The Zipka headlamp is by far the most compact headlamp around, it's retracting headband makes it small enough to store in your pants pocket and still have a lot of space left over. This makes it ideal to carry around with you when going on a drive anywhere or when camping. It's lighting is sufficient to illuminate your general surroundings and for most close-in tasks like cooking, reading and looking into your engine bay to find what's wrong with your broken-down car.

Unfortunately, the feature that makes it so handy also limits it's sport use, the zipka doesn't have enough grip on your head to be used in night-climbing or in high-impact situations because it will move quite easily. The projecting button that holds the dyneema cord will also get in the way if you're lying down to read and gets uncomfortable. It doesn't have a swivel feature, which the new Zipka Plus does have, but it is also cheaper than the plus version.

In a few words, it's very handy, but not very useful to the average climber who engages in night climbing (the reason I only give it a 3), otherwise, it can be the perfect night light.

I have this one and the Tikka. Don't care for the zip cord thing to much when trying to use it on a cap. On a helmet seems like it'll fall off eaisier than a bungee web one would.

Nice light to putter around with- just be careful how you store it will crack with just gear reasting on it, in your bag- Trust me it sucks to pull it out in pieces

This lamp is very light and bright. However, as technology improves, such as the BD ION, there are ligher ones on the market. However, the BD ion requires an expensive battery and dosn't last as long!

If you want one light headlamp to be your main one and can do with just LED this may be the one for you. But if you want an LED light as simply a backup, do yourself a favor and go with the ligher/smaller BD ion.

The one problem with this one is stability. It is great if you are not wearing a helmet, as the black sticky rubber on the back of the lamp part sticks to your head and holds it steady.

However, if you are wearing a helmet and have to tip your head around alot, the spring mechanizm that holds the "zip" line is not tight enough to keep the lamp from ending up dangling by your ear every now and then.

This is why an actual elastic band isn't such a bad thing after all.

This thing is so light! With fresh batteries this headlamp gives barely enough light to find your way on a trail. It also has enough light to climb at night. When after prehaps 15 hours of using the headlamp the lights dim, so that trailfinding is much harder, but they still work great for in camp. I think the newer version had 4 LEDs and will be slightly brighter. The very small cord that holds the headlamp on your head worries me. It could get cut. If an extra gram isnt a huge deal to you I'd get the tika light because I think it'd be more durable. Having said that, mine has never broken.