I've owned this light for maybe 10+ years. Only one problem ( wire came loose ) and they are sending me a replacement, no problems. Bright enough for most practical uses as I don't need it to light up the block. It's great for working on the car, cutting the grass late or about anything when it's not light enough. Once you adjust the headbands you're set to go. I even save my weak batteries to use for low light reading at night. For me, it's the perfect headlam
A big helper that's easy to use. I only hope the hinge and strap have been improved over the first HL27 I bought. If this was done, it would get five stars.
I have tried a number of different head lamps and this one fits all of my needs. In particular, I am a photographer that uses a LOT of rechargeable AA batteries. When a lamp battery goes low, I have plenty of AA batteries to use - and it seems like too many headlamps now don't allow me to use them. This one does. It's comfortable, well built, I really don't care if it is freakishly bright - that isn't what counts when you're trying to do work on a camera at night. What matters is that the button to turn it on and off is easy to find, it is easy to adjust brightness, and easy to adjust the focus beam. On top of that, Coast has excellent customer service and they stand by their lifetime warranty.
This headlamp is great. The lamp is brighter than my Surefire light for my pistol and takes the more common AA batteries. Operation is super ergonomic where the metal ring controls brightness and the rubber ring controls focus. The lamp worked great in sub freezing temperatures without a hitch. I wish I had one years ago since you hardly know you are wearing it and you can function like it is the middle of the day. The only thing that could be improved is if the headlamp had more tactical coloring, i.e. all black, and had the capability of operating with different colored lens, i.e. red, blue, etc., for preserving night vision. The Coast headlamp is now all black which is a plus.
Postscript: I use this headlamp all the time now doing chores like taking out the trash, cleaning the litter box, etc. I now have two Coast headlamps and one got damaged from constant usage. Customer service got back to me quickly and sent out a replacement under the lifetime warranty free of charge. All I had to do was send a photo of the headlamp with my phone and I got a new headlamp. I will definitely buy Coast products again. I used to purchase MagLite products , but will never do so again since getting Maglite to honor a warranty was like pulling teeth since you have to mail everything back snail mail and the response time was glacial.
I have had this head torch for about a year now, and I'm really pleased with it. I use and abuse it daily working on the farm through the long hours of winter darkness. It also served well on a recent trip to Africa.
My reason for purchase was the simplicity of operation – manual dimmer and focus, without any electronic clutter. (I don't have time to scroll through functions I don't need.) The only minor niggle is the limited two-position angle adjustment.