adam85 wrote:
> They sound pretty good. In the "be-seen" category I bought a new
> polaris 5 led front light like this one:
> http://tinyurl.com/nd32y
> for $30 which runs on 2 rechargable AAs. This is for when I don't want
> to lug around the bright but heavy 15w niteflux setup. I'm quite
> impressed by the visibility of this one. Much better than the single
> basta type flashies, which can be obscured by the shifters from cars
> entering from the left or right.
I got my $99NZ lights from Torpedo7 today and after charging the
battery for most of the day used my new lights for my commute home.
First impressions:
The unit has two bulbs, a 5W bulb and a 10W bulb. They operate
independently of one another. The 5W is operated by a button on the
back of the bulb housing, the 10W is operated by a button on the end of
a wire which can be taped onto the handlebars so you can operate it
with your thumb.
The concave bottleneck in the battery is a bit deep for my bidon cages,
as a result the battery rattles around noisily on bumpy roads. This
problem will probably be fixed by taping a wedge of cardboard or
plastic to the bottom of the bottle to raise it 5mm or so in the cage
to my cage prongs hold the thick part of the bottle.
The light is adequate for commuting purposes, though I don't think it
has the guts to illuminate the road adequately at high speed downhill
(though the same could be said of a high end HID). Perhaps I was
expecting a dazzling white wall of light, so the golden torchlight beam
I got instead was a bit underwhelming.
The 5W lamp is adequate for most of the commute except where there are
no street lights, then I turn on the 10W lamp when its needed.
This enables me to do a light power comparison with the 28 LED torch I
bought on ebay for $20 a couple of months ago. The light of my LED
torch is roughly the same as the 5W lamp, though the LED has a much
cooler bluer colour. The light from my LED torch is actually pretty
good I guess, its just a pity it drains a set of 950mAh NiMh
rechargeable batteries in only 45 minutes. I saw no sign of any
dimming in the halogens during my 45 minute ride home. I'll recharge
my LED batteries and just see how the halogen battery pack holds up on
its initial charge for the remainder of the week.
I will, for the time being, keep my LED lamp on my handlebars, it gives
a nice wide beam and when negotiating a particularly horrible patch of
road with lots of glass and nails about I think you can never have too
much light. I think I'll eventually velcro it to my helmet and use it
that way.
I ordered three units, one for me, one for my father and one for a
colleague. One unit doesn't work. After swapping bits around I
identified the faulty component as the wire which joins the battery
wire to the lights themselves. I called Torpedo7 about it and they
immediately agreed to send me a new wire. I told them to hold that for
a couple of days as I was thinking of buying some more stuff and they
could include the wire in the second order.
Altogether, I think it was a good purchase and I'm aware that my vision
of the wall of light was probably more than could be expected from 15
watts of bulbs.
Travis