Before my acquaintance with the Nitecore NU line, I was rather skeptical about this type of headbands. This is understandable: the plastic case, the relatively small capacity of the built-in battery and the brightness make it not as impressive as the bulk of full-size 18650-powered headbands. But the real use showed the inconsistency of these fears — for the mass of everyday situations, both the brightness and the duration of the work were enough. Even seemingly unimpressive in terms of brightness and capacity, the kids NU05 and NU25 turned out to be in demand. The first one I constantly cling to as a beacon on someone’s children. And one of my regular customers (a person with a fairly large number of flashlights, so he knows what he is talking about) bought a second one as a gift for his nephew and said he could hardly resist not to keep it for himself.
Packaging and appearance
The packaging is quite typical for Nitecore. Black and yellow cardboard box with a recognizable design and decent printing. There is no glamor here, just good packaging.
The bundle is expectedly modest — the headband itself with a head mount, charging cable and instructions. what else to add?
Well, here is the hero of the review. This is a hard-hitting plastic carcass with a main and four additional LEDs. The dimensions are quite modest — 63×43.5×31.5 and 99.5 grams of total weight with fastening. As in previous models, the quality of plastic molding is good, there are no gaps, scuffs, squeaks and cracks. Everything is assembled neatly and the Nu32 feels like a solid piece of plastic in the hand.
The forehead mount is not “pants” with three straps, but just a tape. They could have done better here by adding a gel strip inside that traps sweat, and reflective elements on the outside. This would not affect the cost in any way, I clearly added convenience.
The angle of the headrest can be adjusted, it is held securely
There is no chance to disassemble the forehead, everything is soldered. Here it is appropriate to mention the Ip-67 waterproof standard. The flashlight survived being showered with no problems.
The charging connector is reliable (which to a large extent refers just to the issue of moisture protection). The lid is thick enough to fit snugly inside.
Control using two large rubberized buttons with indication, it is quite convenient here.
And if the main light is not very bright, then this is compensated by a good set of additional light. And this is a diffused neutral light with a high color rendering index (i.e. Hi CRI) and bright red light, which is very convenient for working near. The reflector in the main light is smooth, about 2×2 in diameter and depth, quite decent for a forehead.
Overall impressions in appearance are good. The flashlight is light, outwardly there are no claims in quality.
Control
not complicated at all, as far as I remember, this is a typical control for the NU line of headbands.
How Nitecore NU32 shines
So we have an XP-G S3 for the main light. The color temperature is somewhere around 5000K, which is quite good. And a couple of additional LEDs with scattered neutral and red color.
The brightness of the additional neutral in the photo does not look impressive compared to the main one, but only in the photo. For its purposes — work at arm’s length it is enough. Reading, making something there, and so on — enough for the eyes. Headbands are generally rarely needed for long distances, so most of them are precisely sharpened in the light for close-up work.
in the photo below from left to right nu32 high->turbo-> Convoy S2+ high
and extra light. do not think that it is so dim, it is relatively the older modes of the main light, on the same settings. And there I made the shutter speed small to avoid overexposure.
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the charging current is good, there are zero complaints, 3 hours to full charge, the capacity corresponds to the declared one — 1900mah and these are good indicators for the built-in battery. Still, about 3 years ago, the standard capacity of 18650 batteries was about 2600mah.
Turbo here is short, but 30 seconds should be enough to highlight some distant objects.
But High surprised me. This is a small enough brightness to be stabilized both in terms of thermoregulation and current output from the built-in battery. In fact, it turns out a slow slide with a 20% drop every hour. I didn’t expect this at all. The eye, of course, adapts to this and you will not see a visual difference (up to a certain point, of course). But instead of 5 hours of this “ladder”, I would rather get 3 hours of normal stabilized work. The specification here frankly lies, calls 17 hours. We are talking about the fact that 5 hours is falling to something like 10 lumens and then these declared remaining 12 hours at this brightness. This is of course a frank jamb in my opinion. I cannot find an explanation for this. The Nitecore TUP has a third less capacity and it holds 200 lumens High for almost 4 hours. In general, High here is frankly a failure in terms of stabilization — they definitely could have done better. .
As for the light in general, then I have zero complaints. At maximum brightness, the flashlight gives enough light to illuminate somewhere at 50 meters. This is more than enough for a headband in general and for a headband of this type in particular.
high is quite sufficient to work at a distance of 10-15 meters, that is (in my opinion) at the limit of the most familiar distance for a forehead.
additional light is bright. I would even make here two levels of brightness for each type of additional light.
look, there are quite enough of them indoors, not to mention something like reading (photo below). And then, for example, the main light in different modes lowmidhighturbo
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and here, in fact, additional light and main (lowmid)
Well, a small piece of video.
General impressions
The Nu series is quite suitable for some light hiking and outings, where there is no serious requirement for brightness. And, of course, jogging, which is not very popular with us, where a full-fledged 18650 thing on the head will be frankly inconvenient.
For such simple purposes, this line is quite suitable for the number of different types of light and its brightness.
If we talk specifically about Nu32, then for my type I liked it in everything except for High, which after 3 hours will drop to half the brightness, i.e. about 100 lum. It is a good number too. In fact, this is the maximum brightness for modern AAA headphones and it is more than enough. But relative to other Nightcore products with a built-in battery, where this problem does not exist, the lack of stabilization at high looks frankly sad.
I repeat, for me this is the only significant functional disadvantage.
+ capacious acc
+ good maximum brightness
+ charging current under 0.75A
+ appearance and expected good workmanship
+ additional light
— no stabilization in high
— the head mount could be made with gel strips and reflective elements.
UPD. three years have passed, I sold the headlamp shortly after the review. and it’s one of the few lights I regret selling. actually a good thing.
Where to buy and how to save
buy this headlamp with built-in battery on ali or in banggood
You can save on purchases with coupons and promotional codes from the discount channel in telegram, see the link to it below in the block «about the author»