Commuting - Lighting

I'm looking into some serious lighting, the majority of my morning commutes will be in darkness and in the winter solstice months park of the ride home will be too. I'd like to avoid dropping 5 C notes on a light. Anyone have any experience with these lights?

http://tinyurl.com/lzmo2
http://tinyurl.com/mw6ah

There is a effective review by Erick L on the commuting forum. Search under nighthawk emitter. He seems to feel it is almost as good as a 5 watt halogen, not like the 10 watts they claim. And that was only the first post I checked on the search I did. If you do not mind some Do It Yourself geekiness you could have a 100 watt halogen for under $100 but it would use a PAR 36 bulb and a SLA battery.

5 watt as opposed to the 10 claimed, thats very helpfull looks like the HID is the better choice.

Thanks

I had some reliability problems with a Nite Hawk light, though that was a cheaper model (I think it was called the Raptor).

I switched over to the NiteRider Evolution Smart (http://www.niterider.com/prod_evolutionsmart.shtml) (5/10/15w halogen), and I can highly recommend it for both brightness and reliability. Part of my morning ride is on unlit roads and trails, and I've never had a problem seeing. It's a bit expensive (around $240 here), but very good.

I had some reliability problems with a Nite Hawk light, though that was a cheaper model (I think it was called the Raptor).

I switched over to the NiteRider Evolution Smart (http://www.niterider.com/prod_evolutionsmart.shtml) (5/10/15w halogen), and I can highly recommend it for both brightness and reliability. Part of my morning ride is on unlit roads and trails, and I've never had a problem seeing. It's a bit expensive (around $240 here), but very good.Another possible benefit of the Evolution Smart is that it comes with both helmet and bar mounts. If you don't mind more weight and no helmet mount, the dual-beam 12/20/32W NiteRider Classic Plus is under $200 shipped from here: http://aebike.com/page.cfm?PageID=30&action=details&sku=LT9009 Peak runtime is over 3 hours at 12 watts, which can be nice if you forget to charge up.

My dream lights are all out of my price range, and the Classic Plus has battery/charger interchangability with my NR Flamethrower HID, so I picked one for a bike-mounted off-roading light. Sample video on singletrack trails with the Classic Plus & the Flamethrower combined: http://freepages.thesecretlabs.com/~mechbgon/singletrack.wmv (9MB Windows Media Player format, recommend you save it to disk first)

here's a good review of several led (http://www.gearreview.com/2006_led_lights.php) lights like the nitehawk - including the nighthawk. I eelected to go with a jetlites phantom halogen myself - it's on order should arrive next week. I found this review (http://www.mtbr.com/spotlight/lightshootout/)helpful too. It shows an amazing amount of difference between similarly specced lights.

I considered the trailtech HID light from batteryspace but decided against it based on the helmet mount being a velcro strip. No adjustment there. I switch between 4 bikes with different riding positions. I didn't think it was likely that I'd find one postion that worked for all the bikes. Of course being an HID it might not matter with all the light it would be putting out.

here's a good review of several led (http://www.gearreview.com/2006_led_lights.php) lights like the nitehawk - including the nighthawk. I eelected to go with a jetlites phantom halogen myself - it's on order should arrive next week. I found this review (http://www.mtbr.com/spotlight/lightshootout/)helpful too. It shows an amazing amount of difference between similarly specced lights.

I considered the trailtech HID light from batteryspace but decided against it based on the helmet mount being a velcro strip. No adjustment there. I switch between 4 bikes with different riding positions. I didn't think it was likely that I'd find one postion that worked for all the bikes. Of course being an HID it might not matter with all the light it would be putting out.

I have a helmet cam that held by that industrial strenght velcro and I have no problem adjusting it on different helmets. They have a bar adapter for $6 too.