Originally Posted by
Looigi
Wow. Me too. Just got mine from Amazon yesterday and took it for a ride last night. It's replacing my 8 year old Light&Motion HID light which has (had?) a similar lumen rating. It's 2/3 the size and less than 1/4 the weight of just the NiMH battery for the old HID light, which was something like $350 at the the time. And it's significantly brighter and with a fairly wide uniform beam. I used to like the HID light because it was fairly hot in the center and had wide low level illumination. Even though the Expilion is brighter in the middle than the HID light, if I could shape the beam I would sacrifice some of the side intensity and make the center even brighter.
That was with the light on the bars. I want to try it mounted to my helmet and see how well that works.
It has 5 steady modes. Walking, which is really very feeble, then Med, High, Boost, and low, in that order. The difference going between Med and High and High and Boost isn't that much visually, but according to the spex has a rather dramatic effect on run times. Low is pretty dim, maybe OK for riding very slowly or in well lit areas. I have not yet verified the run times.
So far, the only place I have found spare batteries for it is the Cygolite website.
Yes, Cygolite Expilion 600 is a very good light as far as brightness and beam pattern go, but I have two problems with it:
1. The little soft rubber cover for the USB port is really poorly designed. Second week of use and the cover fell off as I was trying to peel it back to charge the battery. It seems impossible to put it back in the tiny hole (you can also see in the picture). So without a cover for the USB port the light is not weatherproof, and that's a dealbreaker.
2. The handle bar attachment does not inspire confidence to me, especially if it gets exposed to the elements a bit longer. Having such an expensive light on the handlebars means that I will need to remove it each time I lock the bike outside (which is nearly everyday), so the constant mounting and removal will inevitably cause the mount to break. Of course it has not broken yet, but it's the engineer in me thinking ahead.
Other than that it's really impressive and good bang for the buck.