Finally decided to sort out my lights and bought a1200 lumen Gloworm X2 light from Neninja for £130, included a £20 discount which is available until the 15th usinging code GLOWORM20.

Get them here

Arrived within 48h of order which was great. Very small form factor and full range of fittings for both bar and helmet mount. Went out for a ride last night and used the helmet mount, pleasingly I didn’t notice any extra weight at all but no surprise as it’s very small.The light has several modes and out the box it comes ready for riding in trail mode. First impression was wide beam that extends well up the trail, very clean without any discernible hot spot. I switched between low and high for climbing / trail / descending and after a two hours ride the battery still showed full.

Not quite as bright as a friends big Exposure, but better spread and easily bright enough. Overall very pleased, well packaged and extremely proficient little unit. Will update as I go. If you’re looking for a new unit I can highly recommend and if you have an questions let me know.

What he said. I’d also recommend if you are looking at this price range or above.

very polished review, you should write press releases. any shots of beam pattern from your ride?

Was out with ASK1974 last night and was really impressed with the gloworm. Long throw of light with a nice and wide profile. I’d say the perfect helmet light!

Always reckoned ASK1974 should write for magazines. You should see some of his write ups on actual rides, frigging marvelous!

Will see if we can remember to take comparison shots next time.
Three of us out last night with

1 x Gloworm
1 x Exposure MaxD
1 x Exposure Joystick
1 x High end Magicshine (not sure which one, but it has a cluster of 3 small lights).

All very different beam profiles.

I also had my first ride on my gloworm last night, perfect helmet light IMO due to its low profile and weight. Decent throw and spread of light, I was very impressed with mine. Delivery was really quick too, ordered thurs night and it was delivered sat morning. Satisfied customer so far : )

Cheers rOcKeTdOg and thanks Variflex, very kind. Must start up those post ride reviews again…

I’ll get my camera out and take some shots as soon as I can, probably not much point trying to do it with a blackberry on the trail!

Sorry to hijack the thread but has anyone tried one of these?.

hopster – Member

Sorry to hijack the thread but has anyone tried one of these?.

I have one of these.

Bought just before MM this year.

Its a great little lamp – good enough spread of light for my needs – I run mine bar mounted.

Not experiencing the full run time in Hi mode but that said I could probably run it 100% of the time in Medium.

hopster – yes i’ve just received my mtbbatteries ‘V2’ XML (next day delivery) and did a first ride last night.

It has bar and helmet mounts – i went for bar last night just to get out of the door quickly!. Unit is small and looks and feels robust. The light throw on full is impressive. There is a definite centre to the light then a dimmer, but usable wider spread. Because of the massive depth, i could attack all the straighter fast sections of trail full on, but when it got twisty, i realised that helmet mounting may be better, but again it didn’t really hold me back. I only rode for 1.5hrs so didn’t test the 3hrs on full battery capacity.

I’ll get it on the helmet for the next ride. Also, my wife took it out a 5am this morning for a road ride and reported it to be excellent on the road. So far so good, but helmet mounted for mtb use I suspect.

Thanks for the reviews guys. I was thinking of getting one for the winter road bike so I didn’t have to keep swapping it over. What’s the weatherproofing like on the cables etc..?

hopster – cable weatherproofing – not tested yet, but looks reasonable. I’ll find out soon!

It will be good on the road as the throw is great -which for me gets over the problem of running older underpowered mtb flood type lights on the road- just not enough depth for the increased speed.

The glow worm looks well sealed. Grommet into the main light unit and battery. Battery case looks waterproof but has not been tried. Cable plugs look similar to magicshine type and seem secure and waterproof.

Head unit looks well sealed.

Obviously I’ll only find out how good it is after a winters riding but there is nothing that would give me concern (unlike cheaper magic shines that I have seen and used).

It has some useful settings for commuting such as flash and 100 and 300 lumens that give much longer battery life than blinding people with the full 1200 and charging everyday.

@ Hopster – Mine was fine for a single night lap at MM with no issues – I think that should demonstrate that the unit is well sealed!

Its amazing how lights have advanced in recent years due to LED’s I remember buying some nightsun lights in late 80’s early 90’s from NTI (chipps will remember them) and being amazed how bright they were but now the tech is stunning for the money.

Thanks again for the reviews, really helpful.

Hopster, this video of the Gloworm X2 dunked in water was quite persuasive…

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNRVJHLxs7M[/video]

I’ve just ordered one to take advantage of the discount ……..will try it at the weekend hopefully

Cool, I’m sure you’ll be impressed. I’m off to Swinley tonight for my first night ride in the forest, the idea of riding Labyrinth in the dark gives me goose bumps. Can’t wait, riding with a couple of STW’ers, perfect weather and perfect trails…

😀

Thanks for the positive feedback folks, it’s appreciated. Gloworm make a quality light that will hopefully challenge the likes of Hope and Exposure.

I’ve had some cracking feedback from customers and a couple have been so happy with theirs they’ve ordered another for a family member.

singlecrack – you order is being packed now and will be with you tomorrow.

Neninja, really impressed and thanks for such prompt delivery. One comment though. It might be a batch issue but two of the little square [Velcro] bits to allow the switch to stick to my helmet both failed. The sticky backing came free. No big issue as I’ve super glued one of them back on but thought you might want to know.

