Daylight savings ended. Then the Ride On lights test in the latest edition of the Bicycle Victoria magazine was published. Then I spent a few days perusing the bike lights on offer at a few popular shops around Melbourne… now I’m motivated to make some comments on the lighting options we’ve got on offer and why.

This article is divided into five sections. These are:

1. Mini lights: legal (… on a full battery), discussing mini battery lights
2. Better choices of battery lights, including At a pinch – cheaper battery lights and also Quality battery lights – a sound investment
3. Self propelled: dynamos and dynamo lights, that can be a really wise investment for dedicated cyclists; and
4. Our bikes that come with lighting systems, including battery options and dynamo options
5. Some final thoughts

Before getting started, a few words about light, power and brightness. The more common flashing battery lights are quite confusingly rated. Some will be labeled, simply, “3 LED” or “5 LED” though this does not help with understanding how bright these lights are. Presumably if a 5 or 7 LED light used the same power consumption LEDs as the 3 LED version, the higher the count of LEDs the brighter. Maybe, but maybe not if the voltage supplied to each LED drops as more are added. These lights give no usable power or illumenance rating.

Most of the higher grade battery lights and all the dynamo lights provide a power consumption rating. For battery front lights this may be half, one or two watts (and so on). And for many dynamo headlights lights this is 2.4 or 3.0 watts, as the power generated by dynamos is generally 3 watts which is used in full by the headlight or shared with a .6 watt tail light. Knowing the power consumption is important: for battery lights the power consumption dictates battery life (and, therefore, “burn time”); and for dynamo lights, harnessing the full power generated is important to regulating the output voltage and prevent burning out globes.

A light’s power consumption does not necessarily relate to its brightness though. Old incandescent globes are extremely inefficient and, for a given power, relatively dull. Halogen lights are more efficient and LEDS can be significantly more efficient again. This translates to a brighter light output for that given power consumption.

Some lights do provide a measure of light intensity. The Busch and Muller range give a Lux rating.  The most useful description of lux I have found is: “a measurement of lux (light intensity) tells you how many lumens (total light output) you need given the area you are trying to illuminate” (read more here). If the light output is important to you, make sure you find a light intensity measurement for the units you are considering.

Legal (… on a full battery)

This describes the mini lights that take the small watch batteries. They look cool being small and often cute colours but they don’t offer much illumination or visibility. They aren’t suitable for day in, day out use because the battery capacity is too small for maintaining a good level of illumination over significant use (ie short burn time), and even at full charge many of these are not bright enough to stand out from the various light pollution and vehicle lighting. But a pair of mini lights can be fantastic as an emergency set for when a light fails, a battery goes flat, or you get caught out after dark…

While mentioning legality, check Bicycle Victoria’s page Overview of Road Rules. This page has links to legal publications listing the requirements on bike lighting and the demerit points (and thus fines) applicable for breach of these requirements.

KNOG Frog mini light: these guys run a pair of CR2032 batteries and are much better than single-battery mini lights

Better choices of battery lights

It’s important to differentiate lights for visibility (ie being seen by other traffic) from lights for illumination (ie for seeing the road with). By far the majority of enquiries we get are for lights for visibility. And there are many reasons why reliable lights are a really good idea, including safety and legality. This category, a better grade of battery light, covers the range of battery lights we generally recommend – reliable, safe and ranging in price to suit different budgets.

Decent battery lights ranging from the basics up to Planet Bike and the S-Sun Ilumenox (Best in test from Ride On at 4.5 out of 5). I hold some dispute at the completeness of the Ride On test (mainly on the limitations of a testing regime that takes a snapshot single-session test of a single unit of each model). My experience differs markedly from this article’s conclusion both on the factors it lists but also in there being other important considerations include burn time and robustness to being dropped. But I acknowledge the review could get overly detailed to be more empirical or exhaustive.

At a pinch – cheaper battery lights

We’ve got a range of lights that will get both good battery life and good visibility. These are usually individual front lights taking 2-3 AA or AAA batteries, individual rear lights taking 2 AAA batteries, and light sets incorporating both of these. The light sets are a fair bit cheaper than the individual units.

The front lights on offer include Akslen, S-Sun and Torch brands. The rear lights include Smart, Basta and Akslen brands. A range of styles are available to suit mounting onto handlebars, front baskets, helmets, seat posts, rear baskets, and rear racks.

There are a number of positive features of these lights including:

• they give quite good visibility on road
• can give some degree of illumination if the going gets dark down laneways or offroad paths
• the burn time on flashing modes is usually fairly good
• they can be quite easily removed from the bike when you park (to avoid theft risks)
• the moulding on the lights and brackets are reasonable durable
• the switches and battery contacts are reasonable reliable
• some models (especially the Basta 5 LED rear light) offer extremely high reliability and are quite bright

Drawbacks

• Some of this range do not give long term reliability (after somewhere between 6-18 months of regular use the housings crack, the switches fail, the contacts become less reliable, they begin to rattle on the bracket interface, etc)
• Replacement brackets aren’t always available
• Burn time on solid beam can be low
• They usually don’t offer a “super flash” option – check this Youtube video, Planet Bike Blaze 1W and Superflash Stealth, and CatEye Opticube, for some examples:

Quality battery lights – a sound investment

There are some good reasons for running battery lights. These include:

• Ease of transfer between bikes (come on! Lots of people have a few bikes!)
• Lighter weight that dynamo options
• More immediately affordable than a dynamo system investment
• Less investment left on the bike when parked

And there are a range of particularly nice battery lights available. These include the Planet Bike and S-Sun Ilumenox ranges. The Ilumenox SS-122W 1 watt headlight won the Ride On lights test with a 4.5/5 rating on function. I agree, it’s a particularly nice unit though my logic differs from Bicycle Victorias for these reasons:

