What's the difference between these two lights?

[horizon]

I'm not sure if horizon is looking to invest in some new lighting to replace his dual SMART set up.

Well spotted gaz.

The lead acid battery had died so I was faced, once again, with a dilemma: what lights would be best for my dark 9 mile ride home?

I revisited the old thread viewtopic.php?f=1&t=73472&hilit=+smart+halogen and realised I was no further forward. I simply find it impossible to navigate between different types of light without physically using them - and at £300 a shot, that's not realistic.

However, for £7.00 I've ordered a new battery. These Smart Halogens do the job. However I still don't really know what would be the replacement for them, the next generation if you like. I could, AFAIK, go further and get a LiIon battery for them (and LED bulbs?). And I really don't want another cheap LED light (even the Cateye Opticube) taking up housespace but not up to the job.

So until I have some assurance that a £35 light is better (simply good value etc isn't enough) and I cannot afford the Exposure light, these old Smart Halogens will have to do. Humpf.

[gentlegreen]

On my commutes I find most bike lights objectionable and not fit for purpose - front and rear - but it will depend on where you ride.

In my case I have no routine need for a lamp like the first one - which appears to have no proper dipped beam.
Hopefully for £300 it at least has a handlebar button to switch it off when there's any danger of another human being being forced to look directly at it.
(I do actually also have something a bit like it, but it's only used for "signalling" - along with the car horn that is operated by a switch on the other handlebar)

An older model Cyo impressed me when I once rode several unlit miles alongside one.

My own £10 DIY dipped beam chucks a lot more light on the road (it consumes six times as much electricity ) , but probably needs to because it plonks too much directly in front and shuts down my night vision - but I suspect the spill assists me in being seen - and it frequently appears to make people mistake me for the police !

If I felt the need to buy a front lamp off the shelf it would almost certainly be a Philips - or perhaps a B&M.
In the meantime I use cheap domestic triple LED lamps that cost about £10 each - plus battery etc ...

[gaz]

So until I have some assurance that a £35 light is better (simply good value etc isn't enough) ... these old Smart Halogens will have to do. Humpf.

IME better is difficult to define, yet alone achieve. Frankly even beam shots can only show you so much, it isn't until you ride your regular route that you'll know if one lamp is better than another.

IMO you would be impressed with how a Philips Saferide 80Lux compares in terms of beam shape and brightness; even that doesn't necessarily make it better. I don't think you'd be impressed by the 40Lux version (you certainly wouldn't if you'd already seen the 80Lux ); although that probably does make it worse.

[mjr]

http://swhs.home.xs4all.nl/fiets/tests/ ... ex_en.html says about the Ixon "Inferior light beam (less light, narrower beam, far smaller reach), but longer runtime" (compared to a Saferide 80) and, more worryingly, about Exposure the company "I was interested in seeing how much light it gives, but I had no reply to emails to them, so I'm not going to bother."

[Bicycler]

That was the 40 lux version. The newer premiums in B+Ms range seem to be getting more positive reviews. With Philips having now left the cycle lighting market they are left with little competition at the road-specific end of the market

[beardy]

but longer runtime

Repeating myself here the runtime is so much greater with the Ixon, The Phillips is too short for an Audax rider on full power. I can get 6 hours out of an IQ with Eneloop XXs or 30 hours on low power.
I am not sure how the Phillips lasts on its lower power settings.

I find the Ixon IQ 40 Lux a good enough light for riding in the total dark and on hilly and twisty lanes, I can up the lighting with extra or more powerful lights (which I already have) but really feel no need to do so. The Premium that I have is a better lamp but I dont mind going out with just the ordinary IQ and even then I have it on low power a lot of the time.

Sometimes I wish that the Cyo could be turned down a bit and I am beginning to feel that you miss something when you have such powerful lights!!!

[WOOLIFERKINS]

The Lumen is a measure of light emitted.
Lux is the level of illumination at a point. 40 Lux represents 40 lumens per square metre. This will probably be the average illumination over the beam pattern at a specific distance and angle.
Neither description really gives a proper idea of how these lights will operate in practice. There is no indication of the beam spread angle.
If say, your 2400lm light gave a 1 square metre spread at a distance of 1 metre that would be (roughly) 2400lux. At 2m distance it would be 600 lux (inverse square law) I would guess that this light may well be superior.

B&M measure their lumen around a point 10m in front of the bike in accordance with the current German lighting reg's.

http://www.bumm.de/innovationoriginal/n ... htung.html

[horizon]

In some ways I am reassured by the replies. I'm getting the impression that the dazzlingly bright torch lights may well have too narrow a beam and that expensive lights (£300 +) still have quite short run times on high beam (2 hours?). Given that my Smart Halogens are a big step up from two LED lights (one of them a Cateye Opticube) operating together, I feel that I've a got a cheap but reasonable lighting set up (they cost me about £15.00).

