bkrownd

They suck. The 1 and 3 Watt have much longer lifetimes.

ericmorin

I agree. probably another reason why they aren't used in many portable applications. However, they do make a "portable" version that has a lifespan if over 100,000 hours like 10x more life than the regular LuxeonV and burns cooler... but i haven't researched their cost.

Merriwether

Ugh. Once again, your problems in reading comprehension just sow confusion.

You, yourself, are talking about a 1w LED at the outset, but then you say that the *brightest* LED you can find has a maximum power rating of .12W.

How about reading your own posts? Or better yet, *you* should do some homework on LED lights.

Look, the white LED lights that are now found in brighter commercial bike headlamps draw about 1w each. Not .12 watt. You're just confused about what you're reading.

Furthermore, some lamps have these lights in a *series* and thus the lamps draw more than 1w total.

Here's an easy-to-understand example. Look at the VEGA from Light and Motion. Notice it's a 4w lamp, with a *two hour* run time at its brightest 4W setting.

www.lightandmotion.com

But how could this be, according to you? I'd go through the various things you've said, but they're usually underexplained, and hard to get through, so you can figure it out.

Anyway, here is the point. Again. LED last a long time on a given battery charge because the same lights can operate at a wide range of voltages, and they can still illuminate at low power, that is, low voltage on weak batteries. Halogen don't do this. Now, from what I can understand, I *think* you agree with that.

When halogen and LED draw power at a time equally, and are equally *powered*, at a level sufficient to light the halogen bulb usefully, LED don't outlast halogen by very much, and the halogen light puts out significantly more light per unit of power than the LED.

Just so it's clear I'm not trying to wound anyone's feelings who owns an LED light, though, I do own one. I like them. I like their long run times, and their light weight. But they're not comparable as seeing lights to the halogen lights. That's all. And even that is only for now.

As I mentioned, before long 5 and 10W LED lights will be on the scene at affordable prices. These lights will provide lumens per watt in a range in between incandescent and HID. Then it will make sense to switch to LED from halogen.

operator

So this means the $20 Nitehawk 4W Halogen > $65 Nitehawk (non digital) LED?

bkrownd

1 Watt is for a Luxeon, as in the EL500. 0.12 Watt is for a superbright LED as in the EL200. Apparently you don't understand the difference between them.


This statement is the only other one worth commenting on. It is almost true, but I believe it is exaggerated. A 4W LED and a 4W halogen should drain the battery at the same rate, but I doubt the difference in light output would be very large. However, care would have to be taken to make sure both lights are really using the same amount of power, and still operating near optimum specs. Trying to invent such a comparison using the 1W EL500 or the even lower power EL200 creates a lot of room for error. However for those of us who want "1 Watt" lights or "10 Watt" lights, a 4 Watt example would be pointless. A more interesting comparison for me would be a 1 Watt LED vs. a 1 Watt halogen - a careful measurement or calculation rather than some hand-waving nonsense based on dubious manufacturer numbers printed on a box or some website. I would be surprised if there was much difference in brightness for the same power consumption.

I have no interest in 5 and 10 Watt LEDs. 5 and 10 Watt LEDs would suffer from the EXACT same problem that 5 and 10 Watt halogens suffer from - draining the batteries too fast. I have a 1 Watt LED for a reason - because it provides plenty of light and has a long runtime. Any light that consumes more power/Watts would provide more light than I need, and not run as long, so a brighter light would be LESS useful for me. IF I had wanted a "5 Watt" light I would have bought one. I wanted a 1 Watt light. It could have been a 1 Watt halogen light, for all I care, though I was willing to pay a premium for the Luxeon. In the end this isn't about LED/halogen/HID - it's about an optimum level of power consumption for the task at hand. I doubt that a 1 Watt halogen could be so much brighter than a 1 Watt LED that it would have changed my decision. (If it even is at all...)

Interestingly, I see Performance is FINALLY stocking the EL500.

Sloth

That is the voice of reason.

Choose the light that works for you. Period.

If that's an LED light, go with it, a HID, a Halogen, whatever.

It's YOUR commute, only YOU know what will work.

Merriwether

Look, for the fourth time, the point is that the best portable halogen bulbs now produce more lumens per watt of electrical input than do the best commercially available LED. That looks to change, soon, but so far that's how it is.

Your paragraph below is a sign you've finally understood that I'm saying this-- see more below-- but as far as the above is concerned, as far as there is any dispute about what I'm saying among LED adherents, *only* the newer 1w luxeons can even be argued to approach good quartz halogen in lumens/watt. The older, 20mAh LEDs lag way behind halogen in lumens/watt. There's no question about this.


