I suppose that he might buy the mag in the shops…

Anyway, I like high end reviews too but that doesn’t mean that the cheaper but functionally capable stuff shouldn’t be included, particularly in group tests.

oh look no P by his name – in what sense are you a customer then?
seems some folk who dont pay for a magazine that subsidises a forum are complaining about the magazine on the forum. I think if i was STW I would tell you to all go **** yourself

And that’s why your customer services role is limited to dealing with doley scumbags. 😉

I do buy the mag from time to time, and if there’s really 700,000 visitors a month to this site that must make for a reasonable bit of revenue from ads (that everyone moans about 🙂 )

Miaow 😆

oh look no P by his name – in what sense are you a customer then?

I don’t think that’s fair Junkyard. You are presuming that by non-premier status, he never buys the mag and has no interest in it. I am non-premier, but buy the mag through a newsagent (when it’s available).

Under the new regime, I will hopefully be buying it through my LBS [like I need another excuse to loiter in my LBS!]

Actually, I’d be more hacked off if they included the DX lights in the test – there must be hundreds of threads on here about them, much more than any other lights.

FWIW I have 2 DX lights, both are great and no issues (apart from a battery failure that was sorted out).

When I first started night riding a couple of years ago I bought a £150 Nukeproof allegedly 900 lumen light. It quickly lost a lot of brightness and started failing randomly (not that CRC cared – despite chasing!).

I then got an exposure Spark but not their rechargeable kit, and in looking for and finding rechargeable CR123 batteries and charger found websites like betterbuy and so on.

The prices are crazy and if you shop carefully – looking for relatively light/short torches (usually with a single 18650 cell) you can find absolute bargains, usually about £20, perhaps double that including charger and plenty of good quality cells.

It is a bit hit and miss with beam spread etc but at £20 a pop some experimentation is easy! I now use one 18650 torch on the head and one on the bar, both about 350 lumens, one with a good spread of light (bar) and one with a good beam (head). They last a 2 hour night ride, they handle rain/mud far better than the nukeproof, and as battery performance improves I can just but new ones rather than someone’s overpriced “branded” ones.

I believe in “you get what you pay for” in most things in life but with lights you are getting the same LED and usually older than current spec batteries for silly money. Granted you get a fancy case and nice button – but for £200-odd more! Personally I prefer this approach of no cables or external batteries…

FWIW the one ton weekender reinforces the point of this thread. The fact that people struggle to get away for £100 is crazy.

£10 pppn camping (generous) = £20
£30 food for the weekend (generous) = £50
£50 petrol to go pretty much anywhere = £100

Add in a few poeple and weekends as cheap as £30 are certainly possible.

Links to your lights please!

There is no new thinking, just another reviewer’s opinion.

Another reviewer who doesn’t appear to have a full awareness of the market given his comments (which inevitably lead people to see bias towards certain companies).

For what it is worth, I ride off road at night 3 time a week, use both helmet an bar lights, total retail price about £470.

To be honest, they are actually great, the lamp units are compact, the batteries and connectors do te job brilliantly and when riding at night (no slower than during the day) I want something that is going to illuminate the trail ahead and let me see the trail turnings too!

There are lots of people who can afford and do buy decent lights. So STW please keep reviewing them. Cheap comparisons would make sense though so feel free to add in the torches, Magicshine an DX stuff too!

I want something that is going to illuminate the trail ahead and let me see the trail turnings too!

The thing is, the (good) cheap stuff also does that. It might just not be quite as well built.

I’d argue that people went down a bit of a blind alley by suggesting DX – with Chipps’ not unreasonable criteria of only reviewing stuff they get sent, something similar but a little more expensive from a UK supplier makes more sense, but then as pointed out they did review one of Smudge’s offerings.

I should point out that I still use lights which are nominally even cheaper than DX ones (if you ignore my development costs), and were at the time of build real cutting edge – far better than you could get by spending several hundred £s. Having done that I appreciate just how much of the value is actually in things like housings – mine are still rubbish if functional.

