I want to start taking the long way home on my commute through the local woods, but confused about lights. What power do people use for commuting and night rides without getting silly bright for silly money? Ideally want to spend £50 or so.

cheap and cheerful xml’s for £18 on fleabay these days

more light than you need

300 lumens will do just,
500 is good /acceptable
1000+ if you want it to be like daylight

That genuine lumens not what they quote on the cheap stuff

YMMV

PS dont forget the burn times – how long will they run at that power with the battery basically

cheap and cheerful xml’s for £18 on fleabay these days

more light than you need

Are these actually any good?

Mine are on their 3rd winter/ dark evening rides, no probs so far, 2hrs + on each ride. In woods then pub/road home, never flattened the batt. Yet always on main beam off road.

Yep they are great, have a few sets and they are bright enough on dim with just bright for the tricky bits. Mine are also heading into winter No3 with no probs to date.

Got a Hope Vision 1 for sale if you want it?
I have two but only need one. Blue one is newer and cosmetically better, black one older, more scratched but has new circuitboard and switch fitted by Hope earlier this year. Both are bar mmounted. Your choice, either for £40 posted, email in profile.
On full whack they claim 600 lumens. Best bit is they run off 4 AA batteries so a doddle to swap when they run out, I would avoid rechargeable lights for this reason. And if you forget, you can get new batteries from any corner shop, can’t do that with a six-pack!

501b XML-U2 (£8)… lid mount(£1.30)… charger(£4) and adapter (£1.80)… used laptop cells (free).

You also need some foil to improve the heat sinking, and some electrical tape to make the cells fit snugly… and I use a small rare-earth magnet on the -ve end of the 18650s as mine are unprotected so a bit short. If the cells manage to move around they will interrupt the current which will cause the torch to change modes – this can be alarming as it is most likely to happen when you hit a really rough patch! But a torch on your lid is ‘stabilized’ so you will probably be fine without.

I’d also budget for a timer for the charger… that way you can set them to charge for e.g. 6 hours and then stop. I think single cell charging is pretty safe, but I would not like to leave mine on for 48 hours just in case!

Additional lights are £8-£15… e.g. a C8 XM-L2 for you bars.

It’s a very cheap way to get into night riding… and once you have cells and a charger additional lights (or a yearly upgrade to the latest emitter) are very inexpensive.

Cheers guys, just waiting for payday now then will get buying!

The wee XML bike lights are a bit spotlighty, they’re bright and great value but not that nice to ride with imo. I had the older P7 lights and they made about half the power but had a much better beam, preferred those tbh.

You can get a silly amount of light for peanuts these days, it’s great.

bartimaeus – I have to say, in order to save about £3 per cell, you’ve added a lot of extra faff. I know I like to mess about with these things, and recycling the cells is cool, but still…

There are a few ‘wide angle’ lenses available (about £5) for the cheap XMLs that change the beam into something much better.
I haven’t used one, but I did swap my reflector for the old mj-808 orange peel type and it made it much more usable.

I want to start taking the long way home on my commute through the local woods,

It’s a silver-bullet for the wolves you need!

Didn’t really rate the wee fresnel tbh, it made for a letterboxy light but very hard edged, possibly a better spread but kind of annoying! All a bit of a faff considering how much light you can get for similiar amounts now.

Disclaimer: I have not used this light but it’s getting good reviews:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/221260421689?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2649

I have a set off ebay for 17 quid, they’re great, I can do all my fast downhill stuff through my local woods without having to slow down.

Whats the run times on the SolarStorm 5000 Lm 2 x CREE XM-L U2 LED?

Also interested in the run times of the SolarStorm 5000 Lm 2 x CREE XM-L U2 LED. Was looking candb seen but prices have gone up.

I got one of those Solarstorms the other week from the exact seller Northwind linked to. Can’t give exact run times but mine shows maybe a little over 25% left on the light’s indicator after a 3.5hr ride with a mix of med./high (probably about 70/30). I run it on my bars with a cheap XML (still going strong in its 3rd season) on my helmet. A couple of rides on it now and nothing to complain about yet; everything seems well enough made and it has a better beam pattern than the single XML unit.

There’s a thread on mtbr about them with more info and nothing but good reviews so far (they also sell under the name ‘Fandyfire’).

From the thread on MTBR, run time is about 2-2.5 hours on medium, and about 1-1.5hrs on high.

I’m thinking one of them, paired with a decent battery from Smudge would be a really good set up.

Just lost one of my p7s so need to replace it – great torch, lasted years.

Does anyone ride with a coloured light, like v slightly green or blue? Quite like that idea but don’t know how it would work out on the trail. Sure I’ve ridden with folk with lights that appeared green-ish, but maybe they were basically white with just a faint tinge.

My old Magicshine job died last night :sob: it’s been going well for 3 years, it keeps turning off and on randomly even with a different battery pack. I’ve got on order (for the last week) a set of those solarstorm things, if they last even a winter i wont care for the costs, my MS were onyl £47.89 from DX and they’ve done 3 winters.

The cheapest Magicshine 808 for less than £50 shines up well for riding in the dark. Been using it for two years now. The halo gives good near zone vision and the spot is perfect for fast singletracks.

Here are two videos. The darkness starts at 2.59:
[video]http://vimeo.com/75658082[/video]

The second video contains more night riding(at 1.30):
[video]http://vimeo.com/75434588[/video]

/Leo