You don't have to guess. A good quartz halogen bulb would put out noticeably more light from the bulb compared to good 1w LED *now available* in bike lights-- but admittedly not vastly more, somewhere on the order of 8-10 lumens more. Even this would vary based on manufacturer, quality of individual bulb, etc.. This is based on a realistic estimate of the performance of commercially available 1w luxeons, which are measured independently at somewhere near 19 or 20 lumens/watt. A good halogen bulb will surpass that by a few lumens/watt, and perform somewhere in the low- to mid- 20 lumens/watt range.

Here's a link:

https://www2.whidbey.net/opto/LEDFAQ/...0Pages.html#Q7

(Then again, who knows, if ericmorin's link is correct, as good or slightly better LED may be now with us. That I would like to have tested.)

However, and it's worth making this explicit for the first time, the *reflector* on the halogen would be much better, because it could take advantage of the point source of the halogen bulb. The LED lamp, by contrast, would have to use the 1w LED in series, and so couldn't reflect all sources nearly as effectively So, as a practical matter, significantly more usable light would be put out by the halogen lamp.

This is particularly important point, since one of the things we're we're discussing is what provides the best light among lamps now, for cyclists who want to *see* the road. And cyclists like that would be interested in lamps of at least 3W-- though apparently I should be very careful to qualify this, as there are some cyclists who say they can see the road well with a 1w LED light. So, ok: all those cyclists who can see the road well with a 1w LED light shouldn't think I'm talking to them. (Similarly, all those who are not slowed by a headwind should not think I'm talking to them when I urge them to ride with the wind at their backs.)

Ah. So, after all this, it turns out you don't actually have an opinion about what I'm saying in this thread: that halogen are more efficient in producing lumens/watt than LED.

Right. Good.

And it's not exactly true that you want a "1 watt light", is it? What it seems you want is a light with a very long run time, which is why you're happy with your LED during all of its battery life, even during that period when it's running at less than 1watt. (Even when it's at "half the brightness", you said.)

As I've said all along, LED do have the advantage of much longer illumination periods with the same battery energy. That's why I have mine. So, I agree with you there. But the again, I said that back in my original post.

Merriwether

Good link.

According to them, their light puts out 24 lumens/watt. Hmmnn...

It would be good to compare this light to a comparably powered halogen, with a good spot reflector.

bkrownd

You can't even get simple physical units right?


The part of your original post that I objected to was the statement that LEDs were all-around
"worse" headlights, based on one factor alone: "lumens/watt". I've been countering that there are
other important factors to consider, and that "lumens/watt" is only one consideration among many.
If you were simply stating some credible lumen/watt figures for comparable power we'd have no
reason to argue. However, you went farther than that.

OK, the link says that the "1 Watt" (more like 1.2 Watt in reality) Luxeon is 30 lumens, giving
25 lumens/watt. I spent a few minutes trying to find lumens/watt figures for "1 Watt" halogens.
(Hopefully 1.2 Watt to be accurate.) So far I've only found numbers for bulbs of much higher wattage.
The closest I've come is a whopping 6 Watt halogen producing 13.3 lumens/watt in the link
somewhere above. (Somehow I'm unimpressed) Without a credible lumens/watt number for a
1.2 Watt halogen, it's still apples and oranges. One of the flashlight-geek sites might have
something useful...


Dunno, I've never seen it go that dim because it takes too long to run the batteries down that far.
(NiMHs are expensive so I wouldn't want to abuse them in that way anyway, except for an emergency)
However, my previous bike light (Black Diamond Moonlight) was about 1/5 the brightness of the
EL500 and I rode happily with that for a year, no problem, which is why I said half the brightness
was fine. I got the EL500 when I started riding a road bike because it flashes off bits of road glass
better, which never concerned me on the mountain bike knobbies, & I figured it would be a great
camping/emergency light, too.

Merriwether

Ugh... Except there was no such "part". I didn't say that LED were "all around worse" head lights. I just never said that.

Even in that first post I said that if one wanted a light with a long run time, LED were better-- so plainly I wasn't saying that LED were all around worse "based on one factor alone". And since I did say that LED had better runtimes, were cooler, and were lighter weight, in the first post, and since I also said that if you wanted a light with those features LED were better -- and then again, and again, and again-- you haven't been "countering" in pointing out that other factors matter. You've just been saying what I've already said.

But then, of course, if somehow this wasn't clear in the first post, I clarified and repeated these points-- again, and again, and again-- all to no apparent effect in you.

We would have no reason to argue about what I was saying if you just *read* what I was saying; and if somehow the first post didn't make it clear you'd think the next one, and the next one, and the next one might have done so.

I can say it again, so there's no misunderstanding. I agree that LED are better for some headlight uses, namely low light and long duration uses. But I've said that *so* many times already that I can't see why my saying it now, this time, should make a difference.

