Originally Posted by Merriwether
As a practical matter, though, the additional battery life of an LED light is not as much longer than a *comparably powered* halogen light as many people might think. For example, Princeton Tec has a four watt halogen headlamp, the Vortec, that runs on four AA batteries. It'll last 3.5 hours (at 70F). A Cateye Opticube El200 will last between 4-6 hours at the four watt level on four AA batteries.
I read what you wrote. You wrote "LED are worse headlights", "they're poor seeing lights", and "LED aren't better than halogen now". These are opinions, based on a limited number of parameters, but you presented them as if they were general facts. I was pointing out that that isn't the case.
The above quote is obviously in error. The commercially available luxeon lights (EL500, SuperSpot) are 1 Watt right now. A 4 Watt halogen will drain the batteries at least 4 times faster. The average 10 Watt halogen will drain the battery at least 10 times faster. That is a BIG difference, if you ask me. The EL200 you mention is a small fraction of a Watt - there is NO WAY on Earth that it can possibly consume 4-6 Watts. (The EL500 does not have a brightness control, BTW) The personal question becomes how much light do you really need, how often do you want to recharge your batteries, and how many batteries do you want to carry.