How to Choose Bicycle Lights

How to Choose Bicycle Lights

You got your new bicycle, the helmet, other must have accessories, but winter darkness cuts your riding hours short. You decide, what the heck, darkness in not going to be a show stopper for me. Let’s get some decent lights and hit the road. You should already know by now, as with any other cycling accessory, if you want to buy the good stuff – you need a mortgage. Lights are no different. Can’t be, you say! Well, would you like to buy $700 Light & Motion Seca 1400 LED Headlight for your mountain bike? Or maybe you like the SUPERNOVA X7 Ultimate LED for 1000 Euro. Why would anybody pay such outrageous amounts for bike lights? What is the difference between them? What do I need?

Let’s talk about the purpose first. There are two major uses for bicycle light, the road and the mountain. And they are completely different. On the mountains you want to see. On the road you want to be seen. MTB lights are usually very strong and have unique characteristics such as battery longevity, ruggedness, and high lumen output. You don’t want to arrive into the middle of a forest at night and find yourself with a dead light. For that reason the MTB riders usually have two lights, one on the handle bar pointing forward and one on the helmet pointing to the direction of your head. If the Mountain bike ends up on the road, it should also have one blinking rear red light.

The road cyclists main concern is cars. So, the main purpose of the light is to be seen by others. Therefore, the more you look like a Christmas tree the safer you are. There’s also the need to see the road. Therefore road cyclist should have three lights. One blinking red light at the rear, and two white lights in front. One constantly pointed to the road and one blinking pointed forward. The more cautious riders, will even add some small lights pointed to the sides. Smart move.

OK, now we know what we need, so how do I choose my lights? This is where the problem begins. All manufacturers are trying to sell us their lights by advertising how bright they are. Well, who wouldn’t want a brighter light? The problem is that they provide meaningless ratings to lure the customers.

There are only two real parameters to describe the strength of light output; Lux and Lumen. In real life, Lux measures the total amount of light (how bright it is) and Lumen measures the density of light perceived by the human eye. Many light manufacturers rate their product by Watts and not by Lux or Lumens. Is there a conversion formula from Watts to Lumens? No, there isn’t. Watt is a measurement of power consumption that the light takes from the battery. The Lumens and Lux are the light output. However, any electrical device wastes energy when converting electricity into light. Therefore every light will give different amount of Lumens for 1 watt of input electricity. For example, Blaze 1W & SuperFlash Light Set. How bright is this 1 Watt? Your guess is as good as mine. The only thing you can derive from it is, that it’s stronger than 1/2 Watt.

Some manufacturers do advertise the Lumens output. But not all light with the same Lumen ratings will provide the same lighting effect due to lens and housing design. A strong light can be very dispersed, resulting in very poor light density (Lumens) in the front. In addition, the Lumens reading will change with distance. So close to the light it maybe high, but 3 feet away, it might dramatically decrease. So the only relevant measure is “Lux”, the total amount of light output, and absolutely no-one provides that rating.

After I’ve got you totally confused, what you need to take home is: don’t be fooled by Watts or Lumens, don’t overpay for the light because it has some number advertised on the box, the best way to buy a light is to try it. Some stores have displays with verity of lights on them. Light them up and find the one that fits your needs. For more advanced lights you can get pretty good picture from this reliable article.

For Mountain biking the variety is huge:This one got very good ratings from many customers on Amazon.This great article can help you choose the outdoor gear for your next night mountain biking adventure.



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Keywords: outdoor gear, bicycle light

By: jennjkong

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