A couple of other things. I said that LED are not good seeing lights-- but I stand by that. At least given LED now. You seem to think I should qualify statements like that because of the possibility of superhuman vision.

In the first post, I said, too, that halogen produce more lumens per $. And that is true, particularly in light of the very low initial cost of halogen lamps.

Even in terms of lumen-hours, the LED take a long time to gain an advantage. A very cheap 2AA halogen headlamp can be had for a few bucks at Walmart, about $10, and non-rechargeable AA batteries can be had at less than $.25 a piece. Such a lamp consumes about 1w-- a 2.5 volt, .5 amp bulb is about what you could expect in a little light like that. Let's assume a two hour runtime per battery set, a realistic assumption. It would take 120 hours of operation for this light to cost $40 to operate. $40 is the low purchase price now for an El500, a 1w LED bike light.

If you didn't care that much about seeing the road, though, you could substitute a krypton bulb for the halogen and extend the run times by a factor of four or so. Then it would be years of riding before the LED saved money.

Of course, you wouldn't have to hassle with battery changes with the LED, and that would be an advantage. But, in terms of $ for a low-powered headlamp, the halogen or just incandescent lamps can be seen as a better choice.

Right, and so you *do* know. It's the long run time that you're concerned with, since you're happy with a light half the brightness of the EL500 with fresh batteries. But, whatever-- what you want is your business, and you can figure out what you wrote in your own posts.

Yeah, that's called a "typo". I was talking about the 20 milliamp LEDs, 20mA.

LED aren't so good now as seeing lights-- people with exceptional night vision aside. Halogen are better *as seeing lights* (I add so you don't think I'm saying "halogen are just better" because I don't repeat the qualifications in every sentence). They're better (as seeing lights) because they can produce enough light to illuminate the road usefully, and for not a lot of money. LED can't yet do that.

timmyag

There seems to be a lot of confusion between light output and watts here they are in no way the same thing. Watts control how fast your batteries run down and lumens control how much you can see, well roughly obviously I’m assuming the same battery size and a good reflector.

LED’s currently in use (luxeons) will produce about 25 Lumen/w
Small (10-20w) Hids will do 50 Lumen/w
Halogen will do 5-40 Lumen/w

Witch is where the confusion stars and why people have such differing opinion, incandesant lights (lights that make light with a bit of glowing wire) like halogen have several factors that effect the efficiency, fist the wattage the higher the wattage the more efficient doubling the watts will roughly increase efficiency by 20-40%, secondly the physical size of the bulb an mr16 halogen bulb will be twice as efficient as an mr11 halogen at the same wattage (mr 11 is a very common bulb in bike lights mr16 is bigger and is used in some bikes is also used in buildings at a high voltage)

So the important question is is a halogen better that an LED
Well a typical mr11 10w halogen will produce 190 lumen and 2 5w LED 240 lumen

So LED’s are just staring to compete of this front but there so much more expensive but as you get bigger halogens for off road work like a mr16 20w your LED is noticeably less efficient and much more expensive not to mention you would need 4 of the to reach a comparable wattage and 6 to reach the same light output so is just not worth having.

But again if we go smaller so for riding on a road a 6 w halogen will produce about 80 lumens and a 5w led 120 so the LED is staring to beet the halogen by almost 50% hear, and as you get down to 2w and 1w halogens you can produce the same amount of light with half or a quarter the wattage LED’s

So which is better really is decided by how much light you use. I got the figure I used of the web but I don’t think halogens are changing much though LED’s are I used the 25lm/w because that’s luxeon led/s achieve witch is what lights are using at the moment but if you go to specialist LED websites like this https://www.ultraleds.co.uk/product_i...533cdc1ec083af
You can get LEDs witch will produce 50lm/w ich is actually about the same as a HID but again these are only 1w at the moment so you would 3-4 to rival a 10w halogen.

If you made it to the end of this well done I hope people understand things better I know I don’t tell you what to buy but remember that LED’s are no more efficient than a 10w halogen and much more expensive but anything less than a 10w halogen and they start beating them hands down, but keep an eye on those LED’s give then a year or 2 and they will be rivalling HID’s as well as large halogens.

bkrownd

Yes yes yes, we're not confused on that point, we're just being a bit loose with the terminology.
People certainly do get this confused around here quite a bit, though. (If we want to get picky about
it, even lumens are a dodgy measure, because they depend on the specific spectrum of the light.)
The rest of what ya said is a nice summary, BTW. Apparently halogen lumens/Watt fall strongly as
a function of Watts, which I only noticed last night, though I'm not quite sure off-hand exactly why
they can't get the same lumens/watt out of a well-designed tiny halogen.

bkrownd

That IS exactly the same kind of statement I was objecting to in the first place. They might not
"illuminate the road usefully" for you, but they ARE illuminating the road usefully for many.
I certainly have a good "seeing light", because I'm seeing just fine with it. (and I do NOT have
"superhuman vision") It's a matter of opinion/preference/conditions, so you need to preface this
with a big fat IMO so it isn't presented as if it's a statement of fact.

slvoid

Guys guys, stop arguing.
If you ride like grandma (0-15 mph), use LED's.
If you ride like armstrong (25-35 mph) or through single trails at night, use HID.
Everything else inbetween, use halogen.
IMHO, YMMV, etc etc.

