I supported Eddie’s round on Leg 2 and 3. All of Leg 2 was in the dark and the start of Leg 3 (clockwise). For my torch I used the Hope Vision 4 with the little 2 cell battery.
The light was more than bright enough on low power for all the night navigation, a couple of times I switched to medium power when searching for things but it wasn’t essential. Using low power gave me about 16 hours of light from one small battery, almost enough for the whole round but easily enough for my legs. With the small battery the total system weight was 340g. I carried the battery in the net side pocket of my pack which worked well.
I really couldn’t fault the Vision 4’s performance at all that night. It did occour to me that for the light outputs that I used I could have used the Vision 2, as the Vision 2 on high power is the same as the Vision 4 on medium. The Vision 2 on Medium is brighter than the Vision 4 on low but still gives 6 hours burn time, which would be enough.
When choosing between the 2 and the 4, it comes down to usage and money. If you want to use the light for technical off road riding then you need the Vision 4, but for on road riding the Vision 2 is enough. If you are using your light just for running then the 2 is enough but the 4 only weighs 30g more than the 2 and because of it’s 4 LEDs rather than 2, the beam width is amazing. So for running get the 4 if you have the spare cash but the 2 is still great and better than everything else except the 4.
