Originally Posted by
smurray
I'm going to start commuting to work on a regular basis and will have to leave well before sunrise in the winter. The majority of my ride is fairly well lit with street lamps, however there are a few miles that have no street lighting what-so-ever and also happen to have really crappy roads with potholes. I tried doing the ride with my little 80 lumen Knog blinder headlight and it didn't put out nearly enough light. I'm wondering what the minimum amount of lumens I should be looking at when shopping for a new light. I'd prefer to get a light that's fairly compact and can be recharged while at work. Also if it could be under $100 that would be great. I'm open to any suggestions either for specific lights or simply a minimum lumen amount.
Generally speaking, 200 lumens seems to be the low end of lights that you can actually see the road with. Light density decreases with the square of the distance so if you have just a little bit of light at the headlamp, you'll have much less the further you get from the lamp. If you have a lot of competing light sources, the effectiveness of a little bit of light is diluted even further. More light (and more sources) is better in all instances I've ever ridden in.
I would suggest lights like
these. The advertised output isn't 1200 lumens...it's closer to 600 lumens...but it's far superior to the Knog Blinder (which isn't
) for a less money. I'd suggest getting at least 2 and would even suggest 3...two on the bars and one on your head...if you want to actually see stuff on the road. Three of them are still going to be less than $100. I've been using similar lights for about 2 years now as well as Magic Shines from 2 to 3 years before that. I haven't experienced any failure of the lamp, or battery for that matter, in all the time I've been using them.
You can find other lights that cost more but, frankly, they have to offer a whole lot more value to beat the above. I haven't seen anything that is so vastly superior to be worth 3 to 10 times the cost.