Chaos, I had never even really thought about standardizing battery size for my lights and other gizmos before, i just accepted the fact that the gizmos i bought used different sized batteries, and did my best to have them on hand. However, over the years I've noticed it is frustrating to have every battery size on hand except the one the gizmo in question needed. It's never been in a critical situation before, thank goodness, but since I've seen a lot of people here mention standardizing battery size I thought I'd ask and see what people's opinions are about the subject.

I would (maybe) prefer a AA form factor, but I'm ok with the 3 AAA form factor, I deal with it frequently on other gizmos without too much trouble. Also, I didn't see much in the way of AA headlamps (granted I haven't really looked at many yet). I was looking at a petzl pixa 2 pro, a nice and rugged looking light but the performance of the light seemed pretty dismal, only 6 hours run time on high at 40 lumens and 12 hours on low at 30 lumens. I'm sure there are better performing AA headlamps available, but i expect the cost will rise substantially and I'll end up with one that has the battery pack on the back of the head and the dreaded over-the-top head strap.

I guess I'm not truly a flashaholic then, I tend to prefer standard AA and AAA cells these days rather than the others you mentioned. Shopping for them is dreadful, especially if, like shopping for the myriad of coin cell type batteries, someone has put a pack on the wrong hook, and you're not paying as close attention as you should to the actual battery pack you put in the cart. As far as narrowing the field, goes, I really like the options on the ones i mentioned, dual outputs, good run times, and uses a more standard battery size. I just hope I am on the right track.