Front lights for all night event

flappy8

I am looking at doing the Dunwich Dynamo later on this year. Given that some of this will be on unlit roads, what front lights would you advise for this? Ideally it would be one that you could keep running from a powerbank.....

froze

That's going to depend if you want a battery contained within the light, or whether you are willing to go with a separate battery pack.

There is a very good light called the Fenix BC26R, Fenix now includes a 5000mAh li-ion battery with the light, up until this year the battery had to be purchased separately, but the battery is still user-replaceable. That battery will run the light at 600 lumens for a rated 9 1/2 hours, in turbo mode at 1600 lumens it will run for 3 1/2 hours, and there is a lower setting of 200 lumens that will run double the time of the 600-lumen setting. It does have a 600-lumen flash mode but it does not say how long it will run in that mode, but it would have to be well over 9 1/2 hours. There is a battery gauge to let you know about how much charge is left. It's a great value at just $90...however, there has been some complaints, more than what I would think there should be, but supposedly the warranty team was looking into the problems. Now there has been some issues with counterfeits, so I'm not sure if those complaints were people that bought their lights from a different site instead of directly through Fenix and they got a crappy light and battery; one of the complaints the Fenix team could not find a record of the sale, so that one was probably a counterfeit, the others I'm not sure of.

If you need even longer run times you can either buy a second battery for the Fenix and keep it with you, it's very easy to replace the battery, simply unscrew the back, slide out the spent battery, and slide in the new one. Or go with a separate battery light combo, but those tend to be at least double the price.

One last option is the Ravemen PR2400, while it only runs for 5 1/2 hours at the medium setting of 500 lumens, you can buy any USB plug in battery power bank and plug it into the light, but you would have to strap it somehow to the bike, I would suggest you contact Ravemen about what power bank to get for your needs and will pair up nicely with their light. The Ravemen is a very highly reviewed light, it uses a cutoff beam similar to car headlights so most of the light energy is directed onto the road and not the road plus the trees! It has twin beams, one flood, and one long range, instead of a single beam like the Fenir, so you have a very well laid out light beam onto the road. It is more expensive than the Fenir but the light beam is superior, Modern Bike has that light for $123 which is the lowest price I could find for it.

I'm sure there might be some other ideas for lights coming forth by other forum members, so compare what they and I told you and select a light.

By the way, I have a cut off beam light and a regular beam light, the cutoff beam light is noticeably better, and mine is much older technology than the regular beam light I just bought last year. My cutoff beam light is an old Phillips Saferide 80, and that darn thing works fantastic after about 15 to 16 years, the battery run time isn't the greatest, but I don't ride all night either, the most I would spend out is 2 hours.