Has anyone used/seen/had experience with the Satechi Ridemate headlight? It's got an interesting feature - the USB charging port for other electronic devices. If it's truly rated at 500 lumens, it + it's tail light runs about $75.00 together on amazon, which is nearly $30.00 less than the Cygolite metro 500 and the niterider 550 + tail light.

Thoughts?

I just took a look at the Ridemate over on ebay; Interesting self-contained lamp. Not much info on the batteries other than 2500mah.. It might be 4 - 2500mah Nimh AA's in series or one 18650 Li-ion....Doesn't say if they are replaceable ( or not ). If replaceable that would be a better selling point as that would mean you could switch batteries if needed. Otherwise, 2500mah is not much juice for recharging your phone. If you were truly intending to use the lamp as a lamp I wouldn't use it to recharge the phone UNLESS you had an emergency.

Just recently I bought two cheap Chinese Li-ion ( 18650 ) phone chargers. One single cell the other a duel cell. Sadly both will not work with the better Panasonic cells. Simply not enough room in the battery compartment. That means I have to use my cheap Ultrafire cells. I tested my single cell charger just he other day. It charged my Droid Maxx ( with 3000mah internal battery ) from about 60% charge to about 94 % before running out of juice. That took about 20 minutes. Better cells would of been better. The duel cell will probably do better. These chargers cost about $3 to $5 respectively on K/D. They work but would of been better if they would hold the better cells. ( they are however both pieces of crap, don't waste your money )

Interesting concept. I'm eager to hear what people think. The Amazon reviews are favorable.

Well, I will let both of you know how they turn out, I went ahead and ordered them, and plan to do a full review with night shots when they arrive next week. I'm a sucker for lesser known brands.

I hadn't planned on charging anything with it really, I guess it's handy to have "just in case". 2500 mah isn't a whole lot. You're right about the batteries. Judging from the shape, I'm suspecting a single 18650 cell, for the reduced circuitry needed in charging parallel/series cells, and the higher voltage. If the unit can be disassembled at all, I'll find out. And if (moderately) easily replaceable, I may just try to stick a larger capacity one in there. I just need to find out the their charging circuit is time based, or capacity based.

The shape reminds me of magicshines eagle 600 to some degree.

stay tuned.

Both lights arrived, review here: linky