Lights for bicycles come in several different types. These days, there are a lot of lights produced for mountain biking which are extremely bright, but which are antisocial or even dangerous when used on the road or cycle-path. The problem is that of round lenses and round light patterns. These spread the light equally in all directions, which is fine if you're riding in a 24 hour mountain biking race and want to see what is beside and above a trail as well as a short distance in front of yourself, but it's not good for use at higher speed or with other road users coming in the opposite direction.
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Three different Philips headlights side by side.
The left-most is the 80 lux battery light, the
middle is the 60 lux dynamo light and the right
is the 40 lux dynamo light. |
For some years, the most effective bicycle lights available were those from the German company
Busch & Müller. B&M were one of the first companies to produce bicycle lights with optics which cut off the beam at the top so that powerful LEDs could be used without blinding oncoming cyclists. There are also other benefits of this design. The beam is graduated in strength so that there is more light further away but under the cut-off and less close by. This means that the ground appears to be relatively evenly lit.
Lights like this are very clever. Because there is less light wasted too high or too far to the side, and all of the light is going in a useful direction, battery life is better than it would be for a light with a round lens which tries to compensate for its waste by producing more light.
I have B&M headlights on two of my bikes and they were absolutely a revelation when I first saw them. With my 50 lux
B&M IQ Speed I found I could ride at 40 km/h in darkness and see perfectly well where I was going. I'd never had that experience with older bicycle lights. I enthusiastically recommended the B&M lights for some years. However, B&M's technology has now been leapfrogged quite comprehensively by Philips - an old company with an excellent new product line
The Philips "Safe Ride" line-up currently includes four front lights and two rear lights. All the front lights use a curved mirror to direct the light to the front, but not to above so that they avoid dazzling other road users. The body of this lamp is of cast aluminium. It's very sturdy.
The biggest and brightest light is the
80 lux battery lamp. This uses two high power LEDs and runs from rechargeable batteries provided with the light. This light mounts on your handlebars. It's a competitor with my IQ Speed, but provides nearly twice the light at little more than half of the cost of the
IQ Speed + battery package.
The second largest and second brightest Philips headlight is
the 60 lux dynamo light. This looks almost exactly like a scaled down version of the 80 lux light, again with an aluminium housing and two LEDs pointing downwards towards a curved mirror which directs the light to the front.
The light stores enough energy to remain glowing for four minutes after you stop, or until you switch it off. The switch on the top also can be used to switch power to a rear dynamo light.
A reflector is built into the mounting bracket for this light so that no separate front reflector need be fitted to your bike. The bracket fits to the top of the fork crown.
Side by side, the 80 lux and 60 lux lamps produce a very similar beam, with the bigger lamp providing a bit more light over a slightly larger area.
The
40 lux headlamp is smaller again. The baby of the range, it uses a single LED, this time pointing upwards toward a curved mirror. There is space on the front of this light to also include a reflector, so no separate reflector is provided.
While this somewhat less light than its bigger brothers, it is still very impressive. It easily beats the performance of old style halogen lights as well as the 10 lux requirements of the strict German StVZO standard.
The 40 lux dynamo light again includes a four minute stand-light. It also includes a light sensor instead of a switch so that it switches on automatically when light levels are dim. There is a switched output on the light to operate a rear lamp. This is convenient for fit and forget usage with a hub dynamo, but does not preclude usage with a bottle dynamo. The much lower price of the 40 lux light is reflected in a plastic body in place of aluminium.
Side by side, I found that the most obvious difference between the 40 lux and 60 lux lamps is in the width of the beam - the lower cost lamp with one LED gives a narrower view.
The
Philips LumiRing rear lights also use a novel design. Available for either battery or dynamo operation (with stand-light) they again use clever optical design to solve a problem.
Many high power LED rear bicycle lamps are very unpleasant to ride behind because the light comes from one small point. This also makes it difficult to judge how far away a bicycle is. The Philips solution is to light up a large race-track shaped area around the central reflector. There is a lot of light from the four high power LEDs, but it doesn't blind those who ride behind.
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| Professionally packaged |
All these lights are good value at their price. We are happy to recommend them and to stock them in the webshop. These are great lights especially for those who will cycle away from areas with street lighting or who like to cycle fast and want to be able to see the road surface well when riding at night.
However, we also of course stock lower cost options. Even very low cost
front and
rear LED dynamo lights combined with our
lowest cost dynamo provide effective and reliable lighting for usage in town with street lighting, or for riding at lower speeds in unlit areas.
For dynamo operation, any combination of the
dynamo front lights and either dynamo or battery rear lights that we sell can be used together, and they can be used with any standard 6 V 3 W dynamo including hub or side-wall dynamos.
January 19 update
The Philips 40 lux light now has
a battery powered counterpart. Another superb light from Philips, offering what was an undreamt of amount of light just a few years ago, but at a bargain price.
Also, don't miss our article about
selecting and installing dynamo lights.
2014 update
Unfortunately, Philips stopped making their bicycle lights so we can no longer supply them (except for
a very few remaining items). We now recommend the
B&M Cyo and
AXA Luxx 70 with USB output as excellent dynamo front lights and the
B&M Secula and
Toplight range as a particularly good dynamo rear lights.
See
our full range of bicycle lights.
