Front light stupid price

johndoran

Has the world of cycling gone completely bonkers. I'm used to seeing very high prices for all kinds of stuff and am firmly of the opinion that if you can afford it why not..However I cannot for the life of me see any justification to charge £850.00 for a front light. ,the Lupine Betty in the new Zyro catalogue. Would you buy one ?

STEFANOS4784

No, i'd require at least 2

Giraffoto

To approach this issue logically . . .

(1) No, you don't need to spend £850 on your bike light. Even if you ride off-road at night, you don't need to spend that much, but then you knew that already

(2) On the other hand, someone must be parting with this sort of bread for their lights, or Lupine would just be filling up their warehouse. These buyers are either people who actually want to spend more on things, or people who believe that any improvement is worth paying for

The justification is, then, that enough people will pay that much to make it worthwhile for the company to charge it. Meanwhile, Hope and Exposure and Ay Up and LED Lenser and lots of others are making lights for the rest of us.

And yes, it is a hell of a lot for a light.

Gizmodo

Perhaps, and I have no evidence to support this, they might put an inflated RRP on their lights so that in a few weeks they can say "SALE: Save 50%, now only £425!" I'm sure you'd run out and buy it then!

Giraffoto

You're too smart for me and I have the good grace to admit it

Pokerface

Front lights (good ones) are an expensive proposition. But 850 is a bit much.

I work with a UK brand (www.Lumicycle.com) that do quality lights for £200-£300. I have one of their bottle-battery systems and it is BRIGHT.

There's also a 70+ page thread on lights in the MTB section!

timmyturbo

i bought this from ebay for £15 and it is disgustingly bright (equivalent to 900 lumens)

it can cast light on trees 200 feet away !!!!

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/290610729914? ... 001wt_1117

phantomx0_1

I have a lupine Betty and a lupine peko. You pay the money for the best lights out there. If you buy direct from lupine the are not as expensive everything you get is quality from the light, batteries, charger even the printed manual all backed up by Lupines second to none customer service. Once bought your lights never get old as they are upgradable most years to the latest LED's all done with a very simple DIY upgrade kit. My two lupines are pumping out 3300 tested lumens between them and out perform all my mates lights be it magic shine exposure or anything else I have seen on the trails and I ride a lot at night.
My lights enable me to ride faster and harder at night as its like having a police helicopter lighting the trails for me!!

So yes lupines lights are worth the money in my opinion.

If you ain't tried them you don't know what your missing!

Rigga

phantomx0_1 wrote:

. Once bought your lights never get old as they are upgradable most years to the latest LED's all done with a very simple DIY upgrade kit.

I bet they love people like you. Spend £850 on a light and then spend more money each year upgrading it!

Frank the tank

phantomx0_1 wrote:

I have a lupine Betty and a lupine peko. You pay the money for the best lights out there. If you buy direct from lupine the are not as expensive everything you get is quality from the light, batteries, charger even the printed manual all backed up by Lupines second to none customer service. Once bought your lights never get old as they are upgradable most years to the latest LED's all done with a very simple DIY upgrade kit. My two lupines are pumping out 3300 tested lumens between them and out perform all my mates lights be it magic shine exposure or anything else I have seen on the trails and I ride a lot at night.
My lights enable me to ride faster and harder at night as its like having a police helicopter lighting the trails for me!!

So yes lupines lights are worth the money in my opinion.

If you ain't tried them you don't know what your missing!

Purchased a front light on ebay 1,600 lumens £37.00 (2off) would be £74.00. 3,200 lumens. You were ripped of my owd.

cornerblock

A friend of mine paid £850.00 for these lights, I told him " they must have seen you coming"
Seen you coming, get it... oh please yourselves.

nwallace

1750 lumens, nice, that's better than an H4.
But really you could put a light leisure battery on a pannier rack and hand 2 Hellas from your bars and get as good a light. Wouldn't cost any where near that much.

Only £600 from one of the sellers that shows up on google shopping.

rick_chasey

I paid for an enormous mirror satelite to orbit the earth, reflecting the suns rays on wherever I'm cycling...

Cycloslalomeur

phantomx0_1 wrote:

I have a lupine Betty and a lupine peko. You pay the money for the best lights out there. If you buy direct from lupine the are not as expensive everything you get is quality from the light, batteries, charger even the printed manual all backed up by Lupines second to none customer service. Once bought your lights never get old as they are upgradable most years to the latest LED's all done with a very simple DIY upgrade kit. My two lupines are pumping out 3300 tested lumens between them and out perform all my mates lights be it magic shine exposure or anything else I have seen on the trails and I ride a lot at night.
My lights enable me to ride faster and harder at night as its like having a police helicopter lighting the trails for me!!

So yes lupines lights are worth the money in my opinion.

If you ain't tried them you don't know what your missing!

May we have a source for that light output figure you quote please?

sloppyschleckonds

Hi- Is this still for sale?

desweller

Oh my goodness, top-of-the-line product in exorbitant price shocker. Hold the front page.

ddraver

No one has brought this up yet, but they re not for road use (in fact they re almost certainly illegally bright). Something like that would be used for (non floodlit) DH races not just the commute home....

Most lights at around 300 are fine for XC, but DHers are going somewhat faster!

Stiff_Orange

ddraver wrote:

Most lights at around 300 are fine for XC, but DHers are going somewhat faster!

