Originally Posted by
Richard Cranium
Dear Bicycle Light Manufacturer,
This is to let you know that you have really missed the mark with your current offerings.
All over the world sophisticated cyclists are using flashlights exclusively or are supplementing their bicycle lighting needs with flashlights.
The reason? You continue to make unwieldy bicycle lights that are either under powered or unnecessarily heavy and complicated to mount.
The answer. Start making bicycle lights that benefit from the "18650" Lithium Ion cell format. Make these lights so that the cell is contained in the body of the light and can be "swapped out"or charged in place.
Offer an optional external battery pack for those who absolutely require it, but standardize plugs and voltages across you lights so that as emitters and new lights come to market past purchases will not become obsolete.
And finally, make the damn light - a bicycle light with reflector and beam pattern that works for a bicyclist. And while you're at it - offer a bicycle light that has a "real" high beam and low beam. Geeeee-zussssss - it's not rocket science!
That is all - continue with your own crop of crap at your own risk. I may go into this business.
Except for the shaped beam requirement, I think "Exposure" lights meet most of your other wishes... albeit quite expensive. Some of the German made lights have shaped beams, but are again very expensive. Some dyno models also with shaped beams, but relatively low power. One of the problems with beam shaping and LED's is the physics of the matter. It ends up taking up a good bit of reflector real estate to come up with a good design, which starts making the light bigger than it could be with typical reflectors and lenses. Couple that with the fact that the typical cyclist may not really care to have that "perfect" beam pattern and is perfectly happy with the "round spot" and it just makes sense that no one is really pushing hard for that feature.
With multiple emitters using different beam patterns, you can arrive at a fairly decent, bike-friendly beam pattern (Troute lights prime example), which is what I've adopted for my lights, but competing with the Chinese on cost is completely out the realm of possibility. It's a freakishly competitive market with ridiculously low margins, definitely not for the faint of heart, and it get's harder to compete every day.