Price of lights

[tyred]

It depends on what you need. £10 lights will be better than a set from a pound shop by a long way, but I don't believe £100 lights would be 10 times better. The laws of diminishing returns kicks in my opinion.

On my Peugeot, I have a Basta Quattro bottle dynamo,  ~£10, a B & M Lumotec halogen headlamp, ~£20 new (I bought mine for £3 second hand on ebay), a Soubitez tailamp with standlight (run of a battery rather than a capacitor like more modern designs but battery lasts for years), ~£5. It is sufficient for my needs, I have done my own visibility tests and it's perfectly visible and it costs nothing to run, drag is minimal from the dynamo. I happily ride at 20mph on unlit roads with this with no problems, it wasn't that expensive at all and it should last for years with no running costs apart from an occasional bulb. As the lights are physically bolted to the bike, they won't fall off or get pinched if I leave the bike outside a shop. Personally, I would never consider battery lights ever again.

 

[spence]

Are they that much more expensive to make?

Probably not, although there is some clever engineering. But does and XTR mech cost so much more to make than a Deore? Again probably not but most of this stuff is sold middle aged IT types playing games to recapture their youth. Market forces and all that. Nothings reasonable if you put too much thought into it.

 

[Davidc]

The main front light on the bike I take onto unlit roads was expensive, at £64 last year. It's a B&M CYO 60. Properly designed beam pattern and very bright. It runs on the hub dynamo, along with the B&M back light. Also expensive, but with well designed reflector, and also bright (£25 on ebay). I like to have diversity and redundancy in my lighting, so I also have a cateye EL530 on the front (£40) and two Smart superflash on the back (£4.75 each). total £138.75, and good enough for safe unlit country road riding at up to about 20 mph. The other bike has about £35 worth, and just enough to use it along the canal.

Most of those lights are specialist bike lights for which there has been a substantial R&D cost, and made by specialist companies, with a restricted size of market. I'd rather pay less of course, but accept that if I want those companies to be around when I want replacements of similar quality then they'd better be making a profit, and that means paying a price at which they can make one.

The Cateye front light is slowly deteriorating and will sometime be replaced by a Hope Vision 1 (or its successor). Not cheap, but again it comes from a small company which has to make a profit or close down.

Take your choice. Buy cheap rubbish, pay for a product designed to do what you need, or try to find good secondhand goods to do the job properly. I've tried the cheap route, and it's only led to short life, frequent replacement, and unsatisfactory performance.

 

[Dan B]

I went from a Cateye EL530 (which died spontaneously one day) to a Fenix torch (which got nicked) to a Hope Vision 1 (which I'm still using)

The light emitted is only one aspect of the price you're paying: the cateye was made of plastic with holes in it, and the cateye bracket was made of cheese. The Fenix was a nice bit of aluminium albeit with a tendency to rattle when used with dry cells and a bracket that tended to rotate around the handlebars on wet nights if the torch wasn't carefully balanced fore-aft. The Hope is up to Hope's usual construction standards (but it would be nice if it gave ay indication of when the batteries were about to die)

I'm not saying "you get what you pay for", but some of this stuff does cost money and you don't get it if you don't pay for it

 

[GrumpyGregry]

Try crashing repeatedly at speed into underbrush or worse, going thru flooded fords, actually falling off in flooded fords, thru hub deep mud lap after lap, across baby's head stone fields that jolt your filings out of your head, and then see how your cheap lights stand up. I've seen plenty of people with cheaper lights drop out of night time mtb races as their lights have failed.

Lights on a road bike have it dead easy in comparison.

Part of the cost is because bombproofing is expensive.

 

[palinurus]

I remember those Ever Ready ones that took 2 D cells and had the big round lenses... they can't have cost much as I went through a few of those.

I remember those as well. On the unlit part of my commute (I've been doing it for a long time!) I could barely see where I was going.

 

[gavintc]

Still missing the point in my humble opinion. We know brighter lights cost more, but why so much more is the question. Are they that much more expensive to make?

This is an interesting point. I do not know the detail, only surmising. However, the high output light manufacturers are not dealing / making big numbers. There is therefore a dis-economy of scale when compared to the Asda/Tesco lights. Secondly, there is far more to an expensive light than a cheap one. Waterproofing, technological development, rechargeable batteries. But, how much it all costs - I for one do not know.

What I do know, is that throw away batteries cost a lot of money when you use them day after day and that when you want to see where you are going, paying a bit extra for reliability is worth it.

 

[scouserinlondon]

Some of us need lights that are bright enough to light up a good section of the road ahead of us so we can see.
Most lights under £60 won't cut the mustard for doing that!