Obviously you've not done any 24hr races. At three in the morning you want all the light you can handle! Even at the recent WDMBC Black Park night races the pace was so quick that you needed as much illumination as possible. Not seeing a tree coming up at 25MPH can be messy.

Most night racers (or general riders) use a combination of a wide beam flood on the bars plus a narrow beam on the helmet. Things like Beam spread, secure mounting options, weather resistance are the difference between the dedicated off-road brands like Exposure, Lupine, AYUP etc and the standard brands such as Cat Eye, Magic Shine etc.

That said lights like the Lupine Betty and the Exposure Six Pack seem to be a bit over the top (I've also seen people twin Exposure Maxx-D), but if people feel safer running these lights and they can afford it, what's the problem. Simple supply and demand, if people didn't want them the manufactuers wouldn't make them.

Hoopdriver

I've got a Lupine Betty - not their newest £850 model but last year's version and bought at considerably less cost than the stated rrp and I have to say the lights are superb, beautifully engineered, powerful, reliable and with long burn times. Lupine's service is, as the above poster says, also superb.

The poster who seemed to believe that because it is possible to upgrade the light in future, you must, is just being ingenuous. My light throws out 1850 lumens (I believe their new Betty throws out 2600) and I cannot imagine a circumstance where I would need to expand on what I've got.

And yes, I know you can buy all sorts of cheap stuff out of China that more or less works - although you will probably have to buy a new one every year - but I would rather buy once, have it last, and not have to worry about finding myself miles from home on an unlit lane with a dead headlight.

Moaning about the price of top of the line gear is silly...

oldhairylegs

Rick Chasey wrote:

I paid for an enormous mirror satelite to orbit the earth, reflecting the suns rays on wherever I'm cycling...

.... on sale now at Wiggle..... probably.....

and if they're not, you know who to blame....

ddraver

Stiff_Orange wrote:

ddraver wrote:

Most lights at around 300 are fine for XC, but DHers are going somewhat faster!

Obviously you've not done any 24hr races. At three in the morning you want all the light you can handle! Even at the recent WDMBC Black Park night races the pace was so quick that you needed as much illumination as possible. Not seeing a tree coming up at 25MPH can be messy.

Most night racers (or general riders) use a combination of a wide beam flood on the bars plus a narrow beam on the helmet. Things like Beam spread, secure mounting options, weather resistance are the difference between the dedicated off-road brands like Exposure, Lupine, AYUP etc and the standard brands such as Cat Eye, Magic Shine etc.

That said lights like the Lupine Betty and the Exposure Six Pack seem to be a bit over the top (I've also seen people twin Exposure Maxx-D), but if people feel safer running these lights and they can afford it, what's the problem. Simple supply and demand, if people didn't want them the manufactuers wouldn't make them.

Fail!

Many

Ayups, intermediate and narrow cost - 250

Face!!

nwallace

If you want to compare that with a automotive form of forest racing.

http://www.demon-tweeks.co.uk/Motorspor ... /1601/2618

Fair enough speeds are around 3x higher, but they have someone telling them exactly where to go.
The HIDs are worth it, was sitting out the south side of mull at 2 in the morning watching cars approaching lighting up the slopes on the other side of Loch Griburn.

Giraffoto

I'm beginning to see the point of having a head torch as well as one on the handlebars after an unexpectedly long spell off-road (translation - I got lost). It would be handy to be able to see where the path went without stopping and turning the bars. Not sure I'd pay £850 for it, though - I'm going to see if I can fit one of the LED Lensers on my hat first

Pep

I konw people skying at night off track with much less epxensive lights

cougie

Skiing ? Wouldnt the snow make it a much lighter place to be, hence no need for lights that bright ?

Helmet lights are always a good idea - even with a kick ass light on the bars, you cant see paths as you pass them to your side. Plus if you have a mechanical - you want light to be where you are looking.

£40 gets you a decent waterproof Fenix torch - you don't need a lot of power there. Especially if you're riding with a pal.
1000 lumens in their eyes when you turn to chat to them wont be appreciated.

Monty Dog

Nobody seems to notice that all the LED emitters come out of one factory in Korea and cost about £6 each, and batteries are generally repackaged 1850 li-ion cells, so that's a pretty expensive box, circuit board and piece of cable folks are paying for. I have a Lupine (half-price) but really fail to understand the 'value' of these lights - 1000 lumens on the bars and a couple of hundred on the helmet is enough for most riding I do.

One Man And His Bike

You can but a half decent second hand car for £850 and I'm sure the car headlights on that will out perform anything Lupine do.

APIII

I bought a Lupine 4 years ago after faffing about with a couple cheaper options that failed pretty quickly after purchase. I paid around £370 if memory serves me correctly. I chose them because of the output, run times and reputation and so ar haven't been let down on any front. Yes, there are cheaper options, but I think my lights have been value for money at less than 100 quid a winter. I'm sure they'll see a few more years yet, not something many Magicshine owners can say.
£850 though, that's a bit steep even for me

DIESELDOG

I'm firmly of the opinion that if you can afford then then spend it. Reminds me of a comment made to a friend who had just done the end to end, sat in the cafe at JoG, someone commented to him that it was obviously nothing special and no major achievement because he was wearing Assos so must cover many miles all the time. Apart from a WTF has what he wears got to do with how many miles he rides, he politely pointed out that he wears it because he can afford it.

Love n hugs

DD

LeicesterLad

I blame the strikes.

DIESELDOG

LeicesterLad wrote:

I blame Wiggle.

FTFY.

Love n hugs

DD