Front Road Lights ? Advice

zak3737

Hi all,
Looking to buy a front light, now that the evenings have all but gone.....and need some advise pls.

I've been looking at the Lezyne Macro Front, which at 350/400 lumens, and USB chargeable, seems s great option.
But someone's just put me onto some 'Cree' 4000 lumen ones on Ebay/Amazon, (yes - 4000 lumens),.....and at £30/40, seem incredible, and for use on country lane riding at night, perhaps great to see the road surface ahead.

But - surely - 4000 lumens is going to be a problem for any oncoming traffic ?? One of the ads carries a 'warning' about looking directly at the light, - but thats hard to avoid for any oncoming driver !!

Any advice on good', small, re-chargeable road lights, gratefully read :-)

dodgy

It won't be 4000 lumens, even if it says so on the packaging.

MountainMonster

I bought some lights from Halfords for around £100 (can be had much cheaper in sales) which have worked very well. I've used them on some very grim days and they provide ample light for getting me to work early in the morning, and the batteries stay charged for roughly a weeks worth of riding. I'd recommend going in there to have a look.

ai_1

High power axial beams (torch type beams beams that give cone of light) really aren't suitable for road use IMO. You'll notice that's not what cars use and there's a good reason for that. A symetrical cone of light means that the foreground will always be too bright compared to the distance so you never really have even illumination that's comfortable to use. You end up with light everywhere but hot spots that ruin your night vision and and some degree of tunnel vision depending on how narrow your beam is. To try and compensate for the poor light pattern people crave more and more power which just makes the night vision issue worse and blinds oncoming traffic.
A good beam for a bike light will be basically the same as a dipped car headlight. That's what the Philips Saferide 80lux is. It's only about 270-290 lumens (tested by a few 3rd parties) but that's all you need when it's used correctly and, because that light is used efficiently, it actually looks more like you'd expect from 600 lumens (and 600 lumens is probably what you really get from a "1000 lumen" light) so don't dismiss it based on that figure.

The Philips light gives a superb beam very similar to what you get from a car headlamp (which Philips also make!) so you get very even illumination across the full width of lane starting just ahead of the bike and out to a distance of 60m or 70m. It's got a cutoff to prevent blinding on-coming traffic but still spills enough light for you to be very visible (again like the dipped beam on an oncoming car). It's not tiring on your eyes and doesn't give you tunnel vision.

It's not perfect however. For one thing it's not particularly compact or sexy but is that what's really important in a light? It IS very solidly built with a cast Aluminium body. The one thing that I have a bit of a problem with is duration on full power. I think the current version (v2) gives 90mins on full power (older version (v1) was about 70mins) after which it switches to Eco mode which is much dimmer and it will last a couple more hours at least at that level. I find this light pretty flawless on full beam and if it lasted longer I'd be 100% happy. If 90mins is sufficient for your purposes I'd suggest going that route. Last time I looked it cost somewhere between €75-€90.

I've already used my v1 unit for a couple of winters but plan to modify it this year to use the same lamp with a new LED driver and battery for much longer run times.

slowbike

I have a couple of Cree torches as secondary lights - well, had ... only one works now, the other one is too intermittent to be of any use.
They are as Ai_1 says - just a cone of light with a bright center and rapidly falling light levels to the outside. You can ride using just one of those, but it's not ideal and car drivers do flash up.

My primary light is a Cateye Nanoshot+ and I've just got my wife a Cateye Volt 700 - the light patten may not be as good as the Philips light, but they're good and light the way very well - even in driving snow!

I usually ride around on 1/2 power and having the ability to "beam up" onto full power is nice, I tend to use it when the road surface is a bit dodgy or if there's rain/sleet/snow - dropping down to 1/2 power if I think I'm blinding drivers.
The Volt has an additional lower power mode as well as a flash mode, but I don't like the way you have to cycle through all the modes (perhaps you don't, perhaps I need to read the manual!) ..

Eitherway, I wouldn't be happy with a Macro as a main front light for the sorts of riding I do - ie pitch black country lanes, often wet, loads of gravel commuting. But also I wouldn't be happy with just the one front light either!

zak3737

I guess i'm just wanting something thats reliable, with a good enough spread of light to see the road enough to avoid potholes/and problems etc, while not needing to 'floodlight' the road for 100yds ahead, and dazzle etc.

diy

If you can wait 2-3 weeks - you wont beat 2 of these at £6

http://www.lightmalls.com/ultrafire-wf- ... ch-1-18650

you need a mount, a charger and some old laptop batteries.

