Are corded lights a thing of the past?

[tbone1004]

Probably not but they will get continue to get harder to find and more expensive as battery, LED, and reflector technology improves. I'm thinking about 10 years before the market completely dries up and battery packs with remote light heads becomes a DIY niche.

So long as guys are doing serious cave dives and doing any diving in the proper cold the canisters will remain. Remember that while we are talking about a cave diving context in largely warm water type areas, we do need to remember that there are a LOT of divers in the great white north using heated vest systems and keeping the batteries inside of a drysuit is a bit sketchy

 

[flymolo]

So who is Neptune’s cave dwelling uncle daddy?

 

[macado]

I still prefer my canister light for a lot of the reasons already mentioned. I am still using HID lights which are "ancient" by today's standards but I vastly prefer the beam of HID in murky or turbid waters. The only LED beam I actually like is the Focus but not willing to pay the Halcyon tax for one when I already own 3 canister lights. The new UWLD beam is also pretty good. I borrowed one of @tbone1004 's to demo and I like it much better than their older generation of light heads.

The runtimes are superior on canister lights if you have a larger battery. Some of us need this but it all depends on your dive profile. I've got a ~5.5-6 hour tested burntimes on my HIDs with 20ah batteries. This is great for multiday excursions where I can't always charge my light or I'm doing a long bottom time. I also run my heater off these 20Ah batteries and have separate lids with E/O cords.

Having said all that, I did pick up a couple DiveRite LX20+ for travel and shorter duration dives. A good portion of my cave dives are only 2.5-3 hours. It's right on the edge of the LX20+ runtime at max brightness but they are perfectly fine for 2-3 hour cave dives. At medium the runtime is ~3 hours. The nice thing about LX20+ is they take 18650 batteries so if I were doing multiple dives a day I would just keep another set of batteries fully charged.

I bought them primary for warm water travel and for sidemount since none of my canisters have side glands and I didn't really want to deal with a cord for sidemount.

I've also recently been using the LX20+ in Great Lakes so I don't have to have 2 canisters on my waist. My batteries are the older 20ah which are quite bulky. I can use one canister on my belt to run my heated vest and just use a handheld primary since for the most part I only really need my lights for 30-40 minutes on the bottom in the Great Lakes. I turn the light off on deco so I really dont need super long runtimes.

I did actually drop one of my handhelds lights (in came unclipped on deco on a wreck at depth of 250ffw). Luckily we did another dive the next day and I was able to recover my light. It was right next to the mooring but it still annoys me; That would not have happened on a canister light. Normally I'd consider something like that gone for good and I'm not going to go hunting in the mud at 250ft but thankfully it was right next to the mooring.

 

[kelemvor]

That's nanite has an awful wide beam for a cave dive. I'd want 8 degree. Might be good as a video light.

BTW, use a simple wrist strap on the back of your non-cannister light and it's much more difficult to lose.

 

[macado]

BTW, use a simple wrist strap on the back of your non-cannister light and it's much more difficult to lose.

I typically clip my handheld light off to a chest d-ring when not using it. I guess that is one downside of taking it off your wrist on deco. :-(

 

[Guille G]

The “everyone is using cordless” bit doesn’t seem to be true in Mexico caves. Corded can lights are very much the norm there.

 

[greeniguana]

That's nanite has an awful wide beam for a cave dive. I'd want 8 degree. Might be good as a video light.

I doubt many people could tell the difference between a 10deg beam and 8deg beam.

 

[Lorenzoid]

The “everyone is using cordless” but doesn’t seem to be true in Mexico caves. Corded can lights are very much the norm there.

Makes sense. Even on the mainline in some of those caves, the line runs way above the floor, and I wouldn't want to have to go down there off the line to try to retrieve a dropped light.

 

[kelemvor]

I doubt many people could tell the difference between a 10deg beam and 8deg beam.

You know what, I misread @hedonist222's post. I thought it said 35° beam. 10° is totally fine.

 

[rddvet]

Cans aren’t go anywhere. I still see can lights on 75+% of most divers at cave sites at all 3 countries I cave dive in. Cordless are becoming popular but they are far from the new norm