The head torches I'm taking my family to -25: the whole shortlist, and why we all ended up on the same one

This was meant to be the easy bit. We have a week booked above the Arctic Circle this winter, the same trip behind the down jacket, baselayers and winter boots pieces in our cold-weather gear hub: snowmobiles, husky sledding, fell hikes if the weather allows, and long static nights out watching for the northern lights when the temperature sits around minus twenty-five. Four of us need a head torch. I assumed I would buy four of something sensible and move on.

I did not move on. The more I looked, the more it turned into a proper decision, because four people do not all want the same thing from a torch, and the conditions we were buying for were serious enough that the wrong call actually mattered. This is the whole shortlist I worked through, who each torch really suits, and the one feature that, in the end, put all four of us on the same light.

The brief: UK performance first, Finland as the test

I want to be clear about this up front, because it shapes every pick below. I was not buying Arctic torches. I was buying torches that have to earn their place here, on UK ground, all year: dark dog walks on the Purbeck coast, winter hill nights, coast paths after sunset, forest with no moon, and the late training runs that come with a 100km ultra next year. This is also our first winter with Maple, so a lot more of my walking is now in the dark than it used to be.

Finland was the stress test, not the point. A torch that survives a night at minus twenty-five, that I can feed a fresh battery to with cold hands, that has a red mode for checking the kids without wrecking anyone's night vision, is exactly the torch I want on a filthy February hill at home. So everything here is chosen for real performance first. The Arctic just set the bar high and refused to let me cut corners.

The decider nobody expects: red mode

Here is the thing that quietly decided the whole exercise, and it is not lumens.

A red mode preserves your dark-adapted night vision. You can check a map, sort a pack, or look at a child next to you without blasting white light into everyone's eyes and starting the twenty-minute wait for your vision to recover. On an aurora night it matters even more, because white light kills the view and washes out anyone's photo. I had assumed this was a nice-to-have. It turned out to be the single most important feature for a group moving around in the dark.

That one realisation reshaped everything. I had very nearly bought myself the warm-white Fenix HM65R-T V2.0, which trades the red mode for a warm beam that cuts glare in snow and fog. A sound torch, but once I decided red mode was non-negotiable for a family, the warm-white version was out for us, and the standard red-mode Fenix was back in. Keep that in mind as you read the picks below: I did not start out planning to put everyone on the same torch. Red mode is what pushed me there.

For me: performance and navigation

My own brief was the most demanding: enough power and reach to see a hazard before I reach it, a red mode, a build that shrugs off rain and knocks, and a battery I can rely on when it is cold.

The Fenix HM65R V2.0 is the one that delivers all four. 2200 lumens, a 230m throw, a proper red mode, an IP68 magnesium body, and a removable 18650 I can swap for a warm spare in a pocket, with a CR123A backup for hard cold. It is the torch I bought and the one I trust for real night navigation. The full reasoning, including the story of the night that taught me to take this seriously, is in the Fenix review.

For my wife: comfort over everything

My wife's criteria are not mine. She does not care about lumens or throw or an IP rating. She cares whether the thing is comfortable to wear and simple to use, and she is right to, because a torch that digs in or bounces is a torch that ends up in the bottom of a bag.

So her shortlist led me to the Silva Trail Runner Free 2 Ultra, which is a lovely thing to wear: a 61g lamp, the battery balanced at the back of the head rather than dragging on your forehead, and the cord hidden inside the band. It also carries a rear red safety light, which is a real plus for a group on a dark path. For comfort-first buyers in normal conditions it is an easy recommendation, and it stayed on the list right to the end. Where it lost out for our trip specifically is covered in the Silva review, and it comes back to the same two things: the red mode, and a battery I could keep swapping in hard cold.

For the kids: red mode, and being seen

For the kids, two things mattered more than anything else: a red mode, so nobody blinds anybody else in a tent or a viewing spot, and being visible on a dark path so I can always see where they are.

The red mode came from the same logic as the rest of the family. Visibility I solved separately: because the Fenix has no rear light, I added a cheap set of clip-on flashing LEDs to the back of each pack. On a dark path with children, a bright rear flasher each is worth more than any built-in tail light, and it means I can pick all of them out at a glance. That combination, a red mode up front and a flasher on the back, is what I wanted for the youngest members of the group.

The premium options I weighed, and who each suits

The Fenix was not the only serious torch on the table. Three others earned a proper look, and each is the right answer for a different person.

The Petzl Swift RL is the reactive, lightweight all-rounder: at 92g it is the lightest here, and its sensor adjusts the brightness for you so you never touch a mode. If you run trails or move fast and would rather look where you are going than manage a torch, it is the smarter pick. The Black Diamond Storm 500-R is the rugged, fully waterproof value option, the cheapest way into a capable torch here at around sixty pounds, with red and RGB night-vision modes. And the Ledlenser HF8R Core is the focusable-beam specialist, with a twist-to-focus optic and the longest throw in the group at 210m, for anyone who wants to shape the beam and see the furthest.

None of them was wrong. They just each answer a different question than the one a family in the cold was asking.

Mid-range and budget: the sensible money

Not everyone needs to spend a hundred pounds a head, and most people should not. If you want the volume-selling sweet spot, the Petzl Actik Core is the mid-range all-rounder to beat: a hybrid battery that charges over USB-C or takes AAAs, a red mode, and enough output for almost anything a hiker actually does, at roughly half the price of the premium picks. The Black Diamond Spot 400 is the waterproof mid-range workhorse alongside it.

Below that, the Petzl Tikka is the dependable budget default, the sensible first head torch to keep in the pack or the car, and it still has a red mode. And if you count grams, the Nitecore NU25 is the 50g ultralight for runners and fastpackers. Any of these is a good buy for the right person. If you want them ranked and compared as products rather than as a family decision, that is what the full head torches category is for.

Why we all ended up on the same torch

So, four different people, four different briefs, and we all ended up on the same Fenix HM65R V2.0. Here is the honest reasoning.

Red mode narrowed it to torches that have one, which ruled out the warm-white version and the comfort picks that skip it. From there, the deciding factor was not really the light at all. It was the batteries. When all four torches are identical, they share one battery type, one charging system, one whistle-and-lockout routine and one set of spare cells. On a serious trip, that uniformity is worth more than squeezing a slightly nicer torch onto each person. I can carry one set of spare 18650s and keep any of the four running. That was the biggest single win, and it is the argument for kitting out any group with matching torches rather than a mix.

It came to around four hundred pounds for the four of them, which is not nothing, and I did not spend it lightly. But it buys four torches I trust, that all run off one battery, all have the red mode, and will all earn their keep here at home long after the Finland trip is a memory. If you are outfitting more than one person for the cold and the dark, that is the thinking I would apply: pick the feature you cannot compromise on, then let uniformity make the rest of the decision for you.

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