Grant's verdict: Buy it. Ignore the headline number. The best weight-to-usable-light ratio on the market, as long as you buy it for its 200-lumen sustained output and not for the 400 on the box. We analyzed 156 owner comments across 4 YouTube reviews (top comments, past ~2 years).
Who it's for
Buy this if: Ultralight backpackers and thru-hikers counting grams, and anyone who wants a genuinely usable red mode for shared shelters.
Skip this if: Anyone who needs sustained high output for night navigation on technical ground, and owners of the original who mainly loved its dedicated red-light button.
In practice
The 400-lumen high mode is a turbo burst, not a setting
This was the single most useful correction in the owner comments we read, and it is the reason to read past the packaging. One highly-rated comment puts it plainly: the 400-lumen high mode “does not work long and is actually turbo. The lamp is only usable with 200 lumens.” That is not a defect — it is how nearly every compact headlamp works. Small lights cannot shed the heat that peak output generates, so they step down within minutes to protect the emitter and the cell. Buy this lamp for its 200-lumen sustained figure, treat 400 as a burst for identifying something at distance, and the light will never disappoint you. Buy it expecting 400 lumens for an evening and it will.
Battery and power dominate the complaints, and mostly for one reason
Battery and power was by far the largest complaint theme in the comments we read — 41 mentions, roughly triple the next theme. Read in context, most of that traffic is not about the cell failing; it is about runtime expectations set by the headline lumen number colliding with the step-down behaviour above. The internal battery is not user-replaceable, which is the real structural trade-off: when the cell eventually degrades, the lamp is the consumable, not the battery. For a light this size that is the accepted bargain, but it should be a deliberate one.
The UL revision split owners, and the red button is why
Two of the most-liked comments we read are both about the same thing. One owner wanted only the USB-C port and the battery indicator carried over, saying “the simplicity of the V1 was it’s selling point.” Another was blunter: “I love the dedicated button for the red light in the old version.” If you are upgrading from an original NU25 specifically because you liked the one-press red mode, check the current control layout before you buy — this is the change most likely to annoy an existing owner, and it does not show up on a spec sheet.
Check the current price
Amazon See price →Links are Amazon affiliate links — we earn a commission if you buy, at no extra cost to you. It never changes our score.