I'm looking for a bike light that's bright enough to commute 20 miles or so on totally unlit back roads every single day well after dark. the light must have

1200+ lumens
wide beam so I can see roadside deer
2+ hour battery life at max output

I'd prefer internal batteries vs wired battery packs

Does anybody have any recommendations?

This one:

Cree XML - T6 LED Mountain Bicycle Lamp Bike Light Headlight-15.51 and Free Shipping| GearBest.com

This Battery:
https://www.fasttech.com/products/0/...0-battery-pack

I attached this light, https://www.amazon.com/XCSOURCE%C2%A.../dp/B00KD8F9LO on my helmet and it is GREAT!!!!

The 5,000 LUMEN is pretty nice.

Get 2 lights.

One small powerful lithium powered LED for your helmet. It should be very focused and "long throw" so you can point it as needed with your head.

The second should be wider beam and mounted to your bars. Most bike specific lights will work.

My combo is $75 Eagletac DX30LC2
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B014AYMDWE/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

And
B&M Ixon IQ Premium with separate battery pack. Should be under $100 now.
https://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?389285-REVIEW-Busch-amp-Muller-Ixon-IQ-Premium-Warning-Photo-Heavy

I've tried over a dozen cheap lights, and they always fail. Tired of it.

Do they even make a light with these specs? 1200 Lumens is very bright, especially using an internal battery that can go 2+ hours...

You'll find plenty external battery/wired lights like that, but a single light with a rechargeable battery with those specs may not be available (that puts out a LEGIT 1,200 lumens...).

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Is a 1200 w internal battery light. My brother has this and it works fine. Brighter than needed and a little larger than most bike lights but still fits on (or under as we do) the bars without looking huge.

You can see the stats here: Lezyne - Engineered Design - Products - LED Lights - Super Drive 1200XXL

1200 lumes at 1.45 hr

$90 on amazon.

Personally I'd save your money and buy something around 600 watts. IMO that is bright enough for any situation.

+1. I do the same.

Dark country roads
1200 lumens is likely too bright for rural dark roads, unless you are speeding downhill and need to see way down the road. With 1100 lumens, the road reflection right in front of my bike was really too bright, and especially any reflective signs were annoyingly bright. So you can run the light at half power, 600 lumens, while cruising on country roads.

I have 2000 lumens now, and really like the bright light for city streets. It can compete with car headlights with a big pool of bright light on the road ahead. It's good for those times when car headlights are in my eyes and the road is hard to see, and for those patches of alternating bright streetlights and dark sections between streetlights.

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Lezyne
That Lezyne looks good. It weighs 250 grams (without the mount, so maybe 280 grams?) which is fairly heavy, so the mount needs to be sturdy. My Dinotte XML-3 with a large 4-cell battery pack is only 340 grams, not that much heavier. It goes 2.5 hours at 2000 lumens, 10 hours at 500 lumens.

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Cheap lights

For commuting every day, I'd consider getting a pair of the inexpensive no-name lights. These may be prone to more failures, so a spare on the bike would be good! They certainly are a lot less expensive. The batteries may more quickly wear out and stop holding enough charge. But the lights are so cheap, they are practically disposable.

My Dinotte has a wide, very smooth beam, with no bright lines or hot spots, and no sharp cutoff at the edge like a flashlight beam has. But it's expensive.

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Helmet lights
Years ago,I had a LED flashlight on my helmet, to go with my (200 lumens! how times have changed!) bike light. It was nice to be able to point it down side roads before I turned, or spotlight suspected potholes in the road. I froze a dog in place once, by blasting the light in his eyes. But I never liked how I needed to hold my head "just so" and keep it still so the light didn't go all over. Kind of annoying.

I use a Cateye Volt 700, which is good. Maybe could be a *bit* brighter in some situations, but I'm pretty happy with it. I think their newest one is the 800, which probably would have been spot on for me. I think at full 700 lumens, it's supposed to last about an hour. Again, I can't imagine an internal-battery light that puts out 1200 lumens and could last 2+ hours...

BTW, there is an entire subforum dedicated to lighting, maybe you'll find some answers in there.

1200+ lumens is useful in the city or on country roads if it's raining. A wet night seems to suck the light out of everything.

I'd get the Fenix BT30R if I were shopping for a bike light in that price range and thought I needed something brighter than the B&M Ixon IQ Premium, which I don't.

These are my two wired lights that I currently have but I can't seem to find a way to get them spaced out so I have good coverage at a distance. they really suck in the winter (goes from 2+ hours at max to about 35 minutes once it hits freezing)

https://www.amazon.com/Fenix-percent...ix+bc30r&psc=1

I was thinking almost the exact opposite.