Erick L

Ok, I've had the Emitter for a few weeks and everything I quoted above is true, but I don't know how NiteHawk can claim the Emitter to be as powerful as a 10w halogen. I had a NiteHawk Viper II, which is 5w halogen and I don't find the Emitter to be as powerful as that one. It's very close though. Actually, I find the Emitter beam more "useful". The halogen beam, while it projected more light, was more like a small "sploch" (is that a word?) with no scattered light. The Emitter beam is a bright circle (in practice, it's an oval since the light is projected at an angle), surrounded by a larger and dimmer circle, and then some scattered light. I can project it further and still see what's closer to my front wheel. While I returned the 5w halogen, I decided to keep the Emitter.

More about the Emitter:

-I find the 10% option is very useful to conserve energy when there are plenty of street lights. It can act as a be-seen light.
-The orientable head is great! Something lacking on most lights. There's no room on my handlebar and there's a bag in the way. I mounted the Emitter on the stem (sideways). With other lights, this means the light would point at the sky, with the Emitter, I just rotate the head to aim at the pavement, under the handlebar bag.
-The on/off button is annoyingly difficult to push. A problem if you switch often between high and low beam. And the sequence is high/off/low/off. It could use a sliding switch instead, with the off position in the middle and high/low on each side, for example.
-The mount is solid. I don't have any jiggling problem as others have reported. My concern is durability. The quick-release attaches to the base of the battery pack and the rest of the light (top of battery pack and head) is secured only by three small plastic parts that snaps the battery pack shut. It's solid but you have to unsnap and snap every time you change the batteries. I'd be afraid of breaking one of these snaps after time (Hope it's clear, my English falls short here). Also, it's easy to think the battery pack is snap shut while it's only holding by two of the three snaps. Vibrations could make the light fall off then.

There's a user review floating on the web that compares the Cateye EL-300, the NiteHawk Emitter and the Planet Bike Super Spot. Click here to see it. I'm curious about the Super Spot, since it sells for 26$ CAD at MEC, batteries included! That's less than half of what I paid for the Emitter (65$ CAD at MEC).

Edit: There's another review, but it seems the poster only changed the name of the EL-300 for EL-500. Something doesn't look right. Anyway, it's here.

2manybikes

"The question: Are there lights for bikes using that same technology but could be cheaper and even work as well as those expensive and heavy rechargable sytems? -- the ones with the dual headlamps and batteries that go in your bottle cage "

You asked...........The answer in NO........not even close. The expensive and heavy lights are worth more. You get what you pay for. The lupine LED lights are probably the brightest around ,but will not "hold a candle" (sorry) to the more powerfull halogens and the HID's. I have a nightrider "Blowtorch". I have an "Edison 10" from Lupine on order, I need more burn time.

sweeks

This was 13 years ago. Good, bright LED lights are getting cheaper. Batteries are frequently of the Li-ion ("Lithium-ion") and have good power density (capacity for weight) and re-charging characteristics. Just sayin'...
Steve

Mr IGH

Hey, this thread was started the same month you joined up. Just sayin'!

sweeks

Hahaha! Yes, it seems like a blink in time. But look at the progress in LED lights (and IGHs!).
:-)

PatrickGSR94

Curious as to why you felt the need to bump it back up...

andr0id

The clusters are a pretty lame hack to keep things cheap.

There are single LED lamps that put out over 1000 lumens. I've got the Protac HL-3 and it will pretty much blind you.

ProTac HLŽ 3

Bicycle light manufacturers really need to up their game.

PatrickGSR94

@andr0id he asked that question 13 years ago...

andr0id

Oddly enough, the cheap manufacturers are STILL using clusters of crappy LEDs to make flashlights and headlights instead of a single high lumen LED. How little things have changed.

PatrickGSR94

well yeah, like the cheap-o $15 WalMart junk.

Andy_K 

This is kind of cool as zombie threads go. I remember in 2008 being kind of excited about a Cateye light that put out 1500 candlepower, though at the time people here were recommending spending the extra money for a Dinotte or getting a Fenix flashlight. Now I can get a light the will burn a hole in someone's retinas for $25.