Among the divers on our trip who tried it out was Jonathan Brooks, a college lecturer from East London, who had asked my advice as to which torch he should buy.
He was full of enthusiasm for it, and gave me some copious notes on his experience with it during a one-hour night dive at Marsa Shagra in the Red Sea. He told me that he thought the muscularly ribbed body of the lamp made it pleasant to hold, and the lanyard kept it secure.
It's tough, too, and toughness is important. The importer told me he had had such trouble with the reliability of HID lamps that he had almost given up importing them altogether! This one uses high-output LEDs instead.
Light Source
Jonathan agreed with me that the light produced by the Pocket 50 was astonishingly bright. That's because its four high-output LEDs are positioned in well-designed parabolic reflectors, and all the light gets pushed forward where you want it.
The cluster of lights sits safely behind a front glass made from a heavy slab of borosilicate. The sea was very rough and visibility towards the shore was only around 1.5m, but Jonathan considered that the beam maintained a high degree of luminescence, even in this disturbed water, and remained reassuringly bright and penetrative.
The four LEDs produced a distinctive pattern that allowed his buddy to distinguish him from other divers in these conditions.
An upside to this type of lamp is that it can also be used in air without ill-effect, because the LEDs produce so little heat. This can be useful, if staying in a tent at an eco-resort, for example.
Power Source
Four AA batteries are all that power this lamp, which means that, with a burntime of only around two hours, you need to change or recharge them (if that's possible) after every dive. This might not be an imposition, unless you are accustomed to a lamp that can go for a whole week's night diving.
The batteries are accessed through a rear cap that unscrews and is protected by a large O-ring. This cap has a gas-pressure relief valve built into it. The batteries sit in a chassis permanently wired to the lamp.
Switching
A simple magnetic reed switch obviates any danger of leakage by doing without a through-body connection. It is a straightforward on/off switch, with no clever sequential switching or anything else to befuddle the diver.
A simple plastic screw-down lock prevents the unit being accidentally switched on in your dive bag, although I think this is the sort of thing that soon goes missing.
Beam
The hotspot of the beam was wide yet very even, despite being delivered from four separate sources, and accompanied by a wider peripheral beam that gave the user an awareness of what else was going on around.
Comparable lights to consider:
Seac Sub X-LED, ?229
Dive Rite LT6078 LED500, ?320
Oceanic OP33, ?179
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SPECS
PRICE £264
BATTERIES 4 AA
BURNTIME 2 hours
EXTRAS None
WEIGHT 600g
DEPTH-RATING 200m
CONTACT www.cressi-sub.net
DIVER GUIDE  
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