We were at Costco last weekend and noticed a 3 pack of 200 lumen lights with the required 3 AAA batteries in the package - for $20! My girlfriend bought a pack, her power was out for hours the night before and it didn't take much to convince her that these would have come in handy then. I couldn't find them on the Costco.com site, but it's not unusual for the store and the website to have different listings.

I tried one out after it got dark, and it was brighter than my 185 lumen Fenix L2D but not as bright as the 220 lumen Terralux. 3 modes, low, high and strobe. If you're wondering if you should try some lights for riding you can try these today at Deal Extreme pricing and bypass the wait for delivery. Put one on the handlebars, one on your helmet, and you'll be surprised at what you've been missing at night. At least until you buy even brighter lights.....

True Value Hardware has 220 lumen lights that run off 3 AAA's for $27. These look well made. About the same quality and much cheaper and more powerful than my Dinotte 200L that I paid over $100 for several years ago.

These looked well made too, not as well as the Fenix but about as good as the Teralux.

I'd be surprised if they are truly 200 lumens out the front of light.

J.

How easy are these to mount onto a bike? How long does the battery last?

I'd be surprised too. A P7 must be dirt cheap nowadays so they could easily make a 500 lumen light (given the usual lumen inflation). It's probably some old stock XR-E's and puts out 75 lumen on a good day.

They should be very easy to mount to the handlebars using one of the Twofish products. The look to wide to mount using the AA sized lockblock I used for AA lights, but they make wider ones for locks and bigger lights. Other people have used conduit hangers and sections of old inner tubes to amke big rubber bands to attach lights.

I'm unsure how long the battery lasts too, my GF bought them to use as flashlights, and I only used one for about a minute to see how bright it was.

I doubt they're really 200 lumens (just like my magicshine isn't 1,000 lumens), but the package had over 3 times the rated lumens as my Fenix did when I bought it, for 1/3 the price.

I looked on the package to see what kind of emiter it had, and all it said was that it was a Cree.

By and large most light mfgs quote the theoretical maximum that the LED can put out but don't include losses do to reflector or thermals. A lot - often the Asian knockoffs - quote something completely made up. Actual performance is almost always far, far less than what they quote. There are few companies like Lupine that do a great job of measuring the light out the front but that would be far and away the exception rather than the rule.

J.

My wife picked up a pack of these. They run off of 3xAAA batteries, and are brighter than my Fenix L2D premium Q5 (Fenix claims a lumen rating of 180 on turbo, though I have no way to verify that). They are also brighter than the Lowes/Task Force lights (clamed 150 lumens).

The OP stated they are brighter than his Fenix L2D (claimed 185 lumens) but not as bright at his Terralux (claimed 220 lumens).

The actual lumens they put out is unknown, but it seems reasonable to conclude it's somewhere around the claimed 200.

We've got the same Fenix, and I thought it was rated at 185 lumens then. How's yours holding up? The power was out at work on Tuesday morning, and we used it to light up a small room then - but when I use it next to the Magicshine I can't tell if it's on or not.

I have my Fenix in a Two-Fish lock block with Eneloop batteries in it. I keep it in my bike bag (usually a Carradice Nelson longflap) as my emergency headlight. It seems to work well in that capacity, and I'm sure it'll work just fine if called into service. I have a second with Eneloops in my 72 hr bag. I charge them 1x/year just to make sure they're fresh. If it was actually needed, the Fenix would be plenty of light for emergency situations.

Personally, I like the Jet Beam BA20 better than the Fenix. It is brighter, looks/feels about the same, and I picked it up for ~$40. The Fenix has several modes I don't ever use or need (strobe, med, high; I only use turbo or low).

Used one for a while, but the batteries can't supply enough power to be useful. I get 20-30 minutes on high if that. Now... I did play with it and found you can run it on a Li ion cell, but it doesn't quite fit. If you think its bright on the stock batteries you should see it with a decent power source.

I have been runing this walmart light from the tool section for a couple years. i get about 4 hours of run time on a charge.

