Mountain Bike Light Shootout 2018: The Best Lights to Own the Night

When lack of daylight strips our mountain bike ride time, we have to find alternative ways to get our fix.  Some of us may become weekend warriors, others may ride indoor trainers while the rest just melt away.  A high-quality light is a way to preserve your sanity!  This mountain bike light shootout is here to educate you on choosing the right lights.

I brought in a big gun mad engineer lighting expert to help me out.   At this point, you can call him “Dangerous”.  You can say he is obsessed with high-quality lights that enable him to ride as fast at night as during the day.  During a 24 hour event, he was once told to “turn those fucking lights off” while coming through the start/finish area.  His homemade lights that were likely 3x brighter than most cars lights on high beam were blinding anyone it his path.

Part of what sparked my interest here is the rise in popularity with cheap lights.  Try a little search on your Amazon and you’ll find a shit ton of cheap lights making boastful claims of using Cree LED’s (the gold standard) with hugely exaggerated performance claims.  Many stories are also floating around about these type lights combusting and burning down houses, cars and mountain bikers.

This comparison does include a few of those cheap lights but mainly the current hot high-quality lights on the market.  Some are lights that we know are really good.  Others are lights that some less picky riders think are really good – and maybe they are for their particular needs.

The following are the straightforward thoughts on the lights from “Dangerous”.

Exposure Joystick | $215 | Lumens 1000  | Runtime high: 1.5 hrs | 99 grams

• Pros
  • Excellent construction, extremely light, no wires, good button feel, intuitive controls, easy to reprogram.  GoPro mounts available.
• Cons
  • Expensive, standard helmet mount sucks with nylon bolt that strips easily and won’t fit all helmets.
  • Helmet mounting limited to on top due to the length of the housing.
  • Battery indicator can be hard to remember and not that useful.
  • Proprietary charge cable
• Overall Recommendation
  • Solid output and runtime for its size, excellent light for cable- and frustration-free helmet mounting.  Bright enough to complement a ~2,000lm handlebar light.  Highly recommended for a really simple setup for short XC rides or longer rides where you can meter output during climbs

NiteRider Lumina OLED 1100 Boost | $149 | 1100 lumens / 810 actual | Runtime on high: 1 hr | 172 grams

• Pros
  • OLED screen is excellent for monitoring runtime remaining and mode selection.
  • Initial output is good.  Cost is better than many single-cell competitors given the feature set.
  • Standard Micro-USB charge port.
• Cons
  • Programming is not super intuitive and buttons are not labeled correctly for what they do.
  • Max output is only available in hidden “boost” mode, falls short of claimed runtime and drops lumens as battery capacity drains.
  • Large housing, shitty mount that slips and feels like a child’s toy in addition to being humungous.
  • GoPro mounts are only made by K-Edge for $25 extra.
  • Insanely high helmet mounting to get snagged on trees.
  • Harsh cutoff to edge of the spill in the beam pattern.[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”]

    

• Overall Recommendation
  • This should be a good helmet light, but that renders the best feature of this one (the OLED screen) useless since you have to take your helmet off to see it.  This should be a good handlebar light but the beam pattern is way too narrow unless paired with a floody helmet light (backwards of typical setups).  Overall, this is the best light NiteRider has ever made, bar none, but without a wider beam, it struggles to be ideal for any application.

Lupine Piko R4 | $385 | 1800 lumens | Runtime on high: 1.15hrs | 214 grams

• Pros
  • Incredibly small housing for 1,800lm, wireless remote that works consistently.
  • Good beam pattern for helmet mounting, light enough with 2-cell battery to mount entire system on helmet (some may find it too heavy, but balances well with the pack on the back and light head forward).
  • Can mount light head forward for a very low profile helmet option.
  • Excellent construction quality, accessories for just about every setup you want.
• Cons
  • Way expensive for its class.
  • Single button makes programming difficult and impossible to remember the flashing sequences to get what you want so you’ll just set it once and leave it forever.
  • The low-profile and stiff button on housing is hard to find with thick gloves, even harder to press without tilting the mount.
  • Small size leads to poor thermals and quick thermal rollback if left on high at low-speed.
  • Proprietary charger.

• Overall Recommendation
  • If you want close to 2,000lm on a low-profile helmet mount and you don’t mind cables, this is the light to get.  Great beam for helmet, quality construction, solid performance, wireless remote that actually works, short rated runtime on max but if you use the remote to control output for your speed you’ll get 2-3hr rides without too much issue.

Light & Motion SECA 2500 Race | $430 | Runtime on high: 1.5 hr| 334 grams

•  Pros
  • Best beam pattern in the market currently, period.
  • Front face angled to prevent glare to the rider when standing.
  • Lightweight light head makes silicone strap mounting actually effective.
  • Decent battery life even on the smaller pack.
  • GoPro mount available.
• Cons
  • 6-freaking-foot-long cable from the light head is crazy and makes handlebar mounting a pain in the ass every time you mount it to not snag/drag/rattle.
  • Proprietary charger interface is limited and forces you to go through weird useless pulsing mode if you want more than 2 light levels.
  • Lots of plastic pieces feel cheap.
  • Large light head for helmet mounting, no remote.
  • Battery indicator only has three levels so is basically useless.
  • Weather sealing isn’t great on front lens and can lead to condensation inside in some environments.

