Longest burn time lights.

[thecycleclinic]

What light gets burn time lights out there on about 200 lumens for the front. I still have built a dynamo whee and I am not likely too if I can avoid it.

The cateye volt 1700 does 15hrs. With a spate battery I can get 30hrs. That enough for a a few days in the summer. But I'll need more for race around the netherlands or lejog.

[londonbikerider]

FWIW, 200 real lumens are not enough to safely see in complete darkness, you want at least 300lmn.
I have a Cateye Volt400 (the older model with screw-in rechargeable battery) and is just slightly brighter than a B&M Cyo 80lux driven by a Son28 hubdynamo. Both lights are on the same bike so I can switch them and make a comparison in real-time.

If you are into racing or long distances at night, either you have to go for a rechargeable light that will allow you to use multiple battery packs, paired with a dynamo light too. The best would be a good dynamo light for "flood" and a pin-point rechargeable light on the helmet.

[andrew_s]

If you want such a long run time without having to take the time out to recharge, or pay for and carry sufficient spare batteries, and still see where you're going, the correct answer is to use a dynamo.

When making comparisons, bear in mind that a good dynamo light will put as much light on the road as a round torch beam of 400 - 500 lumens, so using the Volt (which has such a beam) you'd need to use the 5 h medium setting to see as well as with a dynamo.

All battery lights use the same technology as the Volt, so you won't find anything magically much better. Ideally, you'd want a light that gave a dynamo-style beam, using a downward pointing LED and reflector rather than a forward pointing LED and lens, and that used bare 18650 cells (cheaper), but I'm not aware of any such light.

The £200 that you'd spend on a Volt 1700 and spare battery would pay for a perfectly decent dynamo wheel and light.

If you are worried about the drag of a dynamo, don't be.
It's a long way from the most significant thing that will slow you down. Making the correct choice of what tyre pressure to use for the road surfaces you'll be riding on will make much more difference. No, you can't just look it up on bicyclerollingresistance.com - their aluminium drum isn't a realistic road, and the wheel doesn't have an energy absorbing person on top.

[dim]

front Dynamo Light:

Supernova E3 Triple 2

You don't really need an additional light with the Supernova, but if you want a backup, the Cygolite Expilion 850 USB mounted on your helmet ... it uses swappable USB battery sticks ....

[rmurphy195]

FWIW, 200 real lumens are not enough to safely see in complete darkness, you want at least 300lmn.
I have a Cateye Volt400 (the older model with screw-in rechargeable battery) and is just slightly brighter than a B&M Cyo 80lux driven by a Son28 hubdynamo. Both lights are on the same bike so I can switch them and make a comparison in real-time.

If you are into racing or long distances at night, either you have to go for a rechargeable light that will allow you to use multiple battery packs, paired with a dynamo light too. The best would be a good dynamo light for "flood" and a pin-point rechargeable light on the helmet.

IMHO thesse pin point lights are next to useless to be seen by, they simply get lost in whatever other lighting there is around especially in the rain or at thise time of year when christmas decorations are sprining up all over the place. You need something like the cateye omni range with a nice, bright diffuse output.

[Brucey]

I agree with andrew_s.

Presumably the OP must have reasons for wanting to be enslaved to an endless rigmarole of charging batteries and constantly worrying about them running out, but I doubt very much that those reasons will bear up to close scrutiny.

FWIW the 'life' of the batteries is (so far as Cateye is concerned) reached when the capacity decreases to 70% of the nominal capacity, i.e. near the end of the life you will need to carry three batteries instead of two to get the run time you expect. And you only even get that if the charging/discharging is carried out as per instructions and it isn't too hot or too cold when it all happens. You can quite easily shorten the life of the batteries to a small fraction of their nominal number of cycles by charging them often (just to top them up), or charging them before they are stored, not charging them before they are stored, letting them discharge too much.... the list goes on and on.

I've lived with battery lights of many different types and ultimately, they all do their best to suck the life out of you before finding some new and interesting way of plunging you into complete darkness when it is least convenient for this to happen.

cheers

[bgnukem]

Agree with Brucey. Currently have a Sigma Pava front light on my winter club run bike but have to carry a spare set of batteries as it's already tried to plunge me into darkness when the rechargeable AA cells I use ran out unexpectedly. Bought it as a get me home measure for the last hour or so of dark club runs but not even confident I can achieve that so I'm seriously considering reverting to the dynohub and front light I had fitted previously.

Battery lights are too much stress and hassle worrying about being stranded in the dark. Get a hub dynamo fitted with a half decent front LED light and you can ride with peace of mind!

[Jamesh]

Would it be possible to rig a dynamo light up to a usb powerbank?

Then you would have plenty of power and a power bank that can be charged each night / sleep stop?

Something like this?
https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre ... 2815908440

Cheers James

[pwa]

Agree with Brucey. Currently have a Sigma Pava front light on my winter club run bike but have to carry a spare set of batteries as it's already tried to plunge me into darkness when the rechargeable AA cells I use ran out unexpectedly. Bought it as a get me home measure for the last hour or so of dark club runs but not even confident I can achieve that so I'm seriously considering reverting to the dynohub and front light I had fitted previously.

Battery lights are too much stress and hassle worrying about being stranded in the dark. Get a hub dynamo fitted with a half decent front LED light and you can ride with peace of mind!

You are still going to need a little something extra to deal with a puncture or other mishap though. Personally, I would not rely on any single front light, dynamo or battery. I want two, in case one malfunctions. No light is 100% reliable. Two well chosen lights can be very close to 100% reliable, and only one needs to be bright enough for steady riding. The back-up must be reliable but need not be very bright.