• Its function should be rated lower: being so bright reduces the burn time to a level that impacts upon use – S-Sun list it as 10 hours on flashing mode.
• The materials and components (3/5) should be rated higher: they age very well
• Value for money (2/5) should be rated higher: the $80 RRP ($75 from us) may be a bit higher but in being quite durable the higher initial purchase price is offset by longer service life

S-Sun Ilumenox SS-L122w 1 watt

To elaborate on the point about running out of juice: The Ilumenox takes three AAA batteries. A quality Nickel Metal Hydride rechargeable AAA battery is rated to around 900mAh (check this with an electronics  supplier like Jaycar). Three AAAs therefore give 3 x 1.2v x 900 = 3420 mWh capacity. The Planet Bike Blaze half watt headlight takes two AA batteries. Quality NiMh AA batteries are good for around 2400mAh each. A pair of these gives the Blaze half watt light 2 x 1.2 x 2400 = 5760 mWh capacity. So, the 1 watt Ilumenox has just over half the battery capacity of the half watt Planet Bike lamp. (The Blaze one watt also takes two AA batteries, which Planet Bike quotes as having a 20 hour burn time on flashing mode.). Thanks to Michael M for the corrections to the original energy calculations.

Planet Bike Blaze half watt

And in the higher grade battery rear lights. These include the Planet Bike SuperFlash and SuperFlash Stealth, and the Portland Design Works RadBot 500 and 1000, recently reviewed by Lewis.

Self propelled: dynamos and dynamo lights

The Reelight battery free bike lights are a fantastic idea, harnessing a non-contact design with a wheel mounted rotating magnet and a frame mounted stationary coil electromagnetic pickup. We sell the Reelight SL-100 and SL-120. The SL-120 has a standlight function and keeps glowing when you stop at the lights.

It is still possible to get quality bottle dynamos although hub dynamos have become extremely popular: the Busch & Müller 6 and it’s lower-drag big brother the S12 are the units we can supply. There is also the Nordlicht 2000 which is “very nicely crafted and beautiful in the tradition of the old Miller generators”.

Dynamo hubs including Shimano and Schmidt options. These start from around $140 for a Shimano 3D72 series hub and go up to around $400-450 for a Schmidt SON hub. Keep in mind that the hub then needs to be laced into a wheel (including spokes, labour and possibly rim). There is some fantastic research available on the drag caused by dynamos (both engaged and when the circuit is open) for example Testing the efficiency of generator hubs by Jan Heine and Andreas Oehler.

One further consideration is upgrading your quick release skewers to Pitlocks or Pinheads if you invest in a hollow axle hub dynamo to reduce the risk of the wheel being stolen. We can supply these.

Choosing head and tail lights can be tricky. A standlight function is a good idea particularly if they are is going to be your only light. Some headlights are switched, meaning that you can turn them on and off from a switch on the light body. This is necessary for a hub dynamo but for bottle dynamos, engaging or disengaging the dynamo serves this function anyway. We sell the Busch and Muller light range including the D’Lumotec Oval (16 Lux) and Lumotec IQ Fly (40 lux) and the classic looking Lumotec Retro – all with stand light and available with switch mechanism on lamp body.

We’ve also had a few questions in the past weeks about phone charger couplings from dynamo hubs. There are actually quite a wide range available including:

• Pedal Power, an Aussie mob
• Busch and Muller’s Ewerk
• Dahon’s Biologic Reecharge
• Tout Terrain’s The Plug

Worth noting is the limitations of these systems. The USB standards all have quite tight limitations on power available per port. Check the Wikipedia article for some details of these limits. Moz, with a strong background in computing and electronics, reckons dyno couplers are suitable for charging mobile phones and mp3s but that solar panels are probably a better option for laptops and larger equipment.

We’re not stocking any of these at present but keep the enquiries coming. When we can determine what models are in demand we’ll get these in.

Our bikes that come with lighting systems

Quite a few bikes we’ve got for sale come with a built-in lighting system. These start from the Gofa 1 step through supplied with battery front and rear lights, some of the Electras supplied with bottle dynamo systems, and the Gazelle Dutch bikes with integrated lighting systems (bottle dynamo, hub dynamo or battery systems as appropriate to the model). Many of these bikes also come with racks, mudguards etc and are designed on a philosophy of cycling as transport and the bike as a complete package.

Some final thoughts

It seems like there’s an ongoing attempt to make sense of how confusing and broad the range of bike lights is.

Bicycle Victoria’s Ride On lighting test is annual and I just stumbled upon a Bike lights review from 2009 in Choice magazine.

Confounding the issue further, in Australia a flashing front and flashing rear light is the default, assuming the flashing light attracts more attention. True when the streetscape is saturated in high intensity light sources (vehicle headlights/taillights/signal lights, shop window displays, street lighting etc). In some countries flashing bike lights are not roadworthy and the requirement is for a solid beam. In that case, all the more reason for a dynamo as battery lights usually dim fairly rapidly when powering constant beams. So, why solid? because it is easier for approaching traffic to judge distance and speed from a solid than a flashing light source.

This post is not designed to prescribe the best lighting solution for any particular application. I’ve listed above arguments for different systems of bicycle lighting. Hopefully this will help you isolate the most suited system for your usage. Also, if you’re interested drop in or send us an email and we can offer specific advice on lighting for your requirements.

Update

See also June’s newsletter: The June Tune for more thoughts on bike lighting. And The Radbot Review: Lewis’s review of the Radbot 1000 rear ‘super light’.