Biking In The Dark

[monkeynut]

How mutch!! £300 ,£149 are you all mad? I just used a £10Aldi hand torch strapped to the bars of my old Allan with some tiewraps & my old Myo head torch
Ive used this setup on the bowland fells in the winter clagg with no probs just a little hairy

[AllanT]

I would definitely recommend MiniNewt Nite Rider headlights. Not had any problem with them, and from my experiences they are better than the catseye's systems I've used.

[jmacewan]

The Planet X lights are new to me Dominion - have you ever used any?

I bought some Dinotte lights from On-One/Planet X for occasional bike-commuting last winter and was impressed by the quality and simplicity of the setup, lightwise they were up to the job - few miles on unlit singletrack roads mainly. I went for one of the less bright options and would not use them offroad at any speed but there are much brighter ones available. Liked that you could run them off AA rechargeables just as I was already using in my PT Apex headtorch, easy to carry an extra set of batteries.

[idler]

And from left-field, Tesco have an LED torch for 10 quid. Takes 2x AA batteries and really bright for the money.

That and a blockmount from dealextreme makes a good commuter setup, especially with a supplementary light for side visibility.
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.8274

[Derby Tup]

And from left-field, Tesco have an LED torch for 10 quid. Takes 2x AA batteries and really bright for the money.

That and a blockmount from dealextreme makes a good commuter setup, especially with a supplementary light for side visibility.
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.8274

Have you got one of these Tesco torches Idler? I wondered about getting one to supplement my Alpkit Gamma headkit for running, not that I'm tight with money or anything

[idler]

I have. I've got the Alpkit Gamma too. Not that I'm tight or anything. The one thing I haven't done is switch them on side by side, I'll report back if I remember.

But the Tesco was better than I expected, I'm happy. Only downside (apart from the side visibility) is the tube is quite snug and my rechargeables all seem to be slightly fat.

[idler]

...I'll report back if I remember.

So I've done the garden test. The Tesco is quite a bit brighter than the Gamma, but with a narrower beam angle and a pronounced drop-off between central spot and surrounding halo. Still gives a decent spread though, simply because it's brighter to start with. Both had fresh batteries/charge BTW.

I've just noticed that some folk on Singletrackworld reckon you can broaden the beam by removing the lens on the Tesco.