I just saw the brightest, coolest lights I have seen in my whole life.
The downside is they are $1000
The upside is they are much brighter than the best HID system (1400 Lumens) They are LED lights, and you can set them for bright settings that last 100+ hours
Even at the absoulte brightest setting (daylight!!) you get 8 hours burn time.
the battery is the size of a deck of 104 playing cards (roughly)
The site has a prety cool flash based comparison
For those coming to the 24hr in May, you will be able to see mine first hand
check out the ‘lighttest’ link, the light set is the Betty 6
HID lights (last year’s best lighting system, looks like absolute garbage compared to these)
I understand a lot of people don’t wish to spend so much on lights, but when it extends your riding season by 4 months like it does here, it’s just fantastic
tiny battery, tiny light, super bright light, you can do a several day endurance type trek on one charge.
and the light comes in a fancy zipper case with everything you need, including connector lube and a car charger
I went on a mountain bike night ride with some of the local unicyclists, and I think Geoff (famed designer of the Telford unicycle frame) had one of these light sets. It was practically like riding in the daylight, really. I have a crappy handlebar mounted headlight, so I tried to keep up just for the light.
I’d be slightly worried about spending that much on lupine, they’re very expensive for what you get, and have a poor reputation over here for reliability, warranty service, and how expensive spares are when anything gets broken.
If you buy the LEDs and driver yourself, you can build up a triple LED yourself for about £100/$200 that is approximately HID brightness, which is way more than enough light to ride with.
If you’re buying built up lights:
On the cheap, for £10/$20 you can get something that is just about bright enough to ride with and runs off two rechargeable AAs, and just straps onto your helmet http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.4238 I’ve got one of these and it is very convenient, way more convenient than having the separate battery and wire thing that my old triple led light used to have. If you need more light, buy two, they only weigh about 150g including batteries, so they’re fine to run on a helmet.
Thanks for the tip, I’ll monitor the one that just got bought by someone, see how it holds out for him…all I know is that I’m riding super bright lights from now on, I’m sick of having crappy ones
I’ve been wanting to get a stronger light for a while but have been puting it off because I wasn’t sure how bright I needed it to bee, didn’t want to spend more than I needed or not enough. (I have a 10 watt halogen Knighthawk, my main prob is it’s too focused in one spot).
Just letting people know I’ve just bought one of those cree torches from dealextreme (as linked to by Joe) and I’m very impressed. It’s really nicely made, with an aluminium modular body threaded together with rubber o-rings in all the joints. It’s very bright - not quite as bright as my 10W halogen I usually use for unicycling, but not far off. It’s quite a narrow focussed beam, so not that good for peripheral vision, but cuts through mist quite well. I don’t think the blueish light from an LED is as easy to see by as the more yellow halogen light, but as a second light it’s superb. I’m tempted to buy another one and mount the two heads together on a helmet mount so I can run them off my 6V bike battery (they’re 3V torches). I reckon two of them together would make a pretty good riding/racing light - and if I leave my halogen on the helmet as well it’ll be close to a HID.
It was posted from Hong Kong and took about a week to arrive in the UK, but no hidden charges (all I paid was the US$20-odd listed on their site, which at today’s favourable exchange rate was only just over £10).
Good for you.