Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Let me say first that I love the lamp and the various modes and intensities you have to choose from. I don't agree with the other complaints saying you need 12 buttons on the lamp for each separate illumination mode. The single button work fine for me, but to each his own. I purposely got this lamp to use rechargeable batteries as I do a not of night activities and I get tired of wasting AAA’s. Also I have a solar charger so I like the idea of being able to top off my batteries on my backpack during the day and burn them up at night. But regarding the batteries, I'm losing my faith in humanity that plenty of grown supposedly educated people can't figure out that you can use any other rechargeable AAA battery in this headlamp! There is nothing unique or special about the Black Diamond batteries other than the fact that they had to trim back a bit of the shrink wrap covering the outside of the battery exposing the metal sides to work as a safety feature. They do this a safety feature so some twit doesn't put regular non rechargeable batteries in his lamp and walk away with it on the charger which will of course subsequently burst and potentially burn up his car or house. The fact that so many people can't figure this out is evidence enough justifying Black Diamonds concerns. If you want to use any non BD batteries all you have to do is trim off a little bit of the shrink wrap on your batteries exposing the metal (use your included battery as an example of how much to trim) so it will complete the charging circuit in the headlamp. You will notice that inside the battery compartment there is little metal contact that engages the side of each batter near the negative end (see photos I uploaded). This is the safety feature to prevent the charger from trying to charge a regular battery because it cannot make an electrical circuit as long as it is fully shrink wrapped. The only difference between BD's batteries and other rechargeable is the fact that they are 1,000mah where most others are around 750-850mah. So that only means if your existing stockpile is 750mah that your lamp will not run as long before needing recharging. I had some old Energizers that have been sitting around for 7 years that I just put in there and they charged up and worked fine. So please ignore all the same people who would give a 1 star rating to a book of matches because “they” still couldn't figure out how to start a fire with them! Keep in mind that eventually every battery will fail! NiMH batteries can fail after sitting around for prolong periods of being totally discharged. And if you go out and buy the cheapest dollar store rechargeable batteries you can find, well you get what you pay for. So if the lamp rejects your batteries it’s not a problem with the lamp, its just saying it believes the battery is toast. This lamp has a built in circuit to prevent over discharging of your batteries. IE it will shut down the lamp before totally discharging the battery. Many other devices will just run until the batteries are exhausted, then if you leave the batteries in that device it just sucks any remaining life out of the battery totally killing it. However you may be able to "rehabilitate" your battery with an external charger first. If a battery is over-discharged the lamp may initially reject it, but if you have an external charger you can give it an initial charge then put it in your lamp where it will recognize it. READ the manual that came with your headlamp and understand the blinking lights and the color codes during charging. Also the lamp will not "over" charge your battery. Once full it shuts down and will only give it a brief periodic trickle charge to maintain peak charge. Most standalone chargers will just keep trying to charge a fully charge battery and that is just as bad as over discharging. If you batteries are hot in the charger, they are full and being over charged. Older outlet style chargers were notorious for this and many still are. So if you batteries are already old and crappy you may have to pick up a few new ones to start out with. But rest assured that you can use others instead of relying on the Black Diamonds. But for the price and the fact that the Black Diamond batt's are 1,000mah they are still a very good value! There are a ton of rechargeables on Amazon, but many are advertised at a higher capacity than they really are. So you order what is marketed as a 1,000mah batter but in reality it may only be 850mah. I have R/C hobby chargers that can measure how many amp hours I put back in a cell and the BD's are legitimate 1,000mah's. Hope this helps all those who don't yet have the lamp and needed this info, and to those who already have it, but need others to do the heavy "mental" lifting, LOL.