[andrew_s]

I am not sure how the Phillips lasts on its lower power settings....
Sometimes I wish that the Cyo could be turned down a bit and I am beginning to feel that you miss something when you have such powerful lights!!!

The Philips lasts about 8 hours on low, using the supplied batteries, so presumably a bit more on Eneloop XX.
Compared to the Ixon premium, "low" is quite a bit brighter, and is fine for most riding on unlit country lanes. You'd only really need high for fast downhills.

I agree that after a certain point, brighter just means that your eyes adjust to the extra light, and you don't see any extra road, just less of the surrounding landscape (which makes route finding more awkward, unless you use GPS for every last ride). That's especially true of off road lights, which tend to light up the near ground so much that you can end up seeing less far than with a less bright light.
It would seem that B+M also took this view, as the "Premium" versions aren't all that much brighter than the older versions, and the extra light has mostly been used to light up a larger (wider) area.
Where more power does come in handy is on wet roads, where most light just glances forwards off the water rather than being reflected back to your eyes.

[andrew_s]

I feel that I've a got a cheap but reasonable lighting set up (they cost me about £15.00).

Given the new battery, your Smarts are just as good as they ever were, and not getting onto the "more light" bandwagon at least works out cheaper.
Probably the biggest difference between the Smarts and a similary powerful LED set is that you can't usefully run halogens at less than full power, so your only option for a longer run-time is to run on one light rather than two (assuming that's possible).

[horizon]

Given the new battery, your Smarts are just as good as they ever were, and not getting onto the "more light" bandwagon at least works out cheaper.

The halogens presumably fit somewhere between a Cateye Opticube (and other similar LED lights) and the very expensive £300+ lights. The trouble is, I don't know exactly where. The halogens crucially take me from struggling to see my way and over a threshold into "I can now get home!". Whatever the very expensive lights do, they cannot improve much on that as I have what I want. So yes, saving money is important but I would love to know what I am saving it on.

I have to admit that what I have in mind is a fairly particular requirement: nine miles of completely dark and overgrown, very narrow, twisty lanes with appalling surfaces and sharp, sudden downhill sections. A high intensity, short-run light is ideal for this.

[tim-b]

Hi

My back up lamp is a Cateye Opticube (HL-EL320)

It's a good back up but its lighting doesn't compare to more modern and more powerful LED lamps and I never found it suitable for country-lane-darkness at higher speeds

You don't have to spend £300 to improve on it, but I am at a loss to recommend something as my current lamp isn't made now

Regards
tim-b

[Vantage]

In some ways I am reassured by the replies. I'm getting the impression that the dazzlingly bright torch lights may well have too narrow a beam and that expensive lights (£300 +) still have quite short run times on high beam (2 hours?).

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B007 ... UTF8&psc=1
http://www.amazon.co.uk/SEEN-ANGLE-DIFF ... 6V7YZ6XCXD

It has lit up both lanes of an unlit country road enough for me to feel safe at 40mph on the bends at full beam.
Low beam easily lasts in excess of 5 hours and is enough for 20mph on an unlit cycle track with a 2' drop to a river on one side.
In two years of owning it I have had NO complaints of dazzling other than "That's a seriously bright light mate" from a bunch of kids hanging around. No deaths of fellow cyclists or motons that I know of have resulted from its use. The battery has not exploded killing every living thing for 5 square miles and the only fault it ever had was the LED overheated and burnt itself out. LED's on any light become warm. C&B Seen replaced it without question under warranty in less than 5 days.
I was impressed by how nice my new B&M dyno light was, but not nearly as impressed as I was when I first fired up the Cree.

[horizon]

I'm wondering if this light would answer the criticisms expressed in this thread ( viewtopic.php?f=1&t=91894&start=15 ) regarding high intensity Cree lights from China. The main criticisms seemed to be:

1. Dazzling other road users (fixed by having a diffuser lens as you have done)
2. Unreliability (this is a more expensive light - £50 rather than £15 - and so may be better built)
3. Li-Ion batteries catching fire (perhaps you are paying for a better battery?)

This is probably the light I might have chosen - something in between a low cost but useful LED and the hyper-expensive off road lights. I've still no real idea as to how it actually compares but it looks like it would do the job that i need it to, and responsibly as well.

[John1054]

http://www.peterwhitecycles.com/lightingsystems.htm
This is an American web-site which shows various light outputs viewed in the same position on the owner's drive - might help a bit in this discussion?