I’d say this is actually pretty accurate. All this in a well-designed, completely waterproof and robust package weighs only 120g, with all of the batteries inside!

Thanks to its adjustment system, it offers three night vision modes in different colors, as well as a short-door white light. I have had this lamp for about three months and I still just need to hit random buttons multiple times or for varying durations until, by luck, it does what I want it to. The extensive and numerous functions take a little while to get used to, with multiple sequences of taps and button pushes to memorise, but once you get the hang of it, it feels quite intuitive.

However, if you're looking for a long burn time then the inbuilt battery of the Storm 500-R in particular is going to be hard to beat. I've had the same set of AAA batteries in the lamp since purchasing it in fall 2011 with intermittent use since, and the output is still great. Power Tap allows you to adjust the brightness simply by tapping the touch sensitive housing with your bare finger, think of it like the main beam switch in your car. I have a much smaller and lighter headlamp that works well for small tasks around camp, but the Black Diamond Storm is bright enough to use as a supplemental light to my bike light for nighttime mountain biking. The one thing that I wish Black Diamond would do with their headlamps would be to provide a helmet mount that could be used to attach the headlamp to a helmet without the use of the headband, similar to the adhesive mounts that Petzl makes for some of its headlamps (e.