Afternoon all,

Picked up a Gemini Titan recently and used it in anger for the first time on my pre-dawn blast around the local woods this morning. The output is bonkers, arguably more than you’d ever need, however, the woods are super twisty and despite their best efforts, Gemini clearly haven’t worked out how to bend light around corners. I have a Lezyne commuter helmet light but at 400ish lumens I don’t think it’ll be man enough for the job and the mount is on another helmet.

Evans have 10% off the already discounted Exposure Diablo Mk7 making it sub £150 – is this worth the extra over the Joystick and if so, is the Mk8 worth £30 more than the Mk7?

Any other options to consider for an all in one light which I assume would be better with a tighter beam to complement the wide-ish spread of the Titan?

Cheers

Bump..

Ituo Wiz20?
MTBR forums and STW seem suitably impressed.

I’m looking at one to compliment my XP2 which seems excellent so far and very well built.

Haven’t heard of those before – not a bit big for helmet mounting maybe?

I would go for a Gemini Duo. Have been using mine as a helmet light for a couple of years. In fact it was so good I didn’t use anything else until recently as it was pointless using most bar lights (Chinese type) as they just didn’t make any difference whatsoever. I now have a Hope on the bars and the Gemini still on helmet and it works perfectly together. Seamless light overlap and more light than you could ever want on full chat.

I’d looked at the duo but didn’t really want a separate battery pack as I don’t normally wear a pack on pre-dawn or night rides as they’re shorter. Although I wonder if I could run the Titan and Duo off the same battery pack with a splitter maybe (although unsure I fancy being wired onto the bike!

hughjayteens – Member

Afternoon all,

Picked up a Gemini Titan recently and used it in anger for the first time on my pre-dawn blast around the local woods this morning. The output is bonkers, arguably more than you’d ever need, however, the woods are super twisty and despite their best efforts, Gemini clearly haven’t worked out how to bend light around corners. I have a Lezyne commuter helmet light but at 400ish lumens I don’t think it’ll be man enough for the job and the mount is on another helmet.

Evans have 10% off the already discounted Exposure Diablo Mk7 making it sub £150 – is this worth the extra over the Joystick and if so, is the Mk8 worth £30 more than the Mk7?

Any other options to consider for an all in one light which I assume would be better with a tighter beam to complement the wide-ish spread of the Titan?

Your first consideration needs to be to get a complementary light with the same tint as your Gemini Titan. I looked on the Gemini website but it doesn’t specify the tint of the LEDs used in the light but maybe it’s somewhere in the documentation. Failing that you could contact Gemini support/customer service.

I have Wiz20 that I use bar mounted. I know some people have helmet mounted it but I can’t think why, it’s much too unwieldy really to use as a helmet light.

Personally, even though you don’t fancy a separate battery pack I would be looking at something like the Gemini Duo. I run a very similar light on my helmet with a 2-cell battery pack mounted at the back and it is fine. For longer run times you could use a 4-cell pack mounted in backpack or pocket.

I don’t know if the Duo has replaceable optics or which ones it comes with but you really need a bit of throw on the helmet to complement such a powerful bar light. Alternatives to the Duo which are able to have tighter (10 degree) optics are the Ituo XP2 or the Gloworm X2. Both of which are twin XM-L lights similar in spec to the Gemini Duo.

You might want to look on the MTBR – Lights and Night Riding forum. There’s lots of info and tests of all these lights and more on there.

Cheers – I’ll take a look there.

Do think I prefer the idea of an all in one unit though as I don’t need mega power with the Titan, just something to help in the twisty bits!

hughjayteens – Member

Cheers – I’ll take a look there.

Do think I prefer the idea of an all in one unit though as I don’t need mega power with the Titan, just something to help in the twisty bits!

Quite honestly, even if you run the Titan on medium @ 2400 lumens it’s going to swamp the helmet light at anything less than about 1000 lumens and make it pointless. Your eyes will adjust to the brightness of the Titan and anything less on the helmet won’t even register.

Why would you spend so much on the bar light and skimp on the helmet light? You would have been better off thinking things through and buying a pair of complimentary lights.

Frankly, do yourself a favour and buy a decent helmet light and don’t waste your money on anything less than a double XM-L.