IMO, there is no such thing as too bright for rural roads, particularly if you are in storms or fog, though in clear conditions where you have no oncoming lights to mess with your eyes, it doesn't take many lumens to get decent visibility. Having said that, one of the reasons I like a lot of power in those situations is that most of my experience is on busy highways so lights from oncoming cars shrink your pupils

I used to run a 1650 lumen setup which was generally very adequate, but once the spray started kicking up, I found myself wishing for more. I've collided with all kinds of debris in the dark, the weirdest thing being a bed spring -- the metal was all black and I couldn't see the thin lines in the wet/spray so I suddenly found myself totally tangled up in it. On the plus side, the springs totally broke my fall and I was uninjured

I no longer use the lights from my old commute as I live in an urban area now -- they are way too bright and are too distracting to others even when properly aimed. Plus, my experience is that urban cycling speeds are generally lower than rural ones. I must admit I also find many of the Portland Freds who run poorly aimed 1000+ lumen setups (especially those who run daytime strobes at night) obnoxious because they blind people in the name of visibility.

For urban riding, I use a light that maxes out at 600 lumens but typically run it lower because ambient lighting is usually adequate. I do have a totally unlit descent through tight curves which makes me wish for my old setup since it doesn't give me nearly enough visibility

This is a huge problem. A lot of people out here run a low fork mounted light which helps throw shadows in such conditions in addition to a bar or helmet light.

I'm not sure that "more light" would solve the problem in storms or fog. If you've driven in fog, turning on your high beams makes things worse not better because the light reflects off the fog back into your face. If the road being wet is a problem then more lumens is an improvement (though better color temperature from the light also helps), but if the issue in storms is putting light through pouring rain you can have the same problem - brighter light just means more light reflected off the rain back at you.

I'm just extrapolating from cars, fog lights on cars are not "brighter", they're closer to the ground. I had to drive through fog on a trip last year in my car, and I know that putting out more light I quickly realized was a mistake and made things worse not better.

td;dr: More light can help if the issue is with the road surface being wet, but my experience in a car tells me that more light makes things worse with fog, and sometimes doesn't help with rain coming down.

I have a CygoLite Rover II (max 250 lumens on super high) that has a bottle for the 2500 Mah battery to fit inside and the bottle then fits into a bottle cage on the bike. In winter i stick the bottle inside my jacket and that keeps the battery a lot warmer and thus running longer. I also carry a spare 2000 Mah battery at all times.

Cheers

For fog I have an amber cover i put on my CygoLite Rover II and it really helps.

Without the cover.

IMG_3553 by Miele Man, on Flickr

With the cover.

IMG_3554 by Miele Man, on Flickr

Cheers

I do a lot of night riding on rural roads and although my CygoLite Rover II lights the entire two lane road plus shoulders well I still would like more range when riding at speed so I can see critters at the side of the road before those critters get onto the road.

I also prefer a separate battery pack so that I can change the battery if it runs down.

Cheers

This can be the case for bikes too -- high lumen beams look like a light saber. But with a bike, you can easily change the mount/aim of the lights to mitigate this effect (and this is necessary). I've been in fog so thick I once somehow lost the road even though it was perfectly straight, went over the embankment, and into a ditch filled with 3' of water

Another reason to use bright lights in fog is to help motorists spot you out -- you're otherwise totally invisible.

Oh hell, I'll sell you one of my light and motion seca 1400 headlights for $150. It's hard to beat those things.

The 1200XXL Superdrive weighs in on my scale at 241.5 g. Mount is 38.7 For a total of 280.2.

This light is actually my brothers. Believe it or not I've been running a $30 headlight/tailight combo for a while now. 155 watts on high hehe.

I am hijacking his light now as my schedule is changing as of tomorrow forcing me to ride at 3 am.

I use single battery (18650) flashlights. One on the bars (800 or so lumens) and one on the helmet (400 lumens). This works fine on the dark mup and roads at night. The helmet light is especially useful on the MUP to look for critters on the side of the road in the brush. The problem is that run time of the larger one (a XinTD C8 V5) is about 1.5 hours. For 1200 lumens, you probably want a dual beam unit and unfortunately a light with that output will suck a lot of power and a battery pack will be required. Or willingness to replace battery during the ride.

You might want to check out some light threads on mtbr.com as mountain bikers have need for bright lights for night riding.

Lol yeah that's what fog is like...

We could debate on fog I suppose, but fog acts differently than other stuff. More light can be significantly worse than less light, because the fog reflects the light back at you and it scatters on the moisture making it impossible to see through. Brighter is not better for fog.