Night riding - recommend me a light

[M-Power]

Re: Re:

Magicshine MJ-872 for about £80 online. Full beam is stupid bright, and is really only necessary when taking part in 'my light is brighter than your light' contests. I generally run it at 50% (which is plenty) with the odd burst up to 75% for any descent/technical bits, and haven't had any battery concerns. There is a report on road.cc where the reviewer claims to have gotten 6.5h including 1.5h at 100%. Mine is bar mounted, but easily small enough to mount on your helmet and run the battery into a jersey/jacket pocket.

Edit: http://road.cc/content/review/47573-mag ... bike-light

Cheers for this. Very nice looking light and love the remote switch Sure my daughter will dig that feature Bit worried about the Samsung battery option though :shock:

 

[Smithjss70]

I've been using a Serfas TSL for a while now. Several modes for different terrain and conditions. I rigged a water bottle battery pack which has proven to work extremely well. Here is a thread on the setup.

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=327266&hilit=night

 

[M-Power]

I've been using a Serfas TSL for a while now. Several modes for different terrain and conditions. I rigged a water bottle battery pack which has proven to work extremely well. Here is a thread on the setup.

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=327266&hilit=night

I had a similar set up in a water bottle with my old BLT sp? system back in the 90s. Looks amazing but I cant justify spending that, as its not going to get a huge amount of use, I think. My kid wants to go out every night but i have a battle to break free from the sofa and digestives atm :facepalm:

 

[legrandefromage]

I'm one of those that tries to spend as little as possible but still tries to get the best results regardless

These have been quite fun at 99p plus postage:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/191981872633? ... EBIDX%3AIT

These were also 99p - well built, charge off a phone charger and have survived Fenland damp

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Cycling-Bicyc ... PEktNPtr8g

And these are just barking! Need a few tweaks to mount properly but again, actually quite good.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/10000LM-7x-Cr ... SwHoFXuxYQ

A note on the chargers - throw them in the bin and buy a decent one from the UK.

 

[M-Power]

I'm one of those that tries to spend as little as possible but still tries to get the best results regardless

These have been quite fun at 99p plus postage:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/191981872633? ... EBIDX%3AIT

These were also 99p - well built, charge off a phone charger and have survived Fenland damp

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Cycling-Bicyc ... PEktNPtr8g

And these are just barking! Need a few tweaks to mount properly but again, actually quite good.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/10000LM-7x-Cr ... SwHoFXuxYQ

A note on the chargers - throw them in the bin and buy a decent one from the UK.

My philosophy exactly. Spend when you get the value back. Yeah,saw those last lights in your links. They look amazing 10k lumens. GMSSOT I can live with a few technical breakdowns if they happen, as im not going to be doing any downhilling and will carry backups.

 

[hamster]

The only beef i have with some of the lights is that there is zero optical design to shape the beam. 10,000 lumen is amazing but if it's splashed all over the place it doesn't do much good. Some of the super-bright ones are terrible in traffic - they simply dazzle everyone.

 

[FluffyChicken]

The only beef i have with some of the lights is that there is zero optical design to shape the beam. 10,000 lumen is amazing but if it's splashed all over the place it doesn't do much good. Some of the super-bright ones are terrible in traffic - they simply dazzle everyone.

Tell that to the new cars that dazzle everyone anyway too.
or the poor rider in front when offroad who now just has a shadow cast in front of him

 

[legrandefromage]

I had the use of the Exposure Six Pack a few years ago and just could not justify the cost. Not with the cheap ebay cree/ smd often at less than a tenth of the price and offering almost the same 'brightness'.

Sure, they were a bit poor at spread but later ones are now far better. The 99p headtorch has a much better beam.

Just remember to secure the batteries well, there is still a pack out there in Wendover Woods.

 

[Smithjss70]

I've been using a Serfas TSL for a while now. Several modes for different terrain and conditions. I rigged a water bottle battery pack which has proven to work extremely well. Here is a thread on the setup.

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=327266&hilit=night

I had a similar set up in a water bottle with my old BLT sp? system back in the 90s. Looks amazing but I cant justify spending that, as its not going to get a huge amount of use, I think. My kid wants to go out every night but i have a battle to break free from the sofa and digestives atm :facepalm:

Understood. The Serfas are pricey for sure but I've used mine for 75-100 hours now over the course of 18 months and it's performed flawlessly so for my particular situation the cost is justified. I ride at night solo so the comment on "shadowing" the rider ahead isn't relevant to me but would definitely be an issue should it be. A lot of low cost viable solutions out there now in light technology. Good luck!

 

[JamesM]

The only beef i have with some of the lights is that there is zero optical design to shape the beam. 10,000 lumen is amazing but if it's splashed all over the place it doesn't do much good.

The problem is that the size of the reflector in relation to the size of the emitter has a large bearing on the amount of throw or flood the light has. Smaller emitter and larger reflector will give more throw. The XML emitter is quite large and the single XML emitter chinese lights have a relatively large reflectors and so have a fairly focused beam and so alot of throw, too much for a bar lamp in my opinion and seemingly others too as you can buy those diffuser lenses. As they pack more and more XML emitters in to the same or slightly larger space the reflectors get smaller and the beam becomes more flood and less throw. Somewhere along the line you should get something that's about right, where that is though I don't know. My best guess would be around 3 or 4 maybe!!!

Another thing to consider is that according to Cree the latest XM-L2 emitter has a max output of 1052 lumens, but that's in their lab under controlled conditions, you won't get all of that light when you put it in a lamp. The older XML-T6 was more like 900 lumens. Also these lamps may claim to use Cree LEDs but they probably don't, they almost certainly contain inferior copies. With one emitter the limiting factor is probably the emitter. With two emitters it's still probably the emitters. Beyond that it's most likely going to become the current draw from the battery cells and heat dissipation from the lamp body. So a three emitter lamp is probably a bit brighter than a two emitter lamp but after that I would guess they don't get much brighter, but will get a lot floodier. The 7 emitter lamps and up seem to get a larger 6 cell battery pack so there maybe an increase in brightness at that point. The reality though is that none of these lamps are anywhere near the claimed lumens. The best ones are probably in the region of 1500-3000 lumens, but that's alot of light. Car main beams are circa 3000 lumens.