Lumens strength for lights
shiznit76
Posts: 640
Hi, I want a light to see the road ahead a not just be seen in the dark, what kind of lumens should I be looking at for this?
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Hard to say with the lumen levels - its how you use them.
I've found this one to be very reliable. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SolarStorm-5 ... SwCcVZ4JBM
It's got three settings for the main beam - I use the lowest of these levels and it will give me three hours at least. I turn it up to max when needed and i know nobody will be coming. Theres also a flash function.
I've added a bit of a 'peak' to mine as I found it would go in my eyes a bit when over the front of the bike out of the saddle on steep climbs. The clamp is good - an O ring so you can nudge the lamp down when you need to see closer up rather than further away.
Even comes with a rear light but I've not put that on.0 -
I have a Cateye Volt 800 and its very good when dark, can easily see everything.
Has a three brightness setting, plus a pulse and flashing.0 -
Agree with the above.
I had a 525 lumen Lezyne that was good enough to ride on dark, unlit roads. I eventually replaced it with an 1100 lumen light and was disappointed that my visibility actually reduced. How the lumens are used is critical.
You can spend a LOT of money on lights, but I think that a single LED unit is the most cost effective in terms of usable light and battery life.0 -
I've got a Cateye Nanoshot+ - good in terms of light for road use - not really enough for offroad stuff. The battery is failing now - so probably looking at something else - might just try that SolarStorm ...
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output in lumens is just marketing bs, what counts for seeing where you're going is really lumens per unit area, which is measured in lux (1 lux == 1 lumen m2)
a light that spluffs 1000 lumens over a wide area will be far less effective for seeing where you go than one that outputs far less but has a well designed beam (what the high lumen crap beam will do is dazzle oncoming drivers/riders, at minimum it's annoying, at worst dangerous)
this page has some good examples of different light levels...
http://en.bumm.de/innovations/headlight ... rison.html
this lets you compare different lights...
http://lights.road.cc/index-wide.phpmy bike - faster than god's and twice as shiny0 -
https://dinglights.com/products/ding-fl1-orange
This is a good light. Great focused beam and good run time.0 -
Fenix wrote:Hard to say with the lumen levels - its how you use them.
I've found this one to be very reliable. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SolarStorm-5 ... SwCcVZ4JBM
It's got three settings for the main beam - I use the lowest of these levels and it will give me three hours at least. I turn it up to max when needed and i know nobody will be coming. Theres also a flash function.
I've added a bit of a 'peak' to mine as I found it would go in my eyes a bit when over the front of the bike out of the saddle on steep climbs. The clamp is good - an O ring so you can nudge the lamp down when you need to see closer up rather than further away.
Even comes with a rear light but I've not put that on.
How long a charge do you get with that?0 -
I think the sweet spot is around 600 to 750 lumens unless it has aimed optics than it could be just 250 lumens. However, while 750 lumens is the sweet spot, in my opinion so keep that in mind, you need the ability to have a light that can reach at least 900 lumens in case you run into a dark rainy night, also with the potential of more power on tap the manufactures will usually provide more battery run time at 750 medium setting than a light that is built to have 750 at the top end. Aimed optics are cool because they cut off the beam like car and motorcycle lights so that most of the lumens is concentrated in the lower half of the beam instead of a round flashlight type of beam where lumens are wasted illuminating trees, this actually helps to reduce the amount of battery needed to operate the light because the lumens are less of course. If you're like me and have excellent night vision 750 lumens may be too much and thus 500 or so maybe better for you, that's fine, so you buy a light that has 500 or so on the lower end of the settings, this way the battery will be larger and thus the run time will be a lot longer on the lower end. Keep in mind that a motorcycle headlight on low are running at 700 lumens, you don't go as fast on a bike as you do with a motorcycle so you can't over ride your light on a bike, however the motorcycle uses a larger diameter light whereas the bicycle uses a much smaller diameter light, so 700 lumen range is fine for a bike. The only time you may want a light that exceeds 1000 lumens is if you do off road dirt track riding and you need to see every detail of the trail; those that say you need 1000 plus lumens for the street is just plain crazy.
On the subject of aimed optics. As an example of the two, I have a Phillips Saferide 80 that puts out 224 or so lumens, I also have a Cygolite Mitycross 480 osp, the Phillips puts out less than half the lumens that the Cygolite does BUT the Phillips has actually about 100% brighter illumination of the road! The Phillips only runs on 4 AA rechargeable batteries and on high will run for about 2 hours, whereas the Cygolite has a detached battery pack that will run for about 3 hours on high, so the Phillips is more economical to run in energy usage but due to the smaller batteries it won't run as long.
While these next sites are not completely up to date, nor do they cover every single light made, and nor do they really show how the human eye sees the light, they do give you an idea of what light is the best for the money you want to spend, see:
(this one you drag the light from the pictures into the comparison area) https://www.tredz.co.uk/lights-comparison-test
https://www.bikelightdatabase.com/beams ... 5D=blaze2w
(same site as above but I think it has a few different lights?) https://www.bikelightdatabase.com/beams ... D=shark500
(not as comprehensive a the above sites but they add to it all the time) https://crankjoy.com/mountain-bike-light-shootout-2018/
(same as the above site but done in 2016 with more lights, most of these lights are still on the market) http://reviews.mtbr.com/2016-lights-sho ... ight-light0 -
shiznit76 wrote:Fenix wrote:Hard to say with the lumen levels - its how you use them.
I've found this one to be very reliable. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SolarStorm-5 ... SwCcVZ4JBM
It's got three settings for the main beam - I use the lowest of these levels and it will give me three hours at least. I turn it up to max when needed and i know nobody will be coming. Theres also a flash function.
Even comes with a rear light but I've not put that on.
How long a charge do you get with that?
I'd personally avoid anything that is £20 on ebay, that quotes 5000 lumens. Firstly, you don't need 5000 lumens and secondly, even though that figure is a massive overstatement it will still manage to blind most oncoming traffic you meet.
What you need does depend on where you are riding: Urban, where you just want a better view of the road surface, or rural where you want to see the road but also a bit around you.
For urban, to see the road in more detail you don't really need much more than a single beam which is nicely pointed down.
I like Lezyne as they're good value and easy to swap between bikes, but mostly for their overdrive mode which allows you to switch between max brightness and a decent level easily without cycling through flashing.
https://www.evanscycles.com/lezyne-hect ... n-EV313591
For more rural areas then something with more lumens will be needed, this gets good reviews mostly because of the split focus of the beam, it looks similar to the ding light above.
https://www.tredz.co.uk/.Ravemen-PR900- ... sku=399919
This is a good database of bike lights also.
http://www.torchythebatteryboy.com/p/bi ... abase.html
I bought one of these base on his recommendation, it's been good for the rare rural riding I do.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Fluxient-100 ... xy83JRHIUC
I see he's now opened a store, I might give this a try as it looks good value and a nicely focussed beam.
http://www.torchy.co.uk/product/fluxien ... ike-light/0 -
I've one of the eBay solar storms. I really doubt it's 5000 lumens but on the lowest setting it's enough for pitch black paths.
Not run it out ever but I've done 4 hour rides with it and I don't think it was even half flat.0
