TreeLineBackpacker

The Uco Air is an ultra-light, budget friendly rechargeable headlamp with a unique and stylish real wood panel on the front. It features a 150 lumen lamp, adjustable brightness, a red LED function and adjustable band. It retails for $35, and weighs just 1.6 ounces. This is my review.

There’s a lot to like about the Uco Air. At just 1.6 ounces, it’s incredibly light and it packs down tiny. It’s fairly comfortable after it is broken in thanks to the soft, flexible band, and adjusting it is as simply as undoing a single pad of Velcro and moving it forward or back. It’s exceptionally easy to operate also; Simpy turn the textured knob on the front clockwise to power it on, with a larger rotation to increase brightness. Turning the knob to the left activates the red LED to preserve night vision. There are no buttons to figure out or patterns to memorize here. It’s just a matter of twisting it to the left or right, which is wonderfully simple. The lamp can also be tilted forward and back to adjust where the light lands, which is a rare feature on a lamp this lightweight. Charging is as simple as plugging in the short but adequate micro USB cord, and the unit has IPx4 water resistance, so rain or humidity shouldn’t be much of an issue.

On the downside, the unit only has a battery life of 5 hours on low, and this falls to less than an hour on the highest settings. This isn’t surprising considering the weight (upping the battery life requires a considerable bump in battery size and weight), but it does mean that long winter weekends and week long journeys probably aren’t a good match for this one without some sort of battery backup. I also found that to keep the headlamp in place I had to adjust it to sit pretty tightly, which put more pressure on my head than other designs that I’ve tried,. I found this could be a bit uncomfortable at times. However, I’m the only tester who had this problem, so it could just be the shape of my melon. Also, build quality is pretty basic, despite some nice visual touches.

Overall, I like the Uco Air. It’s priced well, weighs almost nothing, and looks great with the patterned straps, wide variety of colors, and distinctive wooden shield on the front. It’s not a unit that I can recommend for more serious adventures where battery life is absolutely vital. However, for casual use around a bonfire or for summer weekend trips, it should do just fine. It’s also rather nice to keep around the house for emergencies or just working in dark spaces. For more information on Uco and their gear, check out their website. You can also check out this product and support our site by using our Amazon Affiliate Link Here.  For information on our rating system and our testing procedures, check out our About us/ Contact us page. I want to extend a huge thanks to Uco for providing this product for review. We couldn’t do it without their help. Our full disclosure can be found here. Thanks as always for reading! Don’t forget to follow our blog for future updates and reviews. If you have any questions, comment below, send us an email, or find us on Twitter or Facebook (links on the right).