At the moment I have two ebay SolarStorm X3s on my handlebars. They’re ok, and the battery life is sufficient (I tend to put them on full on a trail and on low for fireroad climbs etc).

But they’re not great. I wonder how much better my life would be with a £380 Exposure Six Pack in it. Would it be a huge difference, or just an incremental improvement?

Also, they’re mucho faff. Ziptieing two battery packs to my downtube (a total of 8 zipties needed), and routing the wires up to the lights. With extra rubber under them the lights kinda stay pointing the right way, but it takes a bit of experimentation each ride. And then of course it all has to come off when I clean the bike when I get home.

I like the idea of a single unit that bolts into place and has a QR and will always be pointing the right way.

Are there other single-unit QR-mounted options I should consider, if not the Exposure?

I also have a cheap CREE helmet light and am also considering a Diablo or similar to replace that.

I run a Hope R4 and an exposure Joystick. R4 on bars, joystick on noggin.

I had load of grief from solarstorms, and life was too short. If you have the cash then JFDI

£295 gets you a more powerful wireless light from Four4th.

https://four4th.co.uk/products/lights/rameses-with-white-leds/

That’s a big jump from solarstorms to exposure – you’ll save a bit of money if you look at http://www.mtbbatteries.co.uk, gloworm lights, candbseen etc . I’ve got a gloworm XS on the bars and a joystick on the helmet – it’s a great combination but TBH my Gloworm x2 more than enough

I’ve recently upgraded to a six pack and I have to say I’m loving it. I never liked the faff of separate lights and batteries. I found the wires to be a pain and have had to have some replaced before due to wear and tear on the connections. Based upon that I wanted to go with an “all-in” design and it’s much better.

The reflex setting works well too. I stick it on low for on road and chuck it in high as soon as I go off road. The automatically adjusting of the brightness based upon speed and descent sort of just works. I stacked it quite hard recently as well and it survived that very well so seem to be built to last.

It’s also as bright as you’ll ever need on full power.

What did you have before Painey, and how much brighter would you say the 6pack is? It’s hard to know how bright my solarstorms are, the ebay sellers obviously fib, but in theory with 3 CREE leds in it each light should be about 3000 lumen, which means two of them should be about 6000 lumen… The 6pack is “only” 3600 (4750 in reflex mode) but I’m assuming it’ll actually look a lot brighter… am I being naieve?

How long do you night ride for?

If under 2hrs, the Exposure Toro is perfect for a bar mounted light and much cheaper (plus a bit lighter).

If you’re using a helmet light as well, you won’t need more lumens.

2.5 hours typically, but only thirty minutes of that (tops) needs to be on full power. The toro is obviously cheaper and the run time would be fine, but I’d be sad not to have the extra lumens…

Just paid under £100 for an Exposure Axis 4 (helmet light) from Wiggle (using an on-line code to get a tenner off). Waiting on delivery but from what I’ve heard these are excellent helmet lights.

You can get lights on Bike To Work btw……. 😉

Here’s a light comparison test

Not all models obviously but the Exposure models are listed.

Just bought a Diablo from the shop – they didn’t have any Six Packs in but have one on order now. I’m wondering if it might end up being too bright compared to the Diablo on my head though, maybe a MaxxD is a better bet? Who knows 🙂

Most my riding has moved ovr to nightime and so after years of chinese stuff, then four4th (which is good and about 3000 reported lumens but burn times are poor) I just bought a load of exposures for my road and mountain bikes.
Road, strada 1200 is amazing. I also got an axis for the helmet but its not needed but is an ace ‘its just a bit dark’ light for heading out early morning etc. Much better than a joystick.
Mountain, diablo on helmet is fine but to be honest the axis would have done so could have saved some money there. On the bars I was undecided between a 6 pack and MaxxD so after trying both its the MaxxD for me. The 6 pack is insanely bright but quite a narrow beam, loads of straight line light but how often do you need that. The MaxxD at 2500 lumens is way brighter than my four4th was and has ace illumination to the sides, far better for whizing around with.
After some sage advice on here i stoped trying to go for lumens and went for beam pattern, and the MaxxD is great.
Also, no battery or wires like you desire, best thing ever. In reality it saves you nothing in set up compared to getting gear together for a ride, but it just feels so much less like you have lashed a load of stuff to your bike.

I had a solarstorm X2. Which worked perfectly well but is not a patch on the 6-pack for output. The thing is, it’s the way the light disperses. It throws light miles down the trail in a very usable manner. You can easily light up a football pitch with it.

Hope R8. Used on the lowest 2 settings most of the time but so good when you really need to see well ahead. Brilliant beam pattern.

I’d love to have fancy expensive lights – especially if it meant no external batteries. That said, I’m fairly new to night riding and am amazed for. It much has money how good the light is from my current setup.

