I purchased this spot light a couple of months ago to get ready for a hiking trip that we planned to do later on in the year. It is fairly obvious that I wont be going anywhere hiking anytime soon! So I have been using this spot light doing DIY stuff. Like car maintenance, electronics repair etc. It is great to have a light that illuminated the area that you are working on and I am sure for those that are on the other side of 50's would appreciate.
Before I purchased the light, I noticed a lot of reviews talking about a battery problem and I thought surely Black Diamond would have fixed simple problem like a battery contact problem by now. How wrong was I! After using the light for a couple of months, I encountered the exact problem today.
I have been using Aldi AAA rechargeable batteries for the last 3 cycles and today, when I put the batteries in, the light would not turn on! I opened the battery compartment and I couldn't really see where the poor contact was. So pulled out my multimeter and found out that the poor contact was here .... it is that contact circled in the diagram ....
All the other contacts are fine and it is just this particular one. Because of the way it is bend and when you put in a battery like the Aldi one that has a flat bottom, the packaging plastic wrap at the bottom of the battery would push the contact ever so lightly that it would fail to make contact with the negative pole of the battery!
So to get around this problem it is so simple.. just pull out your cutter and shave maybe half of the packaging plastic off the bottom like this....
Then when you put that battery back in, ensure the shaved side line up with the contact side .. ie. towards the other 2 batteries. Then you will be fine!
It is to do with the profile of the Duracell batteries.. it is not the length, it is just the profile ... it has a slightly protruded bottom that clear the packaging wrap... see the photo
So please Black Diamond, you have a great product and all you need to do is modify that battery contact slightly so consumer like me can use other flat bottom batteries!
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