Pinch of salt – the truth is somewhere in the middle mostly – writing for a mag you have to find a middle ground I presume –

If you get given stuff to review then you don’t want to slate it otherwise you’ll never be given stuff again but not a perfect review otherwise your readers will not respect your reviews unless it really deserves it??

At Christmas I wanted to get my wife a handbag like her friends. It cost £800 so I didn’t buy.Now I know what I am looking at you can’t believe the amount of ladies that come in my shop with £500 plus bags. On a recent journey on the train at rush hour 95% of people had an iPhone 4.
There’s still a lot of money out there.

singletrackmatt – bearded fellow
I understand that you can have a great night ride with cheaper lights but that isn’t really what a gear review is for – that would be more of column or a story really

this begs the question of whether your gear reviews are advertorial space or about telling the reader about what the choices are that deliver what the reader whats (trail illumination, reliability, ease of use etc) if the best option is something that can be bodged for £19.45 from maplin’s, bought from a far east company, a UK manufacturer or a man in the shed I would expect to be told.

there seems to be a lot of rehashing of publicity blurbs and little thought into looking at the product from a wider perspective for some of the more expensive kit

If you get given stuff to review then you don’t want to slate it otherwise you’ll never be given stuff again

If the stuff deserves a slating why would you want any more of it? 😉

this begs the question of whether your gear reviews are advertorial space

Advertorial would assume that products only appear if they pay for the pleasure. That’s not something that we do. Products appear if they’re interesting and we can get hold of them easily.
There’s a lot to be said for the making and converting your own lights idea, but we don’t have the time to do that ourselves and there’s far better info on that kind of thing on the forum or the internet at large, for those who are interested, so we don’t tend to cover it. Besides, it’s all out of date after a week in the world of LEDs.

Advertorial would assume that products only appear if they pay for the pleasure. That’s not something that we do.

Hmm, Benji’s holiday in Jamaica article, though not strictly a product, springs to mind 😕

At Christmas I wanted to get my wife a handbag like her friends. It cost £800 so I didn’t buy.Now I know what I am looking at you can’t believe the amount of ladies that come in my shop with £500 plus bags. On a recent journey on the train at rush hour 95% of people had an iPhone 4.
There’s still a lot of money out there.

More likely it proves what warped priorities our society has developed.

I don’t subscribe STW for reviews as I buy next to nothing 🙂 – enjoyed the ‘Bike Porn’ featurettes though.

If I wanted 0-10 scales and 10 riser handlebars ‘faced off’ I’d buy WMB. Which I do when I’m bored at a station, but generally I’d rather read something (shame Mike F has had to call it a day).

There will always be cynical people who think mags / websites only survive by companies offering incentives for reviewing their products.

And there will always be people who swear it doesn’t happen.

EDIT : I’m on the fence for this – I reckon *some* backhanded dealing does go on, especially when dealing with a large influential supplier (who could stop 70% of your new spangly kit arriving…)

not knocking too hard but you have the same issues as all the other websites/ magazines

Advertorial would assume that products only appear if they pay for the pleasure.

OK what is another way of describing rehashing the marketting blurb and spec sheet for a piece of kit that you don’t get a payment for?

Products appear if they’re interesting and we can get hold of them easily. if people send them to us, unless you are a man in a shed then we’ll ignore you

😉

There’s a lot to be said for the making and converting your own lights idea, but we don’t have the time to do that ourselves

you don’t commission content from freelancers?

and there’s far better info on that kind of thing on the forum or the internet at large, for those who are interested, so we don’t tend to cover it.

the the internat is full of stuff, I thought journalism was all about separating the wheat from the chaff

Besides, it’s all out of date after a week in the world of LEDs.

so all the kit you tested which must be using 6 months old tech is old hat?

There will always be cynical people who think mags / websites only survive by companies offering incentives for reviewing their products.

And there will always be people who swear it doesn’t happen.

