LED Lights
By James Sharp

Lights... one of my favorite topics. Riding year round has given me the opportunity to ride in the dark many, many times. I have ridden in the dark, in the rain, in fog, on the road and off and each and every time I think to myself, "Self, light at night is like water in the desert. You just need it no matter what it weighs." And one thing early light systems had was weight, and lots of it. Mostly this was due to the batteries. Lugging around lead-acid batteries isn’t fun for anyone. Over the years, different materials were used for batteries, bringing the weight down. Now that the weight is reasonable on most lights—particularly the high end—manufacturers are looking at new and more efficient light sources to replace the aging halogen technology. First up were HID lamps. These offered increased light output for a given wattage, enabling l-o-n-g runtimes—but at a price. The bulbs alone are in the $100 range for replacements. Now LEDs are coming on the scene in a big way. These aren’t the keychain lights that you can pick up for a buck; these pack real lumens and burn real Watts. How many lumens, and what kind of burn times depends on your needs and your wallet, but we rounded up three that use the latest technology in two very different price ranges. Every light reviewed here uses Luxeon LEDs, made by Lumileds. Lumileds makes the highest lumen per Watt of any high power LED, the light they emit is clean and white to blueish-white, almost like a light purple. Really, they are the only choice for LED powered lights that you can see by and not just use to be seen.

Light and Motion Vega
Princeton Tec Eos Bike
Princeton Tec Yukon HL Bike

Light and Motion Vega
The Light and Motion Vega is the least expensive high end LED light on the market. While other LED-based lights that are powerful enough to replace halogens range from $250 and up, the Vega comes in at $175. Cheap? Not really, but take a look at what goes into the light. First off, Light and Motion use a 3 Watt LED, but overpower it at 4 Watts on high. At 4 Watts, the Vega puts out 85 lumens. This is about the same amount of light that a 5-Watt halogen puts out, but instead of being a dingy yellow color, the Vega’s light is pale blue. This helps picking out road debris at speed, since the colors don’t wash out like they do with a low-power halogen. Unlike Halogen lights, the emitters in the LED systems don’t really get hot... the circuits do. That 4 Watts needs to go somewhere, and Light and Motion have built a heat sink into the bezel around the lens to keep everything cool. The Vega also monitors the temperature of the circuit and the battery independently. By making sure that everything is kept cool, Light and Motion make sure that the Vega lasts a long time.

The Vega weighs in at a respectable 218 grams for the entire unit. That includes the battery. The built in NiMH battery is good for 500 charge cycles and comes with its own charger. Like other Light and Motion chargers, this one monitors the battery temperature to ensure a full charge as fast as possible without damaging the battery. It also prevents over charging. The emitter itself is housed in Light and Motion’s proprietary acrylic lens. This is kind of a funny looking lens, since it looks like it has a hole in the middle. What that actually is, is a collimator, effectively eliminating the usual interrupted beam pattern that many lights have. You know, the BRIGHT center, then a dark ring, and then the beam fades out to the edges. With the Vega, you get the bright center, then a nice gradual fade to the edges without any lines or other aberrations. Unfortunately, what you don’t get is a wide beam. Instead you get a fairly narrow beam with a nice pattern and no dark spots. All the light that the emitter makes is reflected forward, more or less. No light is wasted, but don’t expect much in the way of peripheral vision.

The Vega is an integrated unit, with the battery, switch and light in one complete unit. This makes the light easy to pack, easy to put on and take off, and perfect for "just in case" use when a training ride or commute might go longer or be later than expected. It fits great in a jersey pocket and, since there are no cords to tangle, can be placed on the handlebars without even stopping.

Summary: With three lighting levels—4 Watts/85 lumens, 2 Watts/55 lumens, 1 Watt/35 lumens—giving 2, 4 and 8 hours of light, respectively, this light can be used in any condition. Need to be seen? Use the flashing mode that runs at 2 Watts/35 lumens that will run for 24 hours. This has to be the brightest white LED flasher I have seen. Run it at dusk and dawn and you’ll be noticed! Need to see the road ahead? Run the Vega at its full 4 Watts and ride at normal speeds on road, or slightly slower off road. This makes a great backup light for off road night rides. It’s small enough and tough enough to be thrown in a pack. It won’t take the place of a higher-powered halogen or a HID, but it will see you safely out of the forest.