Lasts night I had a Brite-R Duo 2 on the bars and a brite-r selector on my helmet – total cost around £35 from amazon. The duo 2 had a rubbish mount, but I managed to do a bit of adapting with the universal mount that came with the selector so it fits the duo 2 and it’s rock solid on the bars now.

At the moment I’ve got the battery for the bar light in a water bottle tool carrier and the battery for the helmet light on my helmet. Bit heavy up there but I forgot to take a bag.

Have also got a Torchy bk 6ix which is meant to be higher lumen output than the duo 2 but I’d say the light is marginally less useable than the duo 2 as it’s a very bluey cold light.

I have a Maxx D and Diablo combo and honestly don’t think I would ever need anything else. They honestly almost make it look like daylight in front of you.

I’ve just picked up the mt-1600 from torchy off eBay.

Astounding light, best off road light I’ve owned. Really good beam. Great build quality.

Just about light enough to be a helmet light but I’ve not tried it there.

commander – it seems odd that the MaxxD and the Six Pack would have significantly different beam patterns – hopefully I won’t be disappointed with the latter when it arrives!

I have a few lights and was debating the other day which combination will be best for the Kielder Chiller 24 hour race in Feb ’18 so I was comparing them down my drive. The 6 pack just lights up everything, so much brighter, straight down the trail and peripherally. Gloworm X2 with 1 spot and 1 diffuser lens more than adequate. Magicshine Eagle M2 close to the Gloworm but a warmer colour, Solastorm X2 bright but too spotty compared to other two. I’d agree that having the whole trail lit as opposed to just whats in front of you makes a massive difference and reduces eye strain loads. Conclusion was to run all together and have someone follow me with a generator and spare batteries!!.

Downhiller, Im sure you wont be dissapointed, just depends what you want. Its definately a different beam pattern, I even mailed Exposure as I was surprised how different and they (always helpful) replied to confirm the 6 pack is more spotty to put more throw down the trail, as it has a different LED configuration but also not a difuser on the bottom LED like the MaxxD. If you look at the two lights you can see the difference in both the LED and the actual glass, explaining the different pattern of each. For me I wanted periphial and evenness so the MaxxD suits, but it you are hooning it down technical trails (I dont, most my night riding is single speed fully rigid) then the 6 pack is probably better. Used to be it was easy to get a demo Exposure but seems harder these days, the baem comparison engine on the Road cc website is ace and accurate, gives very good images of what the beams are like and you can put two side by side to compare.

That four4th light looks like it came out of a cracker

Thanks commander, I wouldn’t have guessed that they’re actually different, but with more light it makes sense to change the optics to throw it further down the trail. As you can probably guess from my username I don’t like to hang around when I get to something with any gradient, so while I’m sure I’d have been happy with a Maxx-D I’m confident I’ll be happy with a Six Pack too. I did compare them on the road.cc thing before I committed to buying; what amuses me most is how they both compare to the Diablo that I bought last week, which frankly is pretty much bright enough to ride by without any other light. Looking forward to setting some trees on fire tomorrow night 🙂

For reliability eliminating the cables makes Exposure great.

My new Hope R4+ is excellent and the Hope velcro elastic fastener for the battery faff free and reliable.

Both offer great quality and back up.

I have some Nightfighter Chinese lights that are good, but the batteries were junk and were replaced with MTB Batteries ones that have lasted very well.

Whatever other people’s experience may be with Chinese lights, mine tells me they are not as good, safe or reliable, but they are cheap.

That four4th light looks like it came out of a cracker

Yeah it looks a bit odd but the performance and build quality of their lights is fantastic so I wouldn’t let that stop me buying one. My Four4th Helmet light is 9 years old this winter and still going strong.

I got some Lumicycle years ago and upgraded to the Led head unit, they have been great and very bright.

Exposure FTW. Whatever your need they’ve got a light for it.

I went for the six pack over the maxx D simply because it gives me longer run times at higher lumens, full power is just ridiculously bright.

Their warranty support is excellent as well

prices are ridiculous though

🙁

There’s something reassuring about a light that takes 13.5 hours to do a full charge on a mains charger 😀

On that note my biggest “complaint” about my new brace of Exposure lights is that the chargers don’t match – they’d look tidier plugged in to the sockets on the kitchen counter if they were visually similar.

And that super minor detail should clue you in to how much I love my new lights. £540 (eek) well spent.

The Six Pack is halfway between normal headlights and full beam on my van. Good to know that I can drive home shining it out of the window should my lights ever fail me!

Read the other thread about the cold AFFECTING batteries. It’s reckoned that because the exposure Ines are self contained the heat sink keeps the batteries ‘warm’ win, win