Originally Posted by
Outbound
The $175 option comes with the battery pack and pouch that provides a 3 hour runtime on high. The light head is not large enough to house enough batteries to create a usable runtime without it becoming very large and very heavy as AngerDan said, that is why I went for the external route.
The light output is going to be one of those things that is hard to get people to understand until they actually experience it in person. It's such a wide even wall of light for the trail version, and such a well defined intense cutoff for the road version, that it won't compare at all to a cheap light that is using a bowl optic and large cheap LED chips. Even if you stack up 5 of them on a bar.
Will the technology get better? Yep, will it happen next year? Nope. Why? Because these chips are one of the newest ones. XML2 has been around for almost 8-10 years now and the only improvements is that manufactures have boosted the amperage in order to get another 100-200 lumens to upsell as the next model year. It takes 4 times the lumens for a light to feel twice as bright. Lumens per watt isn't the concern in optical illumination, it's the luminance, or how bright a chip is. These are emitting 1500 lumens from a combined square area of less than 3.5mm^2. For comparison an XML2 is about 16 mm^2. That insane intensity is why we are able to create a controllable beam pattern.
I will say, I know many will still think any bike light over $100 is nuts. And for that I don't have an answer, some people will always want the cheaper option. I truly believe a good quality light really opens up a new door for how you get to enjoy your bike. I've ridden on many many many cheap lights over the years benchmarking and trying things out. The expensive lights, like the Seca 2500, are expensive, but man do they make a night ride so much more enjoyable, to the point I almost prefer to ride at night now, even when the days are long. That's why I benchmarked that light and made sure mine could match it in beam width (actually exceed it) and peak intensity, then one upped it by having a longer battery life with a lower weight overall package.
Hope to see our light on your bike soon.
Oh, I would totally be OK to buy one single headlight at higher price instead of fiddling with multiple ones. and I don't doubt the light from your light will be great. not sure if $175 great, but sure better than my $30 solution
I perform lighting design and know the actual outcome (an average lux/fc, uniformity etc.) is more important than just a single lumen number. with my flashlight I get a lot (a lot!) of light in one spot and little light over a wider area. So i see the limitation of normal flashlights for biking.
Would it be possible to have just 1.5 hours runtime with the batteries integrated? The issue I see with the external battery is that first more clutter. Second, when you have multiple bikes you take the light from bike to bike. Or when we commute and take off the lights to take in. Seems unnecessary hassle to deal with two "boxes" and cable. I assume no one wants to leave the light on the bike when it is locked up somewhere.
I see the limitations of lm/W and Wh per battery you have to deal with. Standard li-io batteries probably are where they are now, and LED may add 10 lm/w per year. so if you have that much lumen output, you will need a physically large battery for a while.
May I ask what lm/w your LED have? I assume manufacturers bin their LED and the lower efficiencies (100-140 lm/W or even less) go to light fixtures, and the higher ones to battery device? I found this 2014 anouncement of Cree breaking the
300 lm/w barrier. but none of their fixtures goes anywhere near that efficiency. Actually Cree is trailing a bit behind Philips these days regarding efficiency.