[bgnukem]

Yes, but that's the problem. Battery bike lights are not reliable enough to rely on, and battery life often is far less than claimed. Compare with a motorist - the light are built into the car and work whenever it's being driven. A hub dynamo is the equivalent for a bike.

One of the reasons I wanted to use a battery light was to save a bit of weight, but carrying two lights and possibly spare batteries negates the weight saving. The drag of a hub dynamo IME is negligible so not an issue.

[Sweep]

Agree with Brucey. Currently have a Sigma Pava front light on my winter club run bike but have to carry a spare set of batteries as it's already tried to plunge me into darkness when the rechargeable AA cells I use ran out unexpectedly. Bought it as a get me home measure for the last hour or so of dark club runs but not even confident I can achieve that so I'm seriously considering reverting to the dynohub and front light I had fitted previously.

Battery lights are too much stress and hassle worrying about being stranded in the dark. Get a hub dynamo fitted with a half decent front LED light and you can ride with peace of mind!

Something seriously wrong with your batteries if you can't be sure of even an hour. I do a fair few all night rides with battery lights, no great problem, i use lights which use the same mount. If i should start to run out of juice (not always) i just clip another one on.

[Brucey]

re backup lights; I keep a set of backup blinkies attached to my helmet. The front blinky is used (for about 30s at a time) in constant mode whenever I go to or from my back door in the dark, i.e. whenever I ride in the dark. It also has a fairly graceful failure mode, i.e. it goes dim for a long time before the (Lithium Cr20xx) batteries run down entirely. So I'm as confident as I can be that the lamp will work well enough as a back up or to fix a puncture with if needs be. I'd be much less confident in a more powerful light that didn't get tested on a regular basis.

I have not really needed the backup lights (except for mostly optional bike tinkering) not for years. But in the distant past (before LEDs were a thing more or less) I do remember being caught out and fixing a puncture with only a hub dynamo (an old SA one with glow-worm bulbs) to provide illumination. It would have been easier with a battery light for sure but I managed; by laying the bike down and spinning the wheel there was (just) enough light to inspect the tube/tyre with, patch the tube etc. Thinking about it, it would have been a problem if the rim tape had been bad on the wheel with the hub generator, or I had needed to fiddle with the gears or something, so there is no doubt that having a back-up torch or something is much the best idea.

cheers

[andrew_s]

You are still going to need a little something extra to deal with a puncture or other mishap though. Personally, I would not rely on any single front light, dynamo or battery. I want two, in case one malfunctions. No light is 100% reliable.

I carry a Petzl Zipka for puncture mending duties, but these days there's also the near universal option of the smartphone "torch" function.

By way of an emergency front light, there's also the 1xAAA torch that lives on my keyring. I did 20 miles of country lanes on it one night, by way of experimentation, but other than blown bulbs in post-dynohub, pre-LED times, I've only ever had one dynamo front light failure (A Solidlight 1203D that decided to turn off until stationary whenever I went faster than about 10 mph, which was a bit unfortunate as I was doing 72kph/44 mph down a steep hill when it started doing it).

[andrew_s]

Agree with Brucey. Currently have a Sigma Pava front light on my winter club run bike but have to carry a spare set of batteries as it's already tried to plunge me into darkness when the rechargeable AA cells I use ran out unexpectedly.

Something seriously wrong with your batteries if you can't be sure of even an hour.

Rechargable AAs used in sets of 4 can be short lived, particularly when all charged on a single channel together.
I've had more than one new pack of 4 in which one cell didn't take a full charge to start with (tested in a 4-channel smart charger (mh-c9000) with a capacity measurement function*).
Had I used such a set in a 4xAA light, with in-light charging like the Pava, the weak cell would have run flat whilst the other 3 still had plenty of life.
That causes cell damage when the 3 good cells force current through the flat cell (reverse charging), and when next charged, either the charger will stop when the 3 reach full charge, leaving the damaged cell with a partial charge, to compound the damage to the weak cell when next used, or the charger would have carried on, trying to fully charge the weak cell, and overcharging the other 3 whilst doing so, damaging them too.

As it is, I spot the weak cell during the initial check of the pack, and give it a few extra charge/discharge cycles on its own, which usually brings it up to full capacity.


*
for each cell: fully charge, then run flat (at 500 mA usually), recharge fully, then report how many mAh the discharge phase actually gave.

[edit] The above is based on the 4 cells being charged in the light (based on the first google hit for the light).
If you charge the cells outside the light, it would be best to use a 4-channel charger (usually advertised as being able to charge odd numbers of cells, rather than just pairs)

[andrew_s]

What light gets burn time lights out there on about 200 lumens for the front. I still have built a dynamo whee and I am not likely too if I can avoid it.

The cateye volt 1700 does 15hrs. With a spate battery I can get 30hrs. That enough for a a few days in the summer. But I'll need more for race around the netherlands or lejog.

Ideally, you'd want a light that gave a dynamo-style beam, using a downward pointing LED and reflector rather than a forward pointing LED and lens, and that used bare 18650 cells (cheaper), but I'm not aware of any such light.

Having thought some more, if you are determined on a battery light, I'll suggest getting a suitable e-bike front light, and using it with one of the readily available 8.4 V 2S2P 18650 power packs that you can get for the likes of the Magicshine.
It would mean making up a suitable connector cable, or at least changing the plug on the end of the e-bike light cable, but would mean that several spare batteries were at least affordable.

As you may spot, these e-bike lights are usually converted dynamo lights, and don't give any significant amount of extra light, so you're just swapping the weight and (minimal) drag of the dynohub for the weight and luggage space for the battery packs.

Comment:
8.4 V is 2 fully charged Li-ion cells in series. During use, the voltage drops, so you'll want an e-bike light that still works with about 6.4 V (at which point they are pretty flat, but not so much so that they will be damaged).