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feature
Are bike lights too bright nowadays? Different beams and power settings tested
Some riders use bike lights throughout the year, but as we move into winter, you’re going to need them if you’re intent on continuing to ride outside after work. How bright do you need to go? It can be tempting to go for the biggest lumen count that you can afford, but doing so might result in you dazzling road users that are coming the other way, endangering everyone.
> 2021/22 road.cc Front Light Beam Comparison Engine
Dave and Liam set out to do some very unscientific science to give a representation of different front lights from a cyclist’s point of view and a driver’s too, finding out that the brightness of the light isn’t necessarily the defining factor in how well a front light helps you to see the road ahead, or how blinding it can be for other road users. There are lots of other factors to consider: how well it’s made, what the mount is like, how long the battery lasts etc.
> Looking for a front light? We've got a great buyer's guide right here
Another thing we looked at was beam shape, and how that affects things. So as well as a range of brightness, we used lights that use different sorts of lenses. Anyway, let’s have a look at the lights we used in the video.
First up, the Cateye AMPP 200. This is one of two lights that are at the bottom end of the power range for this video, putting out 200 lumens. It’s a pretty standard torch-style light, and it’s nice and light at just 62g. It’s easy to fit too, with a simple silicone band. The light uses Cateye’s OptiCube lens which is a pretty standard round beam.
Moving on, we have the Sigma Aura 80. The 80 stands for 80 lux, which is another way of measuring output. This is what you’ll often hear called a ‘German beam’ light because it complies with the German regulations for bike lights. What that means is it’s a cutoff beam where 95% of the light has to land on the road and not in another road user’s eyes. Lux and Lumens aren’t directly comparable, but these two lights have a similar output.
Turning it up a notch, the Moon Rigel Lite with 500 lumens of power is a mid-range light, and there’s a refractive bit on the top of the lens here that’s designed to point a bit more of the light down towards the road.
Again, it’s usefully small and light, and Moon uses a Garmin-style quarter-turn mount which makes it easy to mount. You can even use your out-front mount if you want.
The Ravemen CR450 has a similar output at 450 lumens. The main difference between this and the Moon is that the Ravemen uses a much more complicated refractive lens to make the beam shape wider and flatter. The idea is that it isn’t as dazzling to oncoming traffic and more light goes on the road. It’s not as stark as the cut-off on the Sigma though.
Up a lighting notch to the Sigma Buster 700, with - you’ve guessed it - 700 lumens of power. That’s fairly bright for a single-LED torch-style light such as this, and this kind of power is where you’d start if some of your riding was on gravel or trails.
Lezyne’s 1600XXL has not one but three LEDs up front and is about twice as powerful as the Sigma Buster. This is a light that’s designed to be fully capable of keeping you upright off-road, at speed. It also has a useful race mode where it’s just full power and low power on the button, a bit like a full and dipped beam on a car.
And lastly, Ravemen’s PR2400. Almost half as powerful again, and if the numbers are to believed, twelve times more powerful than the little Cateye. We were expecting this one to be pretty antisocial on full beam if we’re honest, although like the smaller Ravemen light it has a dipped beam too.
Which one did Liam and Dave pick as their favourite? Watch the video to find out. And do you think some bicycle lights are too bright? Give us your dazzling stories in the comments below.
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42 comments
This article is brilliant on explaining why a brighter light isn't necessarily a better light, and why the StVZO pattern of beam is so brilliant (if you'll excuse the pun):
https://www.renehersecycles.com/myth-14-more-lumens-make-a-better-light/
Something that never seems to be discussed around LED lights is their effectiveness compared with say a Halogen bulb.
LEDs are great, but as they use a limited lightwaves to create 'white' light, the depth / clarity of vision that light then provides is not equal to that achieved by a classic incandescent bulb.
I remember doing endurance MTB events 15 years ago and using performance LED lights for the first time and really struggling to judge distance etc. Things have improved markedly since then, however I'd argue that you still need a brighter LED to achieve the same effective road illumination of a 'duller' incandescent bulb.
Mitigating against this, means cyclists are running 'brighter' lights that are often dazzling, and its sort of understandable why other road users take offence.
A switch to Lux as a performance marker would be a great start in addressing this.
