UKH

Compact, comfy and bounce-free, the NEO 5R is an excellent midweight, mid-power torch for night running, says Dan Bailey. But this rugged model has a lot more potential than that, with a balance of brightness and burn time that'd make it equally handy for climbers, mountaineers and hillwalkers. 

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I guarantee in about 3 years time you will be very glad of the usb-c input. I'm amazed it's your first device with it as most of my electronics are now type c instead of micro.

I own one the LED Lenser MH8s which is very heavy by mountaineering standards but that isn't actually my main gripe, its the non standard non usb-c charger thats more annoying.

I'm not a great one for gizmos and guess I don't tend to buy new ones that often!

Not sure I've explained myself that well in the review since it seems as if you maybe misunderstood what I was trying to say: There's no socket in the torch - it's a magnetic input at that end of the charging cable. At the other end of the cable is a USB-C plug. Nothing I own in terms of chargers or computers has a USB-C sized mini socket to plug that into, so effectively I had a torch I couldn't charge until I'd bought a little adapter thing.

I suspect most people are going to have a bit of an annoying period where they still have old legacy stuff like computers and chargers (and we probably ought to go on using things as long as possible before throwing them away?) that doesn't fit with USB-C. I notice that some USB-C cables have an old style big flat plug at one end, which will of course work with old stuff, while other new cables seem to require something with a tiny USB-C output at the power end. This has just doubly confused me, and surely I'm not alone. Perhaps it's an age thing.  

Pretty much every phone sold in the past 5 years at all price levels, not including iPhones*, use USB-C and the majority come with USB-PD (USB-C female socket) chargers, so I feel you are a bit of an outlier on this. That is why so many devices no longer bother to ship a USB-C power supply.

* and even they actually use USB-C plugs on the charger leads, and shipped with USB-C power supplies until they stopped including them.

Haha, well you're talking to the guy who was still using CDs until a few years ago. And I've never bought a brand new phone, reconditioned old models all the way. I'm the archetypal late adopter. Guess progress catches up with us all at some point

I've had LED lensers since the H7R first came out. I had two of those because the cable joining the lamp to the battery pack failed. The cable had been improved on the second one (thicker + strain relief), so I suspect there won't be any problems with the cable on the NEO5R.

It's a shame it doesn't have manual focusing, that was something LEDlenser did better than Petzl. One good thing my older ones didn't have is the guarantee - 2 years as standard, increasing to 5 with registration. That's really good.

Don't worry - you're not alone! I've got lots of things that charge by a USB C plug that goes into the device, but at all of the cables have the old style 'big USB' plug on the other end - to go into the wall plug.

Possibly (I'll have to check) my pixel phone bought very recently came with a wall plug/charger that has a USB C plug for out put (so the charging wire has USB C at both ends).