Thanks for the pic. More details or side shot of the light. I like multi task lights to.

The Nebo Redline series is what I use. 'Bout $25. Claim 220 lumens. Multifunction.

Two have failed in the switch department. Nice thing is the 1 year manufacturer's no questions asked warranty. Just return to Nebo Tools in Grand Prairie, Texas for satisfaction. They DO answer the phone.

The mount that came with the light I adapted to several bikes here is a good side view of it on my Windsor.



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They work well enough to be a quick and cheap solution until you do your research to get better lights:

Exactly the point I was trying to make!

WOH Why did I not think of that. Two hose clamps. Genius :-)

I ordered one of those 4x18650 rechargeable magic shine 900lumen Knockoffs for $47. states 1200lumens (yeah right) but testes to 850-900 lumens ie more than enough.

for now a little low watt led light till it arrives. works surprisingly well for a little flash light. those twin flash lights look amazing. is that ATES or picture exposure enhanced?

Looks like the same model that keeps on upping their lumens,
I bought a 3 pack in 2010 rated at 100 lumens. Then they
increased it to 150 lumens in 2011. And for 2012, it's 200.
Wonder what will happen in 2013

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BfxHYkhzLM&feature=plcp

I just used a cheapo two year old $60 Sanyo 12-megapix digital camera with all the settings set to "auto" to take those pictures. That is as good as my camera abilites get along with always taking multiple shots and then picking the one that turns out the best and deleting the others. I also have a little program on my laptop that can make combo pictures out of several pictures like that 4-in-1 picture and reduce the resolution and memory size for easy posting. That is all that was done to that picture.

ok what I mean is this. is that video representative of what your "EYES" saw or did the camera blow it up so it looks brighter in the video than it did in real life? ie how close was it to as the eye's see it.

Pretty close, might look just 10% or so brighter in the bottom right picture of the grid then it looked to my eye that night because I think that camera shows just slightly more contrast between light and dark then my eye and it was obviously full night darkness to the sides. Do realize of course that on black pavement especially wet black pavement it doesn't look as bright as on the light grey dirt and grass of that alleyway outside of the back of my shop where I took that photo because stuff that is black colored doesn't reflect light as well and wet pavement tends to bounce even the brightest light up into the sky instead of lighting up the road in front of you a problem even with the very best car headlights. They give me enough light for me to see on my daily commute without outrunning my lights up to about 15-20mph with both of them on the low setting and can do 25+ mph with both of them on the high setting (how photos were taken) without outrunning my light and will light up road reflectors and road signs about a 1/4 of a mile in front of me, but those are surfaces that are designed to maximize light reflection.

They light up the road in front of me way better then anything I have used before but it is also true I have never payed over $50 for a bike headlight or a flashlight used as one either. Better light (and a lot less weight!) then a set-up on one of my old bikes that consisted of a single 4-D size maglight with the maglight brand name 3-watt LED conversion bulb that I had duck taped to the side of the top frame tube pointing out the front.

Nerys, I stopped and snapped a couple quick pictures over the handlebars on my commute home from work last night early this morning just after 3a.m. when I had the road to myself to show you how they look on black pavement which because of the dark color doesn't look as bright. Original alleyway picture on top (re-sized and cropped) and new picture from this morning on the bottom (re-sized and cropped):









This second photo looks as far as I can tell exactly the same as it does to my eye as far as brightness. I think it was the light bouncing back from the closest road reflector that kept the camera from "enhancing the brightness" like it did with the older picture in the alley which as I said I only think shows about 10% more brightness then it did to my eye. The vast majority of the difference in brightness is because the black pavement doesn't light up as well and reflect as much light as the light grey dirt and grass of the alley way. Do notice that the lights are lighting up the road reflectors way off into the distance and those are the little white specks you can see reflecting back on the right hand edge of the road into the distance. You might notice the handlebar stem is not the same from the two pictures, it's the same bike just upgraded to a four bolt stem instead of the cheap two bolt one that came with the bike. In both pictures both lights are on their high setting (2 @ 200lm = 400lm total if the rating is accurate).