For more information, contact:
Light and Motion
300 Cannery Row
Monterey, CA 93940
Phone: 831.645.1538
E-mail: bikelights@lmindustries.com
www.bikelights.com

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Princeton Tec Eos Bike
The Eos, from Princeton Tec, also relies on a Luxeon emitter. In this case it is a 1 Watt emitter. The Eos comes with helmet and handlebar mounts and uses 3 AA batteries. The optimized lens, collimator gives the light decent throw but like the Vega, limits the width of the beam. This isn’t a problem, per se—I would rather see farther down the road than on either side—but something that a potential user should be aware of. The Eos doesn’t come with a headband, but does fit the headband of the Aurora Bike. The Eos has three brightness levels, but the highest is the only one useful for cycling. The others are fine walking or doing roadside repairs. When measuring brightness, Princeton Tec uses two numbers. The first is how long the light lasts without dimming perceptibly, they call that time "constant brightness". The second is how long does the light run until the batteries give out, this they call "run time". The high output has 2 hours of constant brightness, 6.5 hours of run time. The medium brightness lasts for 9.5 hours of constant brightness, 12.5 hours of run time. The lowest setting has 28 hours of constant brightness and over 36 hours of run time. There is also a flashing mode. The Eos weighs 150 grams, with batteries, so it isn’t too heavy for helmet use. The case is water tight to one meter; so a little rain won’t phase it.

Kudos to Princeton Tec for shipping the Eos with both a helmet and handlebar mount. Both are sturdy and stay put. I found that I used the handlebar mount more, but that is mostly due to the fact that I prefer handlebar-mounted lights. I don’t really like anything on my helmet, though I did use the light helmet-mounted. The tight spot beam pattern works better on a helmet—where you can turn the light to point where you are looking—than it does on the handlebar.

At 1 Watt, this is the lowest light level I would use to find my way on a dark road. I would not use it off road for anything but an emergency light. This isn’t the fault of the light; rather it is just a real limitation of any low power light. On the flip side, the Eos has a really long run time, and by using alkaline batteries it has a great shelf life—something to think about for a emergency light.

Summary: I found the Eos to be tolerable in areas lit by street lamps. Once out on dark country roads, I had to slow down or run the risk of hitting something without seeing it first. The size and weight enabled me to take the Eos whenever I felt I might be out until dusk or later. I like the ability to use rechargeable or alkaline batteries. I really like the shelf life of the alkaline batteries; I never fretted over needing to recharge the light before using it. If I was concerned, I popped in some fresh batteries, or just carried spares. At $40, the Eos is light on the wallet too.

For more information, contact:
Princeton Tec
PO BOX 8057
Trenton, NJ 08650
Phone: 609.298.9331
E-mail: info.request@princetontec.com
www.princetontec.com

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Princeton Tec Yukon HL Bike
If you’ve wandered around Princeton Tec’s website you’ll notice that the bike lights started life as outdoor lights. For the most part this works out pretty well—see the Aurora Bike and Eos for examples of that. The Yukon HL Bike is another of their crossover products. Like the Eos, the Yukon HL comes with both helmet and handlebar mounts. However, in the case of the Yukon, the batteries are separate. The 3 AA batteries are housed in a separate case that is frame mountable and is connected to the light head by a stout cord. The battery case is not removeable from the light head. The light consists of one 1 Watt Luxeon LED and three white 5 millimeter LEDs. This is an either/or scenario. You can have the 1 Watt on or the three 5 mm LEDs, but not both. The 1 Watt LED is fine for riding, but the 3 smaller LEDs are for repair or walking duty only. The lens of the Yukon is adjustable so you can vary the beam pattern.

Right away I noticed that the Yukon HL was much more cumbersome to use than the Eos. The handlebar mount didn’t hold the light as secure, allowing it to rattle. The helmet mount was fine, but since you can’t unplug the cord, you can’t feed it through the helmet vents—a nice trick to keep the wire out of your way. Mounting the light to the handlebars required finding a spot to put the battery as well. Because of the separate battery compartment, this light is less likely to be used incidentally and more likely to mounted semi-permanently.

Unlike the other lights in this review, the beam on the Yukon is focusable. This is a nice feature if you don’t like the spot beam of the other lights. I did find, however, that the beam quality isn’t as good as with the Eos and even though they have the same LED, there wasn’t as much usable light coming from the Yukon. I am sure that this is due to the use of the adjustable lens, rather than the collimator used in the Eos.

Summary: I really have difficulty recommending the Yukon over the Eos. Sure, you get the adjustable lens, but the loss in usable light is a bigger detriment than the gain of adjustability. I don’t see the point in the three smaller LEDs, either. The lower outputs can be achieved, mostly, by pulse-width modulating the Luxeon LED—something that Princeton Tec already does in the Eos. The Yukon HL bike retails for $60.

For more information, contact:
Princeton Tec
PO BOX 8057
Trenton, NJ 08650
Phone: 609.298.9331
E-mail: info.request@princetontec.com
www.princetontec.com

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James Sharp is a contributing editor for GearReview.com specializing in road and mountain biking, who likes to see where he is going.