Nice one, cheers for that.

Can you update the thread with how the battery life is when you’ve used it a few times?

You’ve got this completely the wrong way round. You’ve changed a good light with a bad battery for another probably good light with a probably crap battery. Just buy a new battery for your old lamp, from MTBbatteries.co.uk! Or, if you like the new lamp, buy a replacement battery for that.

The lamp and the battery aren’t inseperable parts of a whole, you know.

1000-lumens-v-500-lumens

There you go, I fixed the title from you.

I can’t do beam shots but this light is brighter than my magicshine 872, which is brighter than my solar storm which is just a bit brighter than my mk 10 joystick.

On your own, slowly, on trails you know…..maybe.

I started out night riding with a 2.4w halogen light…

I was slow though 😉

My first set came with a 2.4W and a 10W (6v halogen with a lead acid battery!)

I upgraded the 2.4W bulb to a 10W bulb, got about 2-3hrs run time – just enough to ride to the clubhouse, get a ride in, and back to my student halls. Lights were off at every stop and full power was used sparingly!

I recently rode some techy trails at night with a 400 lumen (allegedly) head torch and 850 lumen (from a company I trust) bar light, and didn’t feel at any particular disadvantage. Previously with 850 on the bars I have had to ease off a bit (mainly around tight corners).

I bought one of the 10,000 lumen 9 cree LED ones for a punt, think it cost about £35 from a UK seller.

so far, having used it about a dozen times, the battery hasn’t caught fire, and I get over 2.5 hours out of it, which is great for what I need.

I have a ‘1000’ lumen magicshine-a-like, a Gloworm X2 and a home made triple Cree in a lumicycle halogen can thing too.

so, gladly, it’s much brighter than the magicshinealike, and different to the other two. It’s difficult to compare as the gloworm spreads light in a much more useful way, gives plenty of spot and a nice even spread across the ground. The triple cree was setup as more of a spot helmet light, to run alongside the X2, or the MS-alike as a bar, so has far better penetration than any light.

However, I’d say that the cheapy light is a bit brighter than the X2, but doesn’t quite push the power to the distance like the X2. Actual light hitting the distance may be the same, or more, but the huge amount of light on the ground means that the central spot looks darker.

bargain for £30 though.

Although actually you can probably get away with a bit less. TBH I’d rather have a reliable weaker light than a unreliable brighter one.

Amazing how far things have come though, there was an article by Brant back in MBUK in about 1990 of them going up Snowden with Petzel Headtorches and those crappy Everready bike lights 😯

yeah it is, my first nightriding light back in about 1993 was a 50W halogen MR11 in a bit of plumbing pipe hooked up to a 4Ah SLA battery in a modified bottle cage.

it was all kinds of awesome, until the police were called as they thought there were motorbikes on the Malverns. Apparenly quite visible..

Get a decent battery pack (mtb batteries, torchy, etc) and you’ve got the best of both worlds.

This +1 again.

4x Samsung 18650 cells are about £35 (which are good enough to drive MTB lights), Panasonic about £50 (they’re better, but not really in any usefull way for MTB lights) on Amazon. If you’re buying lights for much less than that then the batteries are going to be poor.

it was all kinds of awesome, until the police were called as they thought there were motorbikes on the Malverns. Apparenly quite visible.. The scary thing is, the brighter LED lights are 30W (or more) now! Funny what you get used to.

On the subject, in mag. 101, there is a review of lights.
One is £700+. Ok, it is a comparison, so get the best in to see what it’s like against the others.
But, the lowest is £55 – surely Chipps reads the threads here, and sees lights regularly recommended here at £35 or less?
The majority of the tested group was over £200 – come on, get real, how many people actually buy these?
Maybe set your bar a little lower ST, and review some of the cheaper stuff that real people buy?

AFAIK they review what they are sent, rather than scouring the market. Else they’d end up with an awful lot of lights, gilets, wide rimmed wheelsets etc etc knocking about. Which doesn’t sound terrible to me 🙂

There’s probably a pretty even spread of expensive v cheap lights in the group I ride with. The less regular riders tend to the cheaper, for obvious reasons. Most of us regulars have at least two lights as well. But then we’re out every Thursday of the year as a group, plus commuting and stuff, so most of us aimed for something reliable, and that costs a bit more.

I’m probably fairly representative with an old Hope 4* bar light and a far cheaper, equally powerful helmet light.

So, to answer your question, plenty of us pay for decent lights. Reliability; decent bar/helmet mounts that don’t need to be cobbled together and don’t wobble; decent back-up – all worth it.

*My Hope is 6 years old now, it cost me £250. It doesn’t take a genius to do the maths. 😉

My magicshine (mj808?) is nearly 6 years old and cost me £20. I’d say that’s good value for money.

I’ve decided I’d like to try a helmet light, so I’ve bought one of these off Torchy to see how I get on – crazily I’m going to make a helmet mount for it! It may wobble, or then again, it may not; only time will tell…….

tinas – that’s a good article then – “Cheap Chinese lights – are they any good/safe/reliable/etc?”

Or is the mag just there to publicise products that (mainly UK) distributors want to sell to us? I hope not because for me, that’s what the lesser mtb mags already do.

I have a feeling that might be a logic fail 😉

Well it comes down to who you’re producing the mag for – if it’s for the readers’ best interests then the advertisers’ views shouldn’t really matter.

But then I guess they’re running a business and probably have to apply an element of pragmatism to what they do.

Advertising your direct competitor is somewhat different in my view and besides, I disagree that MTBR forums are more useful…