How do you measure the performance of lights with soap?
I believe it is an older Imperial (Leather) unit of measurement.
Are you saying that you don't?
It doesn't really matter how bright your lights are it's the way you position them that really matters.
You should always aim you light downwards so you do not dazzle other road users. That will hopefully allow you to see enough of what's in the road in front of you and give you enough time to react (avoiding potholes for example). If you can't see what's in front of you then slow down enough so you can.
But by the time you've angled an off-road dazzler enough that the margin of the beam is just below horizontal you will have a blinding bright spot just in front of you, so will see little-to-nothing ahead of that.
I think some bike lights are too bright for road use, but where I live I never see anyone pushing that many lumens, heck my light I got in 2004 is among the brightest on the road here!! People aren't too much into lights for road use around here. But I think once you go over 1,200 lumens for road use you're using too much for the speed in which a bicycle travels at, most of the time I run my light at 400 lumens, only on dark country roads and bike paths will I kick it up to 1,000 my max output which is more than enough even for my old 65 year old eyes.
Put in this into perspective, before the ultra bright LED car lights came out the lumens of car or motorcycle single headlight were between 700 and 1,000, and this for vehicles that run a lot faster than bicycle do, so really a cyclist traveling below 30 mph would have more light then they need at 700.
Of course riding off road is a different story, but you're not worried about blinding other drivers off road, you're wanting to see every detail of the terrain your on, so having 2,000 lumens or so is the way to go.
What bugs me is how bright car lights have gotten, even on dim these new LED lights blind me, there is no call for that sort of brightness, regular headlights in the past worked just fine for 75 or more years, the only time we should be having more power is when we switch to brights. I've been so blinded by these lights I can only see black off to the side of the road, if a jogger or cyclist was there I would never see them and could hit one, then I would be in trouble with no proof that someones car lights blinded me out from seeing where I was going, I had to guess where the side of the road was!
I agree with your comments on car lights, they are absurdly bright and people rely on auto which I find unreliable when I am faced with them. Too many times the lights are dimmed too late
There needs to be a maximum set which is lower than the current output.
I think there are problems with DRLs running simultaneously with headlamps, too. they look like cars with their fog lamps on (which is another thing that sickens me).
Depends on beam pattern. I fitted a SuperNova M99 Pro to my bike. Excellent beam cutoff in dipped mode, high beam a good 100 yard beam on unlit roads. 1500 lumens To be honest brighter the better The day light running lights are also great for daytime riding
I agree with the comment below about the car headlights which are usually not dipped in Lancashire when it's only a cyclist coming the other way. This is the real lighting hazard up here, because there aren't many cyclists about, for obvious reasons.
You can usually tell new cars less then 3 years old because an MOT hasn't picked up the lights are offset from the factory.
I don't normally do unlit roads in the dark so normally have "be seen" lights running rather then "see-by" ones. However a person I used to work with lived out in the countryside and used to tell me that locals used to drive without their lights on as they could then easily see other cars coming towards them in the dark from miles as they would be so lit up. I didn't believe him as he had nige levels of fabrication on lots of things. Especially when I asked him "if this was a local trick, there must be loads of crashes as all the locals wouldn't see each other as they all drove with no lights on" and he didn't have an answer.
I ride on country lanes and also grew up living in the sticks. No-one would drive round like that for long, they'd soon end up in a hedge or ditch.
While cycling I have more issues with drivers' slow reaction to my presence on the lanes because they do not get advance warning of my relatively meagre front light like they do another car's headlights as they come round a bend.
And modern LED car lights are f..king blinding, even when on dip beam - if the car happens to crest a small rise as I approach then it's just like a main beam blast and I have to shield my eyes with my gloved hand.
As I mentioned, he had Nige levels of fabrication so I never believed it. The best bullshit was when a story appeared in the news of a sky diver whose chute failed but he survived landing in I think gorse / soft moorland (albeit it seriously injured). This started the tale of a similar thing happening to his mate, only his mate survived the parachute not opening by crashing through a skylight in a hanger and then the trailing parachute catching on the sides and his mate being suspended a foot above the ground by his harness with "only cuts and bruises". Of course we let him have his "moment" without asking how high his mates voice was now, and did they remove the two lumps from his neck succesfully.