• Overall Recommendation

The beam pattern alone makes this the best handlebar light available due to its wide, even distribution and spill.  If using one light on a helmet, then it’s pretty good for the same reason, it fills in everything in the field of view.  That said it is built with the least expensive construction practices available for an expensive high-end light and it has some very frustrating features, but it’s simple and it works, which will be enough for most people.

Extruded Chinese Garbage | $25 | 1200 lumens (claimed) 330 actual | 271 grams

• Pros
  • It’s $25.
• Cons
  • Literally, everything else.   The incredibly narrow beam pattern is useless on the trail.  It falls short of every single performance claim by an insane amount, dimmer than any “legit” lights.
  • Color is extremely blue on most to the point that it doesn’t even register as “white” light when tested.  Weather sealing is shit.
  • Thermal design is atrocious, lumen drop off rapidly, fraudulent LEDs (Cree clones) are used.
  • Construction could not possibly be any cheaper.  The battery pack is not sealed in any way shape or form, cells used are lowest capacity/quality available.  MOST lights actually are mis-wired or have fake cells included in the pack.
  • No battery protection, mounts are terrible.
  • The battery indicator is useless.  The user interface is the dumbest thing ever requiring cycling through Strobe, SOS, AND OFF before getting back to High.  Jesus these lights are awful.
• Overall Recommendation
  • If you hate yourself and hate riding at night and don’t want to spend more than $25 on lights despite your $5,000 bicycle, then these lights are for you.  If you give any shits at all about riding at night, DO NOT buy this garbage.

Round Chinese Garbage | $25

** We figured you know what a pile of poo looks like, so we’ll spare you the photos**

•  Pros
  • It’s $25.
• Cons
  • See above, only it’s round with one LED instead of two.
• Overall Recommendation
  • Fuck these lights are awful.

Gloworm X2 Adventure | $209 | 1700 lumens | Runtime on high: 1.5hrs | 366 grams w/22g remote

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• Pros
  • Excellent price for a high-end 1,700lm light, quality construction.
  • Good thermal design ensures consistent output.
  • Extension cables available if you want to stick battery in your pocket while leaving the option for mounting everything on the helmet with the 2-cell battery.
  • Multiple mount options including GoPro and QR handlebar clamp.
  • Interchangeable optics give user ability to tune beam pattern for a helmet (narrow/narrow) or bars (medium/elliptical) depending on primary use.
  • The battery indicator is relatively useful.
  • Extremely flexible cable on the light head is easy to snake through helmets.
• Cons
  • Have to hold the switch for 5 full seconds to turn the light off after going through minimum mode which is AN ETERNITY when on the trail.
  • The wireless remote is ridiculously inconsistent when helmet mounted because the signal isn’t strong enough to penetrate the housing, rendering the remote more frustrating than useful, which will make people not even use it.   We did receive an update from Glowworm on this issue. ” Gloworm became aware of the problem with the remotes and have implemented a tweak to the design that triples the effective range.”
  • The battery indicator is only on the pack making it less useful while actually riding.  The extension cable is thicker and stiffer than light head which can make for annoying bends and such when sticking battery in your pack.
  • Can be programmed but the process of doing so absolutely requires instructions and is incredibly tedious to the point that no one will do it except nerds like me.
• Overall Recommendation
  • Gloworm makes the best economy options in the high-end light market.  The optic options make it viable for either bars or helmet, which no competitor offers.  The performance and construction are solid.  If you don’t want to pay a ton, this is an excellent option for a higher output light, would pair well on the helmet with a L&M SECA on the bars, or on the bars with an Exposure Joystick or a Gloworm Alpha on the helmet.

Ravemen PR1200 | $99 | 1200 lumens | Runtime on high: 2hrs | 213 grams

Outbound Lighting Focal Trail Series | $250 | 1800 lumens | 416 grams

Beam Comparison

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Final thoughts from “Dangerous”

Personally, I want a ~2,000lm handlebar light with a ridiculously wide beam and a ~1,000lm helmet light with a narrow, soft spot and NO wires (I hate having my head attached to my pack). The helmet beam allows you to use it to fill in gaps and where you want the light to be, while being narrower helps it appear brighter with fewer lumens because it is focused in one spot.

The bar light, needing to cover more area, should be nice and wide so that your periphery is filled in nicely.  This will help eliminate the bouncing hot spot that happens with narrow bar lights, while keeping your eyes better adjusted to the darkness. A combination like the SECA 2500 on the bars with the Exposure Joystick on the helmet is pretty choice, with some room for improvement as all designs do, but that would be my go-to every time from the current choices.

Thanks “Dangerous”!  The Light & Motion Seca 2500 and Exposure Joystick combination is incredible.  Bang your buck the Glowworm X2 Adventure at just over $200 would be my personally choice if I were buying just one unit though.  With the Gloworm’s very high quality build and great beam pattern it’s pretty hard to beat as a single unit.

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