Do you have a picture of your light set up Gaz?

 

[Brahan]

On an internet review site - Bike Radar - there was a review of a front light at around 130 quid which was "cracking value" or similar. How on earth can a light that costs that much be hyped in such a manner? You can buy front lights for a fiver, and so I ask: what is the justification for (so many) high-priced lights? There are plenty out there....

Possibly because if you're in the market for a new set of lights and you're considering spending around that amount of cash, then pound for pound they may be better than other ones in that price range?

£5 lights in my experience are by no means comparable to the likes of Exposure. Justifiable? Well it's a buyer's market isn't it, the only one who needs to happy with the purchase is the buyer. I saved up some cash last year and spent a fair bit on a new light and to be honest it has made night riding a totally different experience more enjoyable and more safe. There's your justification - I can go full speed on a dark, unlit country road and have more than enough beam to see potholes, corners, branches etc. Unfortunately a £5 light can't afford me that freedom.

 

[scouserinlondon]

This is an interesting point. I do not know the detail, only surmising. However, the high output light manufacturers are not dealing / making big numbers. There is therefore a dis-economy of scale when compared to the Asda/Tesco lights. Secondly, there is far more to an expensive light than a cheap one. Waterproofing, technological development, rechargeable batteries. But, how much it all costs - I for one do not know.

What I do know, is that throw away batteries cost a lot of money when you use them day after day and that when you want to see where you are going, paying a bit extra for reliability is worth it.

It's like any top of the range product line, it's expensive and therefore high margin to the manufacturer but it has to be as they sell such low volumes which makes the production and distribution costs higher and with the advances in technology coming so thick and fast manufactueres only have a small window in which to recoup their outlay and maximise profit and also they have to invest in their own R&D to stay ahead of the game.

 

[Tynan]

lights have come on incredibly in the last twenty years, I think what a person pays for is a high grade battery and very efficent optics, all in a small and durable water proof package and not weighing much

ticking all those boxes costs

 

[GrumpyGregry]

durable, cheap, bright. pick any two.

 

[potsy]

I ride predominantly on well lit roads and still have decent front lights,I see plenty of others on the same route with what I presume are the kind of lights you're talking about for £5,absolutely no way I'd feel safe using them as my main lights.
Used to have lots of dodgy pull outs from side streets and as soon as I got my Hope Vision 1's around 95% of these stopped.
Yes they are expensive,my 1st light last year was a(£20) Cat eye which I thought was dear.
Just ordered a Smart Lunar R2 for the rear (£18) some things can be skimped on but for me lights are not one of them.

 

[Wobblers]

The overwhelming majority of bike lights are vary between poor and appalling value for money.

I do a lot of cycling in darkness. I've tried many different lights, from the cheap to the very expensive. Every one has fallen short in one way or another.

First, there's beam shape. Most produce a conical light beam similar to the high beam in a car. That's fine for off-roading, but has two problems on road: you get wasted light directed up into the sky, and you have to angle the light downwards to avoid dazzling other road users. This in turn means you can't project the beam as far down the road as would be preferable. There are very few lights which produce a shaped beam which is most suitable for road use. If a bike light produces a torch-like beam, why not just get a torch?? My Fenix L2D flashlight will knock the socks off almost any light below £100 with the exception of the Ixon IQ (shaped beam) and Exposure's latest offering which uses a better LED. Which brings me rather neatly onto my next point....

Cutting edge technology, or rather, lack thereof. Every single current bike light uses old generation LEDs (Cree XR-E or SSC P4). Even the P7 LED in the Magicshine's based on the years-old P4 LED. The most recent XP-G LEDs are 50% more efficient but only Exposure have - just - brought out lights using it. The XP-G's been out for 18 months: it's a damning indictment to the state of R&D in the industry that there aren't any other lights using it. The premium we're paying certainly isn't going into product development.

Lastly, there's the design and construction. I sometimes wonder if any thought's gone into how these things are going to be used. I don't want a light that requires all sorts of faff to put on my bike, with crap velcro straps and mountings (Light and Motion, please take note). Nor do I want the mount to break as soon as I look at it (Hope 1), or the sodding light to fall off the mount, and then break (Ixon IQ). I just want a self contained unit which is easy to attach and remove that will actually stand up to the every day rigours of commuting. Ironically, it's one of my cheapest lights that does that best - the Smart Polaris 5.

 

[gaz]

Do you have a picture of your light set up Gaz?

How about a video [media]

]View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IU5ryIGXbYs[/media]