Run them on low or medium and as long as you keep them pointed in the right direction you wont blind anyone.

The XM-L2 is still one of the most efficient LEDs on the market and perfect as a bike light. The Lumen claims are at max output (1,200 per LED) but that will be in perfect conditions at 3A.

Here is the older XM-L v1 "1000" Lumen LED about 15% less efficient. But I'm running them at .8-1A so its more like 500 each. The video looks darker than real life.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kQL6UnNmjk&t=1m10s

dodgy

I've tried all the homebrew alternatives over the years, but have now come to the realisation that if charging isn't child's play, then the design is flawed

USB rechargeable all the way for me. Charging points and cables are everywhere.

There are already some cheap USB rechargeables on places like lightmalls.com, but I've gone for branded Lezyne ones.

Cycling Caesar

Slowbike wrote:

I have a couple of Cree torches as secondary lights - well, had ... only one works now, the other one is too intermittent to be of any use.
They are as Ai_1 says - just a cone of light with a bright center and rapidly falling light levels to the outside. You can ride using just one of those, but it's not ideal and car drivers do flash up.

My primary light is a Cateye Nanoshot+ and I've just got my wife a Cateye Volt 700 - the light patten may not be as good as the Philips light, but they're good and light the way very well - even in driving snow!

I usually ride around on 1/2 power and having the ability to "beam up" onto full power is nice, I tend to use it when the road surface is a bit dodgy or if there's rain/sleet/snow - dropping down to 1/2 power if I think I'm blinding drivers.
The Volt has an additional lower power mode as well as a flash mode, but I don't like the way you have to cycle through all the modes (perhaps you don't, perhaps I need to read the manual!) ..

Eitherway, I wouldn't be happy with a Macro as a main front light for the sorts of riding I do - ie pitch black country lanes, often wet, loads of gravel commuting. But also I wouldn't be happy with just the one front light either!

Have you used the volt 700? I was considering getting one of these as my main light and then having something cheap to make sure I'm seen should the volt run out. Aren't many/any reviews around, just the 1200 but that's probably overkill for my needs.

My "commute" is about 10 minutes each way and it's well lit so I'm not too bothered by that but I fancy getting some morning/evening rides in (also have a night ride sportive coming up) so I'd want something that will give me good visibility on sparsely lit roads.

zak3737

dodgy wrote:

I've tried all the homebrew alternatives over the years, but have now come to the realisation that if charging isn't child's play, then the design is flawed

USB rechargeable all the way for me. Charging points and cables are everywhere.

There are already some cheap USB rechargeables on places like lightmalls.com, but I've gone for branded Lezyne ones.

Makes sense to me, the 'old laptop battery' route sounds fraught with disaster imo !

If the beam is good then, 400 lumens could be good enough to light the way on a country lane, or at least sufficient to see the surface ahead of you ?

Thx all.

slowbike

yes I have used the volt - its not bad but i do prefer the nanoshot plus ..

the volt had a funny square type beam pattern, it's fine, just looks a bit odd. Other than that the only negative is as I've already stated - the cycle through the modes.
Both lights have the constant flash but the 700 does have just a flash which I guess would be handier in lighter conditions or lighter traffic.
The other advantage(?) of the 700 is that it has a removable battery, so you could have 2 or 3 charged up for a longer ride

not sure which is cheaper or even if that's a concern.

ai_1

Zak3737 wrote:

dodgy wrote:

I've tried all the homebrew alternatives over the years, but have now come to the realisation that if charging isn't child's play, then the design is flawed

USB rechargeable all the way for me. Charging points and cables are everywhere.

There are already some cheap USB rechargeables on places like lightmalls.com, but I've gone for branded Lezyne ones.

Makes sense to me, the 'old laptop battery' route sounds fraught with disaster imo !

If the beam is good then, 400 lumens could be good enough to light the way on a country lane, or at least sufficient to see the surface ahead of you ?

Thx all.

The Philips beam makes 280ish lumens easily good enough to ride safely at 40km/h on pitch dark roads. It's honestly not much different to a car or motorbike headlamp.

diy

Downside of a built in bat is if it goes flat on route you can't change the cell over for a spare. But then having a £1 shop blinky as a backup is not the end of the world.