EDIT : I’m on the fence for this – I reckon *some* backhanded dealing does go on, especially when dealing with a large influential supplier (who could stop 70% of your new spangly kit arriving…)

@xiphon

some years ago I was a regular product tester / writer for a sports magazine in another industry (extreme sports)

I was sent product from a very respected USA brand, and gave an honest review (product fell to bits in very short time frame, under normal conditions)

both I and the editor were then threatened with legal action for slandering the brand / product, and editor forced to sign a legally binding agreement that I would never be allowed to test any of their products ever again

That… Above.. Has never happened and will never happen at Singletrack… I absolutely PROMISE, on my watch here at Singletrack.

A magazine is only as good as the integrity of its owners/editors and I guarantee you that we will never allow a third party company to lean on us to dictate how or who we decide should write for us. The money just isn’t so important to Chipps and I that this would ever be an issue.

Perhaps unbelievably we actually enjoy what we do enough to consider the integrity of the work to be an intrinsic part of why we do it.

There’s a lot to be said for the making and converting your own lights idea, but we don’t have the time to do that ourselves

Still got Chipp’s “make your own lights” issue of Mountain Bike World somewhere – I made a set and they were pretty good apart from the super heavy lead acid battery I was using.

Mark, I’m pleased to say that I believe you but that’s what makes me struggle to understand why the kind of comment that’s been picked up on (the hundred quid one) gets published when it’s blatently wrong and it’s not the first time I’ve seen similar in the mag though I’ll admit that I can’t recall exactly on what.

clubber – Member

Mark, I’m pleased to say that I believe you but that’s what makes me struggle to understand why the kind of comment that’s been picked up on (the hundred quid one) gets published when it’s blatantly wrong

I’m of the same opinion which is why I found the deviation from previous reviews a bit odd!

Chipps

Troutie – I think there’s been some emailing between you and Matt/Mark about lights recently, though I might be wrong, but anyway if there’s a current model you’d like us to review, then get in touch with me and we’ll get one in in time for 24 hour season.

I have emailed you a couple of times over the last couple of weeks and had no reply
just wondering if you have replied ??

Hello Mr Trout,
I’ve not seen an email from you at my normal email address. – chipps@ etc – are you sure you’ve been emailing me? Or Mark or Matt instead?
I can’t find one in the last couple of years.
Can you try again and I’ll keep an eye open.

After ten years of being poor I may come into money soon. Problem is that I’ll be abroad working where I probably won’t be riding.

So, in my own way I created a light for evening fun. It wasn’t lightweight. We nicknamed it, “The Beast”.

Small SLR Camera Bag – found in the bins out back
Security alarm battery (of the lead acid, almost motorcycle battery size) – £14
Car tow bar fitment – £4 from a car parts shop
50w Ceiling fitting halogen bulb and holder – £4
Switch £2
Cable – stripped off a lamp in the bins out back
Light Bar clamp from old broken light – found in spare parts bin

I rode into town to meet some mates with the camera bag strapped to my top tube, swinging back and forth and twatting me on the kneecaps. I knew I had to sort that out later. We turned off the road going down a dimly lit sustrans route and set off. My mates had their road legal basic lights on and I flicked the switch on my light and we discovered the runner coming straight towards us. He looked like he was wearing a white morph suit! He screamed in pain! We laughed hysterically as I switched the light off and we passed the runner who was standing there rubbing his eyes and swearing profusely.

When we got out of town into utter darkness on a track we used to race down top speed at night with our diddy road lights I switched my light on and it got boring. Honestly, it really was, the edge was gone, no fun to be had. We decided to go off the track and up a steep hill looking down onto a field as large as a football pitch. I turned my light on and 2/3rds the pitch lit up. We shrieked in hysterics for a bit before heading off back to town and split up to go our own way home.

I did try a 20 or 25w bulb in the front later, but I discovered the plastic section of the tow bar fitment was starting to melt with the heat of the bulbs and I guess after a couple of bulbs in a row broke from riding over bumps leaving me lightless midride I put it on my shelf and never really got it out to play with anymore. Well, apart from the some thieving bar stewards came for my bike and the cops raced round after my shed alarm went off, jumping over fences with their dog and I brought my light out to demonstrate to the cop with his huge expensive handheld thing that mine was 2-3x brighter 🙂

Keep on with the expensive parts reviews, they make me make do and ride more.