Originally Posted by
Papa Tom
Now that it's getting light a little later in the morning, I'm thinking about pulling my headlight out of the drawer and snapping it back on my handlebars. The light I've owned for about 14 years is a 10 watt NiteRider with a big, square battery pack that nearly burns my house down every time I go to charge it. Unfortunately, it hasn't been used much, so pretty much all I do is charge it and let the charge trickle down so the battery doesn't die altogether.
I'm afraid it won't last a full commute, so I'm thinking about replacing it with one of the new LED headlights I see everywhere. However, all the options I see now seem to be much lower wattage and much cheaper than the $120 I spent on this one all those years ago. Can somebody tell me what I need to look at and what I need to spend to get the kind of lighting power my Nite Rider provided in its prime?
I have the same old Niterider. Great light.
As I understand it, that lamp was outputting in the 200 lumens range. You'll be shocked by what the tech allows for today.
Small, self contained headlamps ( i.e. no batt pack, no wires) like the Light & Motion Urban 400 puts out twice the lumens, has 3 power settings, and weighs probably 1/10 of the Niterider 10w halogen for about the same money (in ansolute dollars). Value today is, in comparison, much better.
light temp is different, and while I prefer halogen for this reason, the benefits of LED far outweigh the cons.
You could probably replace and upgrade the battery pack to L-ion, thereby saving weight and gaining run time, but that's beyond my techie know how.