Cyansky has produced their first headlamp, the HS6R. The headlamp has independent red and white LEDs, comes with built-in charging and boasts an output of 1400 lumens.

You can buy the Cyansky HS6R from Cyansky’s store. You can also buy Cyansky flashlights on Banggood, though the HS6R isn’t listed at the time of publication.

Specs

Here’s the HS6R’s official specs

Brightness	1400 lumens
Throw	170m (7200cd)
LEDs	1*LUMINUS SST 40 LED, 1* LUMINUS SST 20 LED, and 1*Everlight 2835 red LED
Battery	18650 cell
Charging	USB type C
Weatherproof	IPX8 waterproof (2 meter submersible
Impact resistance	2m
Weight	118g without battery

What’s in the box?

The Cyansky HS6R comes in a colour printed cardboard box that shows off the specs and the main features.

In the box you get:

• HS6R flashlight, including head strap
• 18650 cell (2600mAh)
• Spare o-ring
• USB-C cable
• EVA sticker
• Manual
• Warranty card

Everyday use

There’s 3 parts to the light: the elastic head strap, steel frame and the actual aluminium light itself. The steel frame joins the light to the strap and allows the light to rotate up and down 60 degrees either way from the horizontal. This allows pointing the light at any height very easily.

The light doesn’t detach from the steel frame – at least not easily. It’s possible to remove the strap from the frame but there isn’t really a need to. The HS6R is a dedicated headlamp, so unlike some right angle headlamps it doesn’t belong in your pocket. 

Head strap

The elastic head strap is nice and wide, around 35mm. It goes round your head and doesn’t have a central over-the-top strap like some heavier lights do. Due to the light weight and thick band the headlamp feels comfortable to wear. It’s also adjustable so should easily fit over big helmets or be shrunk to fit children.

Switches

The light has 2 switches. I’ll explain how they work later. The switch on the right can be pressed no problem with gloves on by squeezing the left and right sides of the light together. The switch on the top of the light sits flush. This switch is harder to find at first but once I got used to it I found it easy to press.

Uses

I used the light for a few days to test it, both indoors and out.

Outdoors on a walk at night, the medium modes were most useful, with an occasional bump to high. The light will last many hours with this usage and would be better than most headlamps for a long night hike.

Indoors I used the light for a bit of DIY and whilst doing some things in the garage. Cyansky suggests the HS6R can be used for home inspection, car maintenance and other places that need light. I’d expect the light to be very useful for an electrician or plumber, who often need a bit of hands-free light in awkward places.

Comparison

From left to right:

• Wurkkos HD20
• Armytek Elf C2
• Armytek Elf C2
• Zebralight H53
• Cyansky HS6R

Quality and durability

The HS6R is rated for IPX8 waterproof, so should be fine in heavy rain. It also has 2 meters impact resistance and should be fine with a drop from head height.

LEDs

The Cyansky HS6R has 4 LEDs in total: 2 white and 2 red.

Main light

The main light on the HS6R headlamp is a Luminus SST-40 LED. This provides up to 1200 lumens and is fairly focused, giving a bright, long distance beam.

This has a colour temperature (CCT) around 4500K, according to my Opple Light Master Pro. CRI (Ra) was around 60 with a DUV of +0.0124

Auxiliary light

The aux light is a smaller Luminus SST-20 LED. This provides up to 500 lumens and is much more floody, thanks to the honeycomb TIR.

Colour temperature for this LED is a bit warmer, at a very pleasant 3800K. CRI is better too, at 96, with a DUV of -0.0015.

Red light

Cyansky used 2 Everlight 2835 LEDs for the red light. This is rated at 10 lumens and can be switched between always on and flashing around 1Hz.

User Interface

The HS6R has 2 switches:

• Side switch for the main light
• Top switch for the aux and red lights

Both switches work the same way:

• Hold to turn on or off
• Press when on to change modes

The side switch allows you to cycle between 4 brightness levels:

• Low → med → high → turbo, then back to low.

The top switch cycles between the aux and red light:

• Low (white) → med (white) → high (white) → on (red) → flashing (red), then back to low

The light has mode memory, so turning the light off (either with the switch or disconnecting power) then turning back on will go to the same mode again.

The 2 switches are completely independent of each other. That means you can have the main light on at the same time as the aux or red lights and control them separately.

Cell and charging

Cyansky provides their own wrapped 18650 cell for the HS6R. This is rated at 2600mAh and is 68.8mm long. The light requires a button top cell, due to the physical reverse polarity protection.

The Cyansky HS6R includes a USB-C charging port under a rubber cover. It’ll charge with a USB-C to C cable, which is great. Charging is at around 1.6A, so should take 2 or 3 hours. You can also charge the cell in a standalone li-ion charger.

The light can also be powered by USB but only seems to work on the low mode on the main light.

There’s an indicator light in the side switch, which is red when charging and green when full. The indicator light also comes on when you turn the light on for 2 seconds: green for high battery level and red when it needs charging.

Performance

All lux and lumen measurements are from my home made integrating sphere, calibrated with a S2+ measured by Maukka. Measurements are done with a UNI-T UT383S lux meter and Adafruit TSL2591 connected to a Raspberry Pi (using RuTiTe by bmengineer).

Note: due to its shape, some light escaped my integrating sphere when measuring the HS6R. I’d expect the actual brightness to be higher, possibly around Cyansky’s official specs.

Mode	Spec	Measured
Main low	30	13
Main med	150	97
Main high	500	387
Main turbo	1200	958
Aux low	50	18
Aux med	150	109
Aux high	500	386
Main turbo + aux high	?	1047

Cyansky have their own runtime chart for the light:

Summary

What I liked

• Wide and comfortable headband
• 2 switches for independent control
• Comes with a cell and has built in charging
• Very good choice of floody aux LED 

What could be improved

There’s very little that Cyansky should change in future versions of this light.

One thing that took a while to get used to was the flush button on the top. This is difficult to feel, especially with gloves, so you have to remember where it is. Making this slightly raised would be a welcome change.

Finally, the 2600mAh rated cell is not the highest capacity available. 2600mAh is OK but a 3400mAh cell would give 30% extra run time for not much more.

Conclusion

The Cyansky HS6R is almost the perfect 18650 sized headlamp. It comes with everything you need including a battery and built in charging, has lots of functions and is built really well.

Cyansky could make smaller (18350 or 16340 cell) or larger and heavier (21700 cell) versions of the HS6R to cater for different use cases but I think the 18650 size is normally the best balance of run time and weight.

The aux light is especially nice and I found myself using it more than the main light indoors. The light could even be used in an emergency as a bike light with flashing red and would work well as a roadside warning light with white and flashing red at the same time.

It’s also been taken on a night hike, where I mostly used the low and medium modes. Medium and low modes will give plenty of run time.

You can buy the Cyansky HS6R from Cyansky’s store. You can also buy Cyansky flashlights on Banggood, though the HS6R isn’t listed at the time of publication. Cyansky provided the HS6R at no cost for an honest, unpaid review. This post includes affiliate links, which help me pay for hosting.