One (tiny weeny) blemish on what is an excellent product.

Just received mine, not used it yet but the light itself is impressively tiny!

Does anyone have any tips for attaching the helmet mount? With just a velcro strap it seems like it is very wobbly?

I used tie wraps instead of the velcro, mine is staying as a semi permanent fixture on a helmet so thought the tie wraps would be better, i use one going across from left to right and another from the back slot in the mount securing in between vents – guess it depends on the placement of your vents. Mine is on solid.
As with ask1974 my square velcro patch also came unstuck but no great shakes as it came unstuck at home so just glued it back on.

Neninja what is your website. I know you are not meant to advertise on here. But I an not sure which is your site

Thanks for letting me know about the velcro patches. Sorry about that, I’ll pass your comments back to the factory.

I’ve got some pretty strong self adhesive velcro here and will post you all some that you can cut to the size you require for your bar or helmet to mount the remote switch.

pypdjl –
Does anyone have any tips for attaching the helmet mount? With just a velcro strap it seems like it is very wobbly?

You might find you can do it up tighter if you either trim the velcro strap a little shorter to suit your helmet or wrap the excess a few times round one part of the helmet and then pull the other end tight to join it. I guess it depends on the helmet. I can get mine totally solid doing either of the above.

grahamt1980 – it’s ok I do have paid advertising on here – there’s often a Gloworm ad that appears on the right hand side of the forum.

ask1974 posted a link in the very first post of this thread

HERE

Grahamt, here you go…

Link to Gloworm X2 on Neninja’s website

Pypdjl, I used the Velco tie and it was a firm fit. Probably depends on the shape and style of your helmet though, I removed the light from the bracket so I could apply force from both sides and get the fit nice and tight. Will probably move to cable ties now I’m happy that a helmet mount is ideal.

Cool thank you for the link will see about that later

I’m interested in how well the head strap works. Has anyone used it?

edit: Oh and also, is the flash mode full power or is that controllable? I don’t like blinding people with it.

lemonysam – The flash mode is just over 50% power – about 700 lumens.

The headstrap works well with the battery in a back pack or belt mounted (it has a belt slot on the battery pack). Gloworm sponsor several adventure racers (Team Macpac/GirlsonTop and Sia Svendsen) who use the X2 on the headstrap.

There’s a review from one of them here by Sia who is one of their sponsored racers –
http://www.facebook.com/glowormlites/posts/453405474684153

Any chance of a photo or two of the headstrap and the mountin bracket?

This person on MTBR has taken a few pictures –
http://gallery.mtbr.com/showgallery.php/ppuser/345620/cat/500

It utilises the existing helmet mount which has a soft rubber back to it.

Cheers for the replies, will have another go with the velcro, failing that cable ties it is.

Cheers Neninja, What I can’t quite see from that is how the straps thread through the mount. Do you have to completely unthread the adjusters or is there a more straightforward way?

There are 3 slots on the mount – you thread the over the top strap into one and secure it. The round the head strap threads through the 2 vertical slots and is secured through the back plate.

It only takes a few minutes mount it. If you swap between helmet and headstrap frequently I’m sure I could arrange an extra helmet mount so that you would just need to undo the small hex bolt to switch from one to the other.

Cheers for that. I’ll have a think…

Bloody ‘ell …that thing is small………….on charge now ….try it out tonight ..
Looks very well made ……..

is it a similar size to a Lupine Piko – looks very similar design?

There are visual similarities between the X2 and the Piko which are hard to avoid if you are creating a compact twin XM-L light.

The Gloworm is slightly larger than the Piko and has more fins to aid managing heat more effectively allowing the Gloworm to work it’s XM-L’s harder (450 more lumens than the Piko).

The X2 has helmet and handlebar mounts and a remote switch. Plus the optics in the Gloworm are interchangeable so you can customise the beam pattern to suit your needs – Spot/Flood (standard setup), Spot/Spot or Flood/Flood.

I had a good three hour ride around Swinley on Wednesday with my new Gloworm X2. Really interesting. We set out at dusk (7pm) and rode into darkness so I started on the low setting. After a while we rode through a section of tight, dark woods along twisting singletrack and I was thinking wow this light’s great, didn’t realise until we were spat out back on to the fire track that I was still on low!

The switch made it really easy to use the light effectively. I spent most of the time on high just switching to low when climbing. Big, wide spread of even light. On the last section back to the car two of our team lost there lights with dead batteries, to be fair they were running older lights but when I lifted the battery I still had 80%.

😀

I did my first proper ride with it last night and noticed the same. I didn’t need the high setting which means good things for battery life. Boost would come in handy if the riding was harder.

Neninja, really impressed and thanks for such prompt delivery. One comment though. It might be a batch issue but two of the little square [Velcro] bits to allow the switch to stick to my helmet both failed. The sticky backing came free. No big issue as I’ve super glued one of them back on but thought you might want to know.

We have sourced some new velcro spots which are slightly larger and have a much more powerful adhesive. This should make securing the remote easier and they certainly shouldn’t come off if applied to a clean non-greasy surface.

I will be post some out to everyone who has received a light and will include them in future orders.