The Latest news on the Petzl Ultra Belt is that the ACCU 4 battery will no longer be produced. We had thought it was delayed so Petzl were going to ship the Ultra Belt with an ACCU2 battery and then replace it with an ACCU 4 battery at a later date, sadly this great offer will no longer happen. Uniross, the battery manufacturer, are a victim of the credit crunch and have gone bust, plus there were still some problems with the ACCU 4 battery that were still to be ironed out. This means the Ultra Belt will now come as standard with the ACCU 2 battery. The Ultra Belt will be available from january 2009. Due to increased production costs and the Euro, the price of the Ultra Belt will remain at £300 even with the smaller battery. The price of the standard Ultra will increase to £275. One thing to note is that with both Ultras coming with the same battery, you can now change an Ultra into an Ultra Belt using the extension cable spare part (£22) but you cannot remove the cable from the Ultra Belt to turn it into an Ultra. So an Ultra with the extension cable is a more flexible system for the same cost as an Ultra Belt, however if you would always use the Ultra in belt mode the Ultra Belt would be more robust as there is one less joint in the cable.
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