Originally Posted by
mikey_mike
Have no clue about the quality for each as this will be my first time buying a head light. Main purpose will be on trail riding w/ occassional duties on my road bike, budget will be under $200. Help me decide, tnx!
For trail riding, 200 lumens isn't much. $200 doesn't buy much light for a commercial system either. I'd go HID or DIY halogen over LED for trail riding. The Trail Tech HID from
BatterySpace will put down 670 lumen for about $200. It won't have the run time of some of the LED systems but that's what you get for more light output
Alternatively...and everyone knew I was going to get here
...a
halogen MR16 overvolted 20% beats the efficiency of the HID for about half the price. Bulbs don't last as long but they are extremely cheap. Nor is it difficult to build them. You can build 2 of them...one for the bar and one for your helmet...for around the same price as the BatterySpace system. And for the same price, you'll get so much light (around 3000 lumens... about 5 times the HID or 15 times the LED) you'll be annoying to your buddies
They'll either make you ride at the back so they can see where they are going (with their wimpy lights
) or they'll make you ride at the front so that they don't have to ride in shadows