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TECH NEWS

Moon Lights launch in the UK

Four new lights in range distributed by Raleigh

Well we're past 21 June now so those nights are drawing in, and news stories about lights (and even lights themselves) are beginning to trickle into the road.cc inbox. The chaps at Raleigh got in touch with us this week to let us know they'll be distributing a new range up lights from Moon.

The range is aimed at mostly at the commuter market and all the lights will feature a rechargeable Lithium-Ion battery that you can power up from the mains or via your computer's USB port, something that's becoming more and more popular, and for good reason: for most of us mouse jockeys it's a handy source of power.

At the moment there's four lights to talk about. Pictured at the top is the GEM 2.0, a 3-LED front light with a claimed 270Lux output (we're looking forward to dusting off the light meter). We're happy to see that the urban lights have plenty of side visibility; the GEM 2.0 has side ports and its smaller cousin, the GEM 1.0 (above) has a protruding lens.

The more powerful X300 light, which uses a CREE XP-G transmitter (that's A Good Thing) and has a claimed output of 300 Lumens. Cue the perennial debate about what light measurements mean what and which is the best one to use: Moon haven't even been consistent across the range. Ah well. Doesn't look like there's any side visibility for the X300, though it looks to be designed more for the seeing than being seen aspect of riding at night.

To go with those front lights there's the GEM 3.0 rear light which uses 4 red LEDs that appear to stand proud of the unit: good for side visibility again, but we'll hold comment on any longevity or waterproofing issues that might introduce. It's quite a funky looking light though.

We don't have a firm launch date for the range but we will be getting some to test as soon as they're ready. It may or may not be dark by then...

Dave is a founding father of road.cc, having previously worked on Cycling Plus and What Mountain Bike magazines back in the day. He also writes about e-bikes for our sister publication ebiketips. He's won three mountain bike bog snorkelling World Championships, and races at the back of the third cats.

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dave atkinson | 13 years ago
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we've got a lux meter now and all lights we review will get lux measured...

 1

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dave atkinson | 13 years ago
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they state 270 Lux but since Lux is (as I understand it) dependent on area it doesn't really tell us how bright the light is, because we don't know whether it's measured at 1m or 10m, say.

Lumens is more reliable in my experience but even then different beam patterns can make lights with same stated output wildly different on the road.

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vorsprung replied to dave atkinson | 13 years ago
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dave_atkinson wrote:

they state 270 Lux but since Lux is (as I understand it) dependent on area it doesn't really tell us how bright the light is, because we don't know whether it's measured at 1m or 10m, say.

Lumens is more reliable in my experience but even then different beam patterns can make lights with same stated output wildly different on the road.

Well, that's where you reviewer chaps can step in and measure the lux at 10 metres. 10 metres is used in the German road traffic regs, so direct comparison with B&M, Supernova and SON lights is easy.

Lux meters aren't even expensive and it is source of continual bafflement why reviews don't do this

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Andy_Moorhouse | 13 years ago
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270Lux or 270 Lumens for the smaller light?

270 lux severely damaged retinas of albino rats

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3613508

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mattbianchi | 13 years ago
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now i know it's a bit childish and the words are upside down, but there's something very 'cock and balls' about that Moon logo, which is especially unfortunate given the brand name. or possibly deliberate, who knows  4  4

right i'll go back to reading Viz now

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