Front light...£100 budget

[Hard-Drive]

Any advice? Needs to be...

-Rechargeable, separate battery is fine
-Easily transferable between bikes
-Looking for max power to illuminate darker, unlit roads
-Tough for possibly some off road use
-Good burn time with variable power
-Pimp

£100 (or very close) maximum. Does not need to flash as I'll have a separate one for that.

Thanks!

[Simond S]

http://www.lightslightslights.co.uk/Bikeray-Lights...

Far better than the price suggests.

[Rob_T]

Bikeray 3.

Bought one for off road use and use it for commute in dark country roads. Extremely bright and good wide beam. Thoroughly recommend it.

[MadDad]

These are great for the money, I have two now - use one on the bars and one on my helmet (oh-erh, in a childish voice).

http://www.dealextreme.com/p/mj-808e-ha-iii-cree-x...

Great value for money, seriously bright, quite a few friends with more expensive 'premium' brands have bought one of these after borrowing mine for an evenings ride.

on full power I get circa 4 hours, half power I am yet to try but I would guess about 6-ish.

[nammynake]

P7. Bought mine through eBay from a company called Trailblazer or something. Light, bracket, charger and two batteries for about £60. Ridiculously bright - used mine at both Mountain Mayhem and SITS 24 hour events.

[Hard-Drive]

OK, the bikeray 3 looks good, but can anyone tell me the difference between the version 1 and version 2?

Thanks!

[bigtomski]

I've opted for the Magicshine MJ-872.
You can get them on fleabay for £89.
Mine hasn't arrived yet so can't tell you if it's any good or not but plenty of info available about them on the web.

[Major T]

MadDad said:

These are great for the money, I have two now - use one on the bars and one on my helmet (oh-erh, in a childish voice).

http://www.dealextreme.com/p/mj-808e-ha-iii-cree-x...

Great value for money, seriously bright, quite a few friends with more expensive 'premium' brands have bought one of these after borrowing mine for an evenings ride.

on full power I get circa 4 hours, half power I am yet to try but I would guess about 6-ish.

I have one of these, love it. Absolute bargain at £46 incl tracked delivery.

Edited by Major T on Tuesday 25th October 13:51

[thiscocks]

I'd reccommend the Nite rider lights. The MiNewt 300 is in budget http://www.niterider.com/rechargeable-new/minewt-m...

[Hard-Drive]

Hmmm, the niterider ain't gonna cut it with 300 lumens output but thanks for the reply anyway...perhaps more of a commuter light. I've ended up going for the Bikeray III v2...it was a toss up between that and the 1200 lumens Magicshine, but the £20 extra for a lot more battery power seemed like a bit of a no brainer. I did not want to be stuck out somewhere in the dark wishing I'd paid the extra!

For my next question, has anyone managed to get one of these to fit on a helmet? If so, how?

http://www.dealextreme.com/p/fandyfire-501b-ssc-p7...

[bigtomski]

Search for lockblock on ebay.
I got a couple from a seller called the torchsight i think and I can mount my P7 light no probs on my helmet or on the bars with one of them.

[Hard-Drive]

First time out last night with the BikerayIII and it's very good. Head to head against my mate's Magicshine, the battery is better, and the beam a bit wider. In many ways for road riding the slightly more "spot" characteristics of the MS look brighter, but for really dark lanes or off road the wider beam pattern of the BR3 works well. The MS has more light levels, but they may be just to preserve the battery, where the BR3 you can just leave on full chat all the time.

My little Aldi "flasher" is totally lost in the beam of the BR3 for oncoming traffic, however both lights were mounted on the bars. My mate has a flashing cateye mounted inside his fork crown (rigid forks on an MTB so plenty room) and the separation makes the cateye much more visible.

So basically a big thumbs up for the BR3.

[thanetspeedshop]

HUNDRED QUID!!!!!!!!

For a light!!!!!!!!!

Feck me; how much d'ya pay for a whole bicycle then?

