[BC] Bicycle Head and Tail Light comparisions

[martygoodman]

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This evening I did a small presentation about "bicycle lighting" at my local bike club's (Grizzly Peak Cyclists of Berkeley, CA) meeting.  At this presentation, demonstrated and provided comparitive commentary on the NiteRider LED MyNewt and HID Blowtorch, the Light and Motion HID ARC lamp, a highlycustom  modified, regulated, Li Ion battery-powered, over-driven CatEye Stadium 3 lamp (24 watt HID), the Dinotte 5W LED AA battery-powered lamp, the Princeton Tec Apex 3 watt LED headlamp, and the CatEye HL500II Micro (incandescant 2.4 watt, old standby). Others at the club provided, for comparison, a classic old tehcnlogy NiteRider 10 watt halogen lamp, and a USA-market CatEye HL530 1 watt LED 4AA battery-powered lamp.

 

We found the Dinotte 5 watt lamp was pretty near as bright as the NiteRider 10W halgoen (incandscant) lamp.  But provided more even coverage over a wider area.

 

I found the beam pattern on the CatEye HL530 1 watt LED lamp to be totally unacceptable, with a very concentrated (far TOO concentrated, in my opinion) central spot, tho its owner, a serious and experienced cyclist, was quite pleased with it.

 

Headlamps:

 

LED lamps: 

 

We found the Princeton Tec 3 watt LED to have a more focused central spot (but still of generous size, with good spillover in a wide area) than the Dinotte 5W LED, and to be about as bright as the Dinotte 5W when the Dinotte was put in low power (3 watt?) mode.  The NiteRider MyNewt had the tightest smallest spot beam of the three higher power LED lamps compared at the meeteing, tho even the MyNewt had a less tight spot beam than the CatEye HL530. 

 

I tested the (USA model... purchased from Nashbar) CatEye HL530 at home, on my bench power supply, and found it to be totally unregulated, meaning it's utterly worthless junk, and to be without question avoided.  While it does have an electronic circuit board inside, this is just for on/off, power control, and flash mode generation, and does NO regulation AT ALL of power from the battery to LED... no keeping of constant power to the LED in a given mode.

 

HID (plasama arc) Lamps:

 

My "over-driven" and regulated CatEye Stadium 3 put the NiteRider blowtorch and L&M ARC lamps to shame, shining VERY much brighter, and with better, more even coverage but still with a brightish central area. This of course is what one would expect when comparing a 25 watt HID lamp to 13 watt HID lamps!  The NiteRider Blowtorch HID lamp had a more even beam pattern, and to most more pleasing, than the L&M ARC lamp, but overall the two were quite similar.  NOTE that the L&M ARC lamp is regulated, and offers a 13.5 watt and a low power 10.0 watt setting, desireable features NOT offerred by the NiteRider Blowtorch (tho perhaps offerred by more current versions of NiteRider's HID lamps... I'm not sure about this not being familiar with the Fire Storm or the Moab, the two current NiteRider HID models).

 

Tail Lamps:

 

We also compared the following tail lamps: Classic old NiteRider 16 LED lamp (with separate power off 6 or 12 volts headlamp battery), CatEye LD600 2 AAA battery-powered lamp (a current standard in inexpensive AAA battery-powered tail lamps), a Sigma 1,3, or 7 LED inexpensive AAA battery-powered tail lamp, my own custom 48 LED lamp, and the very new product, the Vetta TLS-C  20 LED lamp (powered off 4 AA batteries, retails for around $75).

 

First and foremost, the Vetta TLS-C came across as a truly OUTSTANDING new product, that I and my friend Zach (who sold it to me) recommend UNRESERVEDLY to those seeking a good value in a truly effective, modern design red LED tail lamp.  This lamp runs off 4 AA batteries, and has a low and high mode in continuous operation (for 4 and 8 hour, respectively, run times off alkaline batteries, they claim), and a flashing mode (in high power, but with a duty cycle that provides, they claim, an 8 hour run time.

 

This lamp dramatically outshown the CatEye LD600 5 LED, 2 AAA battery-powered lamp, and will make a very effective DAY TIME VISIBLE tail lamp.

 

The Vetta 20 LED TLS-C was not only brighter in its central bright area, by far, than the CatEye LD600 or the NiteRider 16 LED lamp, but that central bright area was qualitatively much wider than that of either of the other two LED lamps tested.  Thus, it was both brighter AND with wider side coverage than the other two.  A truly impressive performance. 

 

The old NiteRider 16 LED lamp of some years back was nothing short of PATHETIC, and utterly not worth using if one can elect to use the Vetta instead.  It was not much brighter than the CatEye 5 LED lamp!

 

We argued a bit among ourselves whether the Vetta was to be considered TOO bright for night use.  Some felt so, others felt it should be fine in low power mode, and some of us felt it should be OK in flashing mode (it does a very slow flash cycle... about 2/sec or slower).

 

I'm going to provide detailed data from a bench test in a following post, but for now I'll say that the Vetta TLS-C enjoys SOME degree of electronic regulation, tho less than perfect.

 

My 48 LED personal project (I've made two of them) with a high flash rate was judged to be UTTERLY UNACCEPTABLE for night time riding, given the degree of irritation it was felt likely to cause a rider behind me. However, it did well in tests during the day, so I'm happy with it as a superior daytime-visiblity device.

 

A more technical report on the degree of and nature of regulation of the Vette TLS-C 20 LED tail lamp will follow, as well as test results on the CatEye HL530 1 watt headlamp.

 

 ---marty

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