cthenn

I just bought a Cateye Volt 700 for some planned night riding during the winter months, and I have some questions for owners of this light. What mode do you find works best for road riding? The "dynamic" mode seems extremely bright, probably too much for semi-lighted urban environments.

Is the "all night" mode bright enough for most urban riding?

The manual doesn't say what the "base" light output is for the hyper-constant mode, but it appears to be "all night" with bursts of brighter light? That would probably be the best mode, as drivers are becoming accustomed to flashing headlights equating to cyclists. It's too bad this mode doesn't have a higher base light output (such as "normal" mode), but maybe it's good enough for most situations.

Lastly, what kind of real-world run times do you get for various modes? The manuals always claim a certain run time for a full charge, but I wonder how accurate it is.

Oh...anyone know where I can get spare batteries? I could only find a couple on ebay and a few obscure websites, but there doesn't appear to be a plethora of places to buy them online...

thanks!

Klassicbike

Great lights, Im running two of them.
I mostly run on unlit roads and am a bit night blind so I use the full power mode. When riding through lit towns and cities I use the Constant with flashing.

Cateye is usually pretty conservative about their claims. I never exactly measured but I think my runtime on full power is around 2-3 hours. In a review I also saw that after measuring the lumens the output is actually 750 something lumens and goes down to 700 when the battery is empty. In constant+Flashing I get much more runtime.

Sorry Im not sure about where to find the single batteries as I have two of the 700's on my bars and usually only run one of them so that Im never out of battery, maybe check google for BA-3.1 that seems to be the product name of the battery.

ColonelSanders

From here --> HL-EL470RC | CATEYE

Dynamic mode....700 lumens： 2hrs
Normal mode......300 lumens：3.5hrs
All-Night mode....100 lumens： 10hrs
Hyper Constant...800/100 lumens： 7hrs
Flashing mode.....100 lumens： 50hrs

Not wanting to rain on your parade or anything, but I actually think the Volt 800 has a much better selection of lumen output, mainly because I think the 100 lumen outputs of the Volt 700 is just too weak.

Here is the Volt 800's outputs.

HL-EL471RC | CATEYE

High mode..........800 lumens： 2hrs
Middle mode.......400 lumens：3.5hrs
Low mode...........200 lumens： 8hrs
Hyper Constant...800/200 lumens： 7hrs
Flashing mode.....200 lumens： 80hrs

Looigi

From the conspicuity perspective, it doesn't take much to be conspicuous in dark unlit rural areas. In urban environments, you're competing with a lot of other lights and lighting.

I find that though I can get by running my light at less than the max 700 lumens, I always run it at max, unless I need to squeeze out more run time. If I don't need it to see by, I run it flashing.

cthenn

Hmm, don't know why I didn't see that...thanks.

You kind of did rain on my parade! I like the idea of a flash incorporated with the constant light, but yeah, I'd MUCH rather have the 200 lumen base light. Oh well, too late to return the light now, guess I'll have to go with this one for now.

BigC_82

I plan on getting one for my helmet mounted light. As I liked it measured more than 700 lumens from this review. Review: CatEye Volt 700 - Mtbr.com