Nebo Curvbeam 600 Flex Rechargeable headlamp review: light up your outdoor adventures

Let me shed a little light on Nebo. The Texan brand strives to be the "wolf leading the pack" when it comes to cutting edge LED lighting. Its products range from flashlights, pocket lights and work lights to headlamps and lanterns. Nebo isn't solely focussed on the outdoor market – its torches serve workplaces and other urban use too. So, unlike lamps from the likes of Black Diamond, Petzl or Alpkit, this isn’t an outdoor brand dabbling in lighting systems, this is a lighting systems brand dabbling in the outdoors.

A glance at Nebo’s website or social media confirms this, with a patchwork of outdoorsy types alongside car mechanics and the like. There’s little sign of anyone running, so it seems the brand have yet to market themselves as creators of running headlamps. However, it’s clear that there’s strong hiking and camping potential within its range of headlamps, lanterns and flashlights.

Enter the Curvbeam 600 Flex Rechargable: a modestly priced headlamp powered by a USB rechargeable lithium-ion battery and featuring multiple spot and beam settings, and with an impressive max output of 600 lumens. The battery sits at the back, making it a nicely balanced unit and its main selling point is perhaps the ultra-wide flood setting. I was intrigued to try it out on the trails.

Nebo Curvbeam 600 Flex: First impressions

This is a smartly designed and good-looking headlamp that I was able to get to grips with immediately. The simple yet effective two button design allowed me to master the beam settings straight away. Plus, the unit is well-balanced, with the LEDs on the front and the battery pack on the rear. The ‘one-size-fits all’ headband is padded at the front, nicely elasticated and wide enough to distribute the pressure nicely. If it was a shoe, I’d be saying something along the lines of "out-of-the-box comfort".

I was also impressed with the intensity on max output, which was frankly startling for such a well-priced headlamp. This coupled with the coverage offered by the 180-degree flood beam makes it a really powerful unit when dialled up to the max. The light from the two strips of CoB LEDs (more on these in a mo) put me in mind of something from science fiction. Posing in the mirror, I looked as though I was about to grab my gamma cannon and dimension jump into to the Epsilon System to battle the Qaark Empire. As it turned out, I was just going for a short sunset hill walk.

Features

The Curvbeam is simple to use. The back-mounted battery pack has two buttons, one of the spot and one for the two strips of CoB LED flood lighting on either side. For the uninitiated, CoB stands for chip-on-board, with LED chips in contact with a substrate, such as silicon carbide or sapphire. This produces LED arrays that are cheap to produce, light, compact and deliver smooth, diffuse light. Anyway, back to the two buttons. Each press cycles through the intensities for either the spot or the beam, allowing the wearer to achieve the right light for the situation.

Nebo states that there are six light modes, but there are actually eleven different combinations here, as there are several possible intensity combos when both the spot and beam are activated. The spot cycles between three settings: high (500 lumens), medium (150 lumens) and low (30 lumens). Meanwhile, the beam has two settings: high (300 lumens) and low (100 lumens). Put both together on max intensity and you achieve an impressive 600 lumens, making this one of the brightest lamps we’ve tested. Not bad at all considering the modest price. It has a maximum beam distance of 96 meters on the highest spot mode, which compares favorably with most of the competition and points to a high level of usability in night hiking scenarios.

The downside of its max intensity is the relatively short runtime. However, despite a stated time of an-hour-and-a-half on max, I found that it actually kept running for three-and-a-half hours. Nevertheless, you won’t want to spend too long firing out photons like there’s no tomorrow if you’re heading anywhere remote. On the lowest intensity, you get ten hours, which is still less than many of the headlamps we’ve tested but probably enough for a standard camping trip.

The good news is that the Curvbeam is easily brought back to life with a USB cable and a power source so its shorter battery life is less of a worry if you’re got your power bank with you. Nevertheless, it’s not the headlamp we’d opt for if we were heading somewhere really remote. The battery pack features three little LED lights that indicate the battery level so you shouldn’t run out of juice unawares.

Unlike some, there’s just white light settings here, so no gentle red light for those instances when you don’t want to wake your camping mates in the dead of night. Plus, there’s no rear light either, unless you count the relatively dim LED battery display. The whole package weighs 124g (4.4 oz) which, while not overly heavy, does make it one of the weightier headlamps we’ve tested. This, coupled with the lack of a backlight to warn traffic of your presence, means that it’s not a headlamp for running.

When it comes to water resistance, the Curvebeam is IPX4 rated, which means splashproof rather than full-on submersion proof. This puts it on a par with the likes of the Petzl Actik Core 450 and the BioLite HeadLamp 425 and it’ll suffice for most uses. However, if you’re heading out into really dreich (Scottish for horrendously wet) conditions, something like the IP67-rated Black Diamond Storm 500R or the almost impenetrable, IPX8-rated Nitecore HC65 will provide more confidence. Water resistance ratings can be a bit of minefield but you can rest assured that the Curvbeam will be fine in most scenarios.

All of Nebo’s lighting systems come with a 2-year manufacturer’s warranty.

Nebo Curvbeam 600 Flex: In the field

Ease of use is a real strength. From the grippy buttons on the battery pack to the no-nonsense battery latch and clear labelling, it’s pretty foolproof. I like the little design touches, like the way the flood button is raised above the spot button, making turning the right light on nicely intuitive.

As mentioned, the intensity and beam distance of the spot-on full power is very impressive and it made finding my way along trails in the dark a doddle. However, the caveat here is the short burn time on this kind of setting. Realistically, I’d wouldn’t leave it this high for long, instead opting for the medium setting, which still gave me enough light to find my way and provide 50-odd meters of visibility.

The spot is tilted downwards by 20 degrees and is fixed in place, so it’s not ideal for scenarios where you’d want to shift the focus without having to move your head around to do so – such as rooting through a daypack for a specific item.

It's when camping that the diffuse light from the 180-degree beam comes into its own – great for reading at night or when preparing the campfire. Plus, when practising night navigation, it’s nice to have a softer light when reading the map.

The ‘one-size-fits-all’ elasticated strap held firm to my head throughout and I had no issues with comfort. It didn’t fit my daughter, however, so one size doesn’t fit all – though I’d imagine Nebo didn’t have toddlers in mind when they were designing it.