Although his story did come to mind when this happened in front of me at a football match in 98. From hitting the roof everything seemed to be in slow motion and to me looked like the parachute would catch and suspend stopping another fall of 100ft or so but it didn't. Luckily the parachutist survived with severe injuries and the loss of a leg.
'Luckily the parachutist survived with severe injuries and the loss of a leg.'
Lucky, eh? Like it!
"Always look on the bright side of life (de dum, de dum....)"
Yes, easily could have died, easily could have had paralysing injuries. And IIRC, he actually married the nurse who looked after him in the hospital.
... and now plays for Barnet
Lights that dazzle really wind me up. Pedestrians and drivers don't like them either. Enough people hate cyclists already without giving them another excuse I use a Ravemen that has a dipped setting.
I rarely have an issue with blinding bike lights (the last one was actually a badly angled rear light), but frequently have issues these days with beams from car headlights. I can't believe that they don't cause issues for other drivers too.
Ultimately with bike lights the issue is that you are competing with cars. A light that was fine 20 years ago (and still legal today) would potentially be invisible against the mass of other brighter lights. I run multiple lights front and rear and have plenty of reflective tape spread across my bike.
That's part of it. In town - be seen. In that case decent reflectives are probably as useful as lights since you're using the cars' ones and moving reflectives (e.g. stuff on legs, spokes, arms) are possibly the best attention getter.
In the country - you need to see because it's dark with winding roads, rapid changes in gradient, animals, dire surfaces. If you pick up any speed a decent beam shape with close in / longer distance coverage is a must. Also other lights (bike / car) can be seriously detrimental to your night vision. As a cyclist unless you're running massive front lights that's relatively more important than in a car (with its massively greater beam output). I often end up closing one eye trying to preserve some of that, probably kidding myself.
The European commission has been engaged on vehicle standards setting over many years and one of those was to mandate dipped beam regardless of the need. Before that it was only the northern European countries that had legislation to require dipped beam in the winter months of darkness. This was further justified as manufacturing simplification. However that is a complete fiction as modern vehicles have CAN-bus controls so can do anything, including different behaviour in different countries.
What was not considered was the impact on other road users, especially cyclists and motorcyclists. So instead of competing for attention with side lights at dusk, and dipped beam in the night, we are lost in the visual clutter 24*7.
Epic stupidity from Strasbourg.
And a whole lot of drivers assume their rear lights are also on, because surely no legislature was daft enough to mandate front lights only, without the rears...
I know it might be a bit niche, but I'd always be interested to see some dynamo lights represented in the annual lights features. Would be interesting to see how road-focused dynamo lights from SON, Supernova and B&M compare, though the comparison may be slightly complicated by them typically being mounted on the fork crown rather than handlebar.
+1. Not that niche - I believe there are plenty here that use them, particularly for commuting use. After I got one, all my subsequent commuter / touring bikes had them!
Not found anything half as useful as the road.cc image comparisons but for anyone starting out there's a useful overview article with info on beam shapes, placement, lux vs. lumens here and more recently at BikeRadar.
I'd quite like a rear light equipped with radar. If it detects a vehicle approaching from behind above a certain threshold speed differential and without sufficient lateral clearance, then it produces a million watt explosion of photons detectable from space.
So Garmin Varia Radar Light for you then. Not only does the light pattern change as a vehicle approaches behind but you also get noise and graphics on a choice of devices such as Edge head units, watch or Varia head up display.
So that is a great tool that works well. Some even have an auto brake to light up as you slow, avoiding tail gate peril.
No Garmin sale or agent relationship.
LOL!
As far as the headline goes, I think that no matter how bright your lights are, some fuckwit will always try to kill you, then claim 'not to have seen you'. Or you blinded them with your lights, so much so that they had to continue, almost killing you in the process. Too bright, not bright enough, it will always be the pesky cyclist who is at fault.
i have lost count of the amount of times I have had a run in with motorists who complain that my lights are too bright. My response is, that as they have stopped to have a moan, my lights must be bright enough as they didn't hit me.
When I was a regular bike commuter in London I used to have an air horn. Ideal for waking the inattentive and sounding like a truck. Only ice in winter could stop me...
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