Coast HP17 Review

Coast HP17 Review – 3 1/2 stars

Summary

The Coast HP17 is physically the largest 3 D-cell torch we’ve reviewed. On the heavy end of this class, it’s a substantial piece of metal. With it’s heavy rear, it’s the best club of all the 3 D-cell torches we’ve reviewed!

The beam is adjustable form flood to spot, with an extremely effective spot, although the head rattles a little on adjusting the beam, more so than other torches in this class.

It will maintain it’s 885 lumens for an 8 hours, though that’s less impressive than it’s competition.

Brightness

885 lumens for 8 hours is a decent spec. Add that 885 lumens to the narrow beam with the head fully extended to spot mode and you have a very effective long range torch.

In the photo below, the white building (The Plow pub) just over 100m away is extremely well lit due to the efficiency of the variable beam mechanism, yet there is just enough flood in spot mode to see the village sign on the right as well.

Useful for

A useful house torch. Using regular (not rechargeable) batteries, you can leave it in a drawer till you need it and it’ll work. But with no button lock mode it won’t travel well.

Not too heavy to carry for a long time for me personally, but some will be put off by its weight.

Notable features

The protruding on/off button is easy to locate without looking. It has a gnarly rubbery feel so your wet or muddy finger won’t slip off. There’s a reassuring click when you press it all the way.

Momentary mode is accessed from off with half presses of the on/off button.

The flood to spot beam control is particularly efficient, having a very tight spot on full spot that can illuminate objects a long way off, a very useful feature. The head has a nicely damped feel when adjusting it, but unfortunately I couldn’t get the beam to lock. Also, the head is a quite rattly when fully extended.

The Coast HP17 has 3 brightness settings:

• High: 885 lumens for 8 hours
• Med ?
• Low: 41 lumens for 200 hours

To access the 3 brightness levels, turn it on with 1, 2 or 3 half presses before you click all the way

Design

The Coast HP17 is a well built torch, if a touch on the heavy side. It’s also notably longer than other 3 D-cell torches for no good reason.

I found the supposedly simple functionality of selecting the 3 brightness settings quite tricky. I seems to be half-pressing either too fast or too slow. A bit flakey really. Not great usability.