TBH, the power of the Titan was one of the reasons I was looking at the Exposure Diablo as that is 1400 lumens on max power and a very compact unit for it’s brightness. It costs more than a 2 cell Duo, so it was nothing to do with scrimping, I just liked the idea of a powerful all in one, lightweight unit.

The Duo can also share the wireless control of the Titan so it would make a nice package I guess.

The Diablo makes more sense if you do want an all in one light. I would suggest if you have (or can borrow) a torch of similar size to try that on your helmet for a ride to see if you like that or not. The beam will be unimportant but it shold give you some idea if the all in one is going to work for you or not before you splash the cash.

I have a Diablo Mk7, it’s a very impressive light

But on max power it only last an hour, and your bar light is so powerful that it’ll probably still overpower the Diablo on anything less than max output

Am I missing the point here?- I use my helmet light to get a view of the trail if the bike is pointing in another direction- for example as the OP says in windy singletrack- therefore its not competing with the main light but just needs to give enough visibility until the bike straightens up

pop larkin – Member

Am I missing the point here?- I use my helmet light to get a view of the trail if the bike is pointing in another direction- for example as the OP says in windy singletrack- therefore its not competing with the main light but just needs to give enough visibility until the bike straightens up

The point is that if the bar light is very bright your eyes will tend to adjust to that level of light. If the helmet light is much less powerful then your eyes won’t tend to register that light beam so well. It’s much better to have two reasonably equally balanced lights rather than one very bright and one less so.

One caveat to this is most people tend to favour a more floody light on the bars to more throw on the helmet light. The floody light will actually appear less intense than the throwy light. Therefore if for instance you decided you wanted say 4000 lumens in total a reasonable combo might be 2500 lumens flood on the bars and 1500 lumens throw on the helmet.

This is why people need to think about their total light requirements and how the are going achieve that before jumping in and buying one light or another.

After a little experiment this morning, I think forzafkawi has a point. I stuck on my 450lumen Lezyne commuter helmet light which I used to use alongside my Magicshine bar light without issue. As he says, it was almost useless unless I had the Titan on the lowest power setting, and even then it wasn’t much use, even on the super tight bits.

Am sure a Diablo would be fine on full power but 1 hour runtime may not be enough unless I make the effort to drop the popper or switch it off when its not needed. Maybe a Duo with 2 cell battery on the back of the helmet to balance it out may be the best option.

hughjayteens – Member

After a little experiment this morning, I think forzafkawi has a point. I stuck on my 450lumen Lezyne commuter helmet light which I used to use alongside my Magicshine bar light without issue. As he says, it was almost useless unless I had the Titan on the lowest power setting, and even then it wasn’t much use, even on the super tight bits.

Am sure a Diablo would be fine on full power but 1 hour runtime may not be enough unless I make the effort to drop the popper or switch it off when its not needed. Maybe a Duo with 2 cell battery on the back of the helmet to balance it out may be the best option.

I saw your posts on MTBR – Lights and Night Riding forum. If you do decide to go for the Duo, Gemini are claiming 1h30m for the light with a 2-cell 2600 mAh battery pack which (if correct) is not bad in my opinion for a twin XM-L2 1500 lumen light. If you need any more runtime you could always get a 3400mAh battery pack which could well give you another 30 minutes or so. Also, to extend the run time you could step the light down on slower, climbing sections of the ride.

I’ve just ordered a 2 cell duo as I am too impatient to spend any more time thinking about it! My Giro lid has a gopro mount and I’ve seen a suitable mount so I will see how I get on with that. I’ll try it with separate control switches at first (one either side, they’re very neat and easy to operate) and switch the helmet light down or off when not needed. Most pre-dawn rides are under an hour so the battery will be fine for those on full, and evening ones only 2 hours ish so again, should be fine if I am careful.

Thanks for all the input – I’ll report back once I’ve tried it.

I ended up sending the Duo back as it was a total faff to fit and remove on my helmet with the MIPS liner. Went for an Exposure Axis Mk4 – 1000 lumens. Tested this morning and it works really well with the Titan as long as the Axis is on full power and the Titan on low or medium (which is still plenty of light).

First Exposure product and very impressed by the lightweight, helmet mount and overall quality.