Review of the B&M Ixon IQ Premium Light

hypster

Based on the reviews and various beamshots including YouTube videos I had seen on the web I bought one of these recently from Bike-Discount.de. I ordered the bare light with no cells or charger and in fact that package seems to be out of stock until December at Bike-Discount.de anyway.

I charged up a set of 4 GP Recyko 2050mAh AA cells before I started a two-hour ride (largely on unlit country roads) and left the light running after the ride to test the runtime. I got 4 hours 30 minutes with the light on high the whole time. The light barely got warm even when static indoors.

Here are my impressions.

I didn't really expect a great deal from a light with a claimed output of only 80 lux and I wasn't disappointed. It is barely adequate at slower speeds but above about 16 mph there isn't enough light to see road defects and have enough time to react and safely avoid them. Faster descents are positively dangerous if you rely on this light alone.

The two main failings of the light are it is not bright enough and the beam pattern is patchy. The best way I can describe it is imagine a triangle of light stretching away from the bike. Furthest away there is a definite section of about a third of the triangle with an even brighter spot in the middle. The remaining two-thirds of the triangle back towards the bike is dimmer with artefacts around the edges.

I tried the light on the bars and mounted lower down towards the front wheel. It didn't seem to make any appreciable difference either way.

The low setting (10 lux) is very feeble and is more a light to be seen that to see by. Useful I guess if you are riding largely in urban areas with street lights but a bare, emergency, get-you-home level for unlit roads. There is no flashing mode by the way.

Weight: Light 108g, 4 AA cells 113g

Pros

1. Definite vertical cut-off to the beam pattern. Riding behind a friend it didn't even light up the reflective strips on the base of his jacket. Good for not dazzling oncoming drivers.

2. Although an all-plastic construction the quality looks high and it is a very neat, self-contained package with the 4 AA cells inside the light.

3. Tested run time of 4H 30M on high is good although I would personally sacrifice half this time for twice the brightness. If you do the sort of rides which are even longer than this time then carrying a fresh set of cells would be no problem to quickly change them as well. On low setting there is a claimed runtime of 20 hours which I didn't test.

Cons

1. Not bright enough.

2. Beam pattern very uneven which I found irritating.

3. There appears to be no actually weather sealing around the battery compartment. How waterproof this will be can only be guessed at as I didn't test that. Having said that all the electronics seem to be sealed away so it is probably only the battery compartment which is at risk.

As a general commuting light for riding in largely urban areas with street lighting this is probably very good. For any sort of sports cycle riding where the average speeds are likely to be higher then it is barely adequate and certainly a safe limit would be 16 mph in my opinion but your eyesight might be better than mine. I personally wouldn't feel comfortable using this light without a much brighter back-up that I could switch on for faster sections which is how I will actually use it in future I think.

All of the beam shots and videos I have seen on the web flatter this light greatly and in reality what your eyes see will be vastly different to how a camera reacts to it. I would recommend that you try and see one for yourself before buying otherwise you might be disappointed.

keef66

Thanks for posting this. I'd more or less made up my mind that I was going to buy this very light based on a couple of favourable reviews with photographs of adequately illuminated roads. Now I'm not so sure.

Is it possible you have a defective unit? How would you know without a side by side comparison with a working one though? The 4 1/2 hr runtime is consistent with their label claims on full power...

I have a colleague in Germany who bought the 40 lux version a couple of years ago, and he seemed pretty impressed with it. That was commuting on his Brompton though, not hooning round unlit lanes in pitch darkness, which is what I need it for.

Anybody else out there who has tried one??

hypster

keef66 wrote:

Thanks for posting this. I'd more or less made up my mind that I was going to buy this very light based on a couple of favourable reviews with photographs of adequately illuminated roads. Now I'm not so sure.

Is it possible you have a defective unit? How would you know without a side by side comparison with a working one though? The 4 1/2 hr runtime is consistent with their label claims on full power...

I have a colleague in Germany who bought the 40 lux version a couple of years ago, and he seemed pretty impressed with it. That was commuting on his Brompton though, not hooning round unlit lanes in pitch darkness, which is what I need it for.

Anybody else out there who has tried one??

I don't think I have a defective unit. The light itself it actually about the sort of brightness I would have expected, it's just the pattern is a bit more patchy than I would have hoped for. The light is rated at 80 lux on high and I have seen equivalent figures of around 200 lumens bandied around the web and I would have thought that was pretty close.

In my opinion all of the beam shots I have seen online greatly exagerate what this light looks like to the human eye in real life. I think that also goes for most beam shots I've seen for most lights. A camera lens and image sensor just doesn't capture things the way the human eye works even when the exposure settings are carefully set up. It's not just me that thinks this either. My friend that I was riding with last night thought the light was pretty poor as well and the reality of it just doesn't match the beam shots.

Having said that this is not a bad light just a bit limited. As I said in my review the biggest positive with the light is the design which gives a very sharp vertical cut-off which is great for not blinding oncoming drivers if that is important to you. I think in reality it is designed to comply with strict German law for bike lights and is mainly aimed at commuters who may be riding predomnantly on lit streets.

I would say the for the illumination level and quality of build you get then the £49 I paid (including postage) from Bike-Discount.de is a pretty fair price. Personally speaking for my own hooning around unlit country lanes I want a lot more light to see far enough ahead to avoid any problems.

I build my own lights as well and one of the main reasons I bought this light was to study the technology of it with a view to maybe trying to build a similar version of my own. I have a friend who also builds lights and he has been working on something similar for months with partial success.

At present I am prototyping a single XM-L light with a fresnel lens and this gives amazing throw and shows a lot of promise. Because the beam is so focussed there seems to be less spill than traditional optics so less problem for dazzling oncoming drivers. It's not perfect though and I think I will overcome this with a remote handlebar switch to allow me to dip the light like a car headlight. I also use a second, less powerful light for fill-in duties closer to the front wheel.

At this sort of budget level I don't really know what to suggest. My friend that I ride with at night runs one of the cheap Chinese double XM-L lights but at 50% level and he seems pretty happy with that. There are loads of those on eBay but the quality can be a bit variable I understand.

This is the one he bought from DealExtreme if you are interested:

http://www.dx.com/p/fandyfire-d99-l2-2- ... F0M88lrZZN

bendertherobot

It's a shame you missed out on the Rose Philips Saferide. It's excellent. The only thing I don't like is that I will need to mod it with a thumbscrew to carry spare batteries and replace them easily.

cal_stewart

I run a bm light as I live in Germany. The reason is your front and rear light need to be cert'd for road use, so they do not blind drivers. In the fatherland you can't run more than 1 led in your front light or any super powerful off road lights on the run

hypster

Cal_Stewart wrote:

I run a bm light as I live in Germany. The reason is your front and rear light need to be cert'd for road use, so they do not blind drivers. In the fatherland you can't run more than 1 led in your front light or any super powerful off road lights on the run

Spoilsports in the true meaning of the word!

extrusion

I bought this light recently also based on favourable reviews. Put simply it is dangerous to use on country roads, just not bright enough to pick out potholes. I have a Saferide which is vastly superior in strength (although not width). I wondered if I had a faulty light given the wonderful reviews and that it and the saferide are both rated 80 lux, but the ops review has confirmed that no, some people just have lower expectations and rate accordingly! I will continue with the saferide and/or 2 moon meteors.

cal_stewart

I use this one http://www.fun-corner.de/index.php/en/B ... /a-A004538 and it's fine on pitch Black Forest roads.