Advice on bike lights for seeing in the dark
- Thread starter Rebecca
- Start date
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That's excellent normanD. Already seen some decent deals on lights I'm very familiar with el-300 for £24.50 and el-320 for £27.99. FWIW my first bike light the hl-el 120 is the cheapest there. You can get by in total darkness with that sort of thing but you have to know every square inch of the road/track and go at slow speeds (not a problem for me). The best bit about the el 120 is that I keep it as a spare light for other people. You can take it on/off very easily and put it on any bike.
The brompton front light which I also have is the sort of level of brightness I think you should be going for (or above), I quite like that one as it has a nice spot beam.
Proper bike lamps are FAR too overpriced for what they are.
An LED torch such as the P7 lenser at £35 is as good as a £120 proper bike lamp with the same output.
The P7 lenser is pretty good. The back of the unit unscrews and the battery case comes completely out. It uses 4 x AAA which I charge in a Tesco 'smart charger'. On top whack, it gives 90 minutes of light.
I have mine attached to the handlebars using two jubilee clips and a sheet of rubber to stop the paint on the handlebars getting scratched.
The light from it is as good as the 6V halogen filament bulb lamp on the front of a Yamaha FS1E moped I owned.
An LED torch such as the P7 lenser at £35 is as good as a £120 proper bike lamp with the same output.
The P7 lenser is pretty good. The back of the unit unscrews and the battery case comes completely out. It uses 4 x AAA which I charge in a Tesco 'smart charger'. On top whack, it gives 90 minutes of light.
I have mine attached to the handlebars using two jubilee clips and a sheet of rubber to stop the paint on the handlebars getting scratched.
The light from it is as good as the 6V halogen filament bulb lamp on the front of a Yamaha FS1E moped I owned.
OK, just a bit of advice on what to expect from the lights...
this is my set up. there are two kinds of lights. lights to see with and lights to be seen by. in the centre is a Hope vision 1 like this (to see with) and the outer two are smart 3 LED Polaris lights a bit like this (to be seen by). i use the outer two on flash mode to "get noticed" and also as a back up to the centre one (as the hope will just shut off when the batteries run out).
OK it costs a lot more for the hope but you really get better light from it
this is the light from one of the smart lights....
not really any good for unlit roads, unless you want to walk !!!
and the hope, already brighter on lowest setting...
and there are three more settings...
big difference between the first and last photo
the smarts run on 2 AA batteries and the hope runs on 4 AA batteries but the hope will eat batteries in the higher modes (1.5 hours with good batteries) so you have to invest in some high power rechargeable ones. so your looking at around £80 - 90 in total.
i like the hope and im really happy with it. cycling plus magazine have a good review on lights this month and they didn't rate it very high mainly due to weight (one of the brightest light outputs though). from this review it looks like there is now a lot more choice when it comes to this type of light. it may be worth you getting a copy.
so there you go, if you want good light output, your best NOT to waste your money on those cheap lights.
invest in something worth having
The lamp on my bike would have fried that dog.
cameramanjim
Getting faster, very slowly
- Location
- Battersea, London
This Electron gets a good review in Cycling + magazine. Rechargeable (overnight) and very bright.
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Electron-Terr...isure_Cycling_Bike_Lights&hash=item3f03f62c60
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Electron-Terr...isure_Cycling_Bike_Lights&hash=item3f03f62c60
D
Deleted member 1258
Guest
B***** I've recently paid thirty quid for a HL-EL 300 front light and its on there for twenty four quid.
cyberknight
As long as I breathe, I attack.
- Location
- Land of confusion
+1 i saw a hope 1 this week on another works commuters bike and though nice i get the same light out put from my set up.
I got confused with what some one in my works car park thought was a moped this week with my 2 £8 ish lights from .....
http://www.dealextre...esort.relevence
Piemaster
Guru
- Location
- UK City of Culture
While I don't disagree on the value for money of dedicated bike lights vs. torches I personally prefer the B+M Ixon purely for the beam shape it produces, a trapezoid shape on the road.
I have gone down the torch route, with two Tesco 3W torches on lockblock mounts and while it produced plenty of light I did need to use two torches to cover the same sort of area because of the more focused beams they produce. It also meant two vs. one set of batteries to charge (B+M charges via a jack plug), downside of that being reliance on just one light.
It of course very much depends on the type of routes you are riding, speed, and any streetlighting. City streets for me.
Can't imagine that lighting threads like this are as common on car forums as on here!
I have gone down the torch route, with two Tesco 3W torches on lockblock mounts and while it produced plenty of light I did need to use two torches to cover the same sort of area because of the more focused beams they produce. It also meant two vs. one set of batteries to charge (B+M charges via a jack plug), downside of that being reliance on just one light.
It of course very much depends on the type of routes you are riding, speed, and any streetlighting. City streets for me.
Can't imagine that lighting threads like this are as common on car forums as on here!
B***** I've recently paid thirty quid for a HL-EL 300 front light and its on there for twenty four quid.
That's still not such a bad price. They've gone for a lot more than that in the past. Cateye lights are generally overpriced.
cyberknight
As long as I breathe, I attack.
- Location
- Land of confusion
D
Deleted member 1258
Guest
The light is impressive the bracket isn't. The bracket won't fit the courier bars fitted to my Pearson, the threaded rod that screws it together isn't long enough. People with oversize bars might struggle to make it fit. Fortunately my bars were getting crowded and I was about to buy a bar x tender, one of these
http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/Models.aspx?ModelID=11337
and the bracket fitted the x tender, otherwise the light would have gone back. The funny thing is the other light, a s-sun 130w, would fit the bars but not the x tender, the bracket is to big and doesn't tighten down. A the moment I have the Cateye on the x tender under the bars and the s-sun on the bars above it.
either its for hotblack desiato
or for the new show CSI:TOUR-DE-FRANCE ?
(some nice links btw
)