[Hard-Drive]

OK, let me put this into perspective. Dress up in some lycra with a small piece of polystyrene on your head. Go and sit on the bonnet of your car and get a mate to drive down pitch black country lane at night at 30mph. Now ask him to switch his lights off and see how long it takes him to have a massive accident and fire you into the nearest hedgerow. Whilst he's laughing into his airbag, you can decide from the comfort of your ditch/tree whether it was perhaps worth £100 to be able to see where you were going.

I've never spent more than a grand on a bike, however I have a few bikes. Some people on here would never spend that little on a bike. But they are all nice bikes capable of high speeds so it seems a bit stupid to ride them at 5mph at night because I can't see where the feck I am going!

Also, £100 for a light that I own and enables me to go out of an evening with my mates and enjoy it when there's feck all else to do on a wintery evening, versus £65 for a month's membership of some depressing stinky gym somewhere. Hmmm, let me think. OK, perhaps I need to buy the missus a decent light too so I too can enjoy the sight of a lycra clad girlie bum like the people in the gym do but that's the only drawback I can think of!

Oh, and by the way £100 for a bike light is actually at the budget end of the spectrum if you are looking for something to see with, rather than be seen with. You can spend £700 if you really want to...

Edited by Hard-Drive on Wednesday 2nd November 17:58

[thanetspeedshop]

Yeah, fair play mate, but ...A HUNDRED QUID!

Surely you could buy a house in a town with street lighting for that sort of money, no?

[fixedwheelnut]

bigtomski said:

I've opted for the Magicshine MJ-872.
You can get them on fleabay for £89.
Mine hasn't arrived yet so can't tell you if it's any good or not but plenty of info available about them on the web.

Had mine a couple of months now, pretty good so far, good flood of light

[Simond S]

Hard-Drive said:

OK, let me put this into perspective. Dress up in some lycra with a small piece of polystyrene on your head. Go and sit on the bonnet of your car and get a mate to drive down pitch black country lane at night at 30mph. Now ask him to switch his lights off and see how long it takes him to have a massive accident and fire you into the nearest hedgerow. Whilst he's laughing into his airbag, you can decide from the comfort of your ditch/tree whether it was perhaps worth £100 to be able to see where you were going.

I've never spent more than a grand on a bike, however I have a few bikes. Some people on here would never spend that little on a bike. But they are all nice bikes capable of high speeds so it seems a bit stupid to ride them at 5mph at night because I can't see where the feck I am going!

Oh, and by the way £100 for a bike light is actually at the budget end of the spectrum if you are looking for something to see with, rather than be seen with. You can spend £700 if you really want to...

Well put. We had a girl ride with us using a £35 cateye from Halfords. I ended up riding on her shoulder to illuminate the road ahead. She couldn't see potholes that were 2 seconds from her front wheel at 15mph!

[Silver940]

Useful read:

http://www.torchythebatteryboy.com/

[thiscocks]

Hard-Drive said:

First time out last night with the BikerayIII and it's very good. Head to head against my mate's Magicshine, the battery is better, and the beam a bit wider. In many ways for road riding the slightly more "spot" characteristics of the MS look brighter, but for really dark lanes or off road the wider beam pattern of the BR3 works well. The MS has more light levels, but they may be just to preserve the battery, where the BR3 you can just leave on full chat all the time.

My little Aldi "flasher" is totally lost in the beam of the BR3 for oncoming traffic, however both lights were mounted on the bars. My mate has a flashing cateye mounted inside his fork crown (rigid forks on an MTB so plenty room) and the separation makes the cateye much more visible.

So basically a big thumbs up for the BR3.

What is the visibility like from the side on those? I find with my nite riders they dont show hardly any light from the side as the lense in fairly recessed in the casing. For around town I am going to stick a little cateye flashy thing on the bars, as I have had way too many near misses at roundabouts!

[Rob_T]

they're not good from the side. i think you're better off developing a roundabout tactic. seems that you can be lit up like a beacon and you still can't be seen.