Recommendations for a wide angle headlight

[Avg_Joe]

I've spent time searching here and via Google, I guess at this point what I am seeking is personal experience with a wide-angle headlight. The stock headlight on my Vado is a "be seen" light, wholly inadequate for primary illumination. I have a Bontrager Ion something-or-other which is actually a nice light, but is more of a spotlight, it has very little throw to the sides. Blinky mode on it is great to be seen as well.

However, on both dirt and paved trails around me, there's no lighting. And it's dark out. And many curves and turns. I really need something that will throw off a wide, flat beam. I am riding these paths at a modest pace, always assuming someone or some animal will be around the bend, and I still get surprised cos I can't see except for where the Ion directly points to (very narrow field).

Any recommendations on lights that fit the bill would be greatly appreciated. Budget is flexible; prefer to not go w/ Alibaba/Amazon knockoff stuff.

 

[m@Robertson]

Having been there and done that, and experienced exactly what you are talking about (in partially rural areas as well with no street lights) I would recommend you stop trying to do the job with a single light. I've had great success with triplets. One center beam that is narrow and focused long, with two more - one on each side, with more diffuse beams that light up your sides. The net effect is a pear-shaped illuminated area with the wide part of the pear closer to the bicycle.

Over the years I have found MANY ways to skin this cat; both cheap and not so. I just looked back at my bike pics and going back to about 2019 I appear to have come up with at least a half dozen variations of this setup. The key is to use multiple beams. Everything else is just tinkering.

I wrote up an article on the subject showing up close a couple-three iterations of this idea. The most recent using good quality but inexpensive lighting - The Victagen and the two Gators. Links to everything are in the article as well. Older versions are shown with a pair of Niterider Luminas in the center and a couple more of those Gators as outriggers. The light I listed as the favorite center beam over the Victagen - $33 - is now even more so that I have bought two more recently for a new project (look at the pic of the Bullitt and see the lights on the forks... I got two for another one of those). That light now shuts off the illuminated switch when you turn off the light. Older versions didn't and (very) slowly drained the battery. One of these lights and two Niterider Luminas were my go-to setup for quite some time. But its an expensive setup so I switched my 'outriggers' to the Gator360's.

Which Front Bicycle Lights Should I Use?

What front bicycle lights give the best beam pattern? Are blinking lights safer?

talesontwowheels.com

When doing multiple lights like this, you gain a secondary benefit: You are putting out enough light you do not have to run high beam intensity. I run every light at its lowest setting and I have a nice well-illuminated area in front of me that lasts quite a while as a result. I usually only charge once weekly.

Most recently, I blew the budget several months ago and on my Bullitt I subbed out the 3 lights up top for a Fisher Fab House BBSHD-connected headlight. This thing goes from 75 to 3000 lumens via a 2-beam housing that contains one spot and one flood, side by side. I like it... but its about $250. I would not start my exploration of options with that one.

 

[fooferdoggie]

the trek headlight is really good. nice and wide and low. it has a ligh and low switch. I think it was 250 or 300 but cant remember for sure. I had it put on our tandem. I had a lights and motion 800 lumen its not bad but its the typical round circle. the trek light works on unlit bike paths pretty well. plus since it runs off the bike battery no worry about run time. but you would have to go to trek I cant fin it on their webpage.

 

[m@Robertson]

Mr. Robertson installed a light bar maybe some like it would light up your path.

COB lights! Super cheap and super easy to install. I did a full writeup on what/how I did it at my web site. I think I paid $10 for each strip, and they are connected to a single 10000mah power bank from Amazon. I have another set sitting and waiting to install on my new bike in exactly the same way, except this time the ones I bought have built in on/off and dimmer switches. They light up the lower side of the bike like its a billboard, and create a moving blob of light on the ground that makes me much more visible to traffic.

This pic only shows them at twilight so reduced effect. But its recent enough you can also see that bike-powered Fisher Fab House light up top. The blinding look of the lights is NOT real. Thats an artifact of the camera. They're bright but not problematically so.

Another light that I did that could be categorized as a sort of 'light bar' is this one. I made a beam cutoff for it and it had its own mini-sized 52v battery. It works on 9-60v DC so you can use almost any ebike battery to power it. This sucker is 40w of LED power. I used a bar mount for offroad lights and just bolted it directly to those, and in turn those bolted to a simple handlebar extension (just going straight to the bars would have worked but I wanted it up higher and set back a bit). We are talking surface-of-the-sun bright here. Beautiful for trails. Not for the street. You will light up the next ZIP code with this thing, which has a mixture of spot and flood bulbs on that lineup. Only runs about $30 on Amazon but you need to spend some time and money on additional parts to make it mountable, then give it a connector that will match your battery. And of course add a battery.

 

[Ravi Kempaiah]

I really need something that will throw off a wide, flat beam.

We have a solution for that. See the images below.
We use Supernova M99 light on all our Bosch E-bikes, and they offer excellent illumination and beam cutoff that doesn't bling oncoming traffic!
happy to offer if you ever need one.
We also have a custom light that is even more powerful than Supernova but I am not sure if it is compatible with your Vado.

 

[Avg_Joe]

Having been there and done that, and experienced exactly what you are talking about (in partially rural areas as well with no street lights) I would recommend you stop trying to do the job with a single light. I've had great success with triplets. One center beam that is narrow and focused long, with two more - one on each side, with more diffuse beams that light up your sides. The net effect is a pear-shaped illuminated area with the wide part of the pear closer to the bicycle.

I was hoping you would respond, I read through some of your prior posts about this topic and have read your blog/website. Your point about not relying a single light is very, um, illuminating. I will probably spend more time thinking about what you've written here and on your site and use that for my continued research. Thank you very much, sir!

<Edit> The more I look at those Blitzu lights, the more compelling they are. What are your thoughts on mounting them down low, on the forks? </Edit>

 

[Avg_Joe]

We have a solution for that. See the images below.
We use Supernova M99 light on all our Bosch E-bikes, and they offer excellent illumination and beam cutoff that doesn't bling oncoming traffic!
happy to offer if you ever need one.
We also have a custom light that is even more powerful than Supernova but I am not sure if it is compatible with your Vado.



View attachment 140255

@Ravi Kempaiah thank you very much for this! That Zen Katana looks perfect for what I want - I was thinking along the lines of a proper SAE foglight for autos, and the Katana seems to mimic that for our bikes. Let me research it a bit more, and I may end up reaching out for one. Thank you again!

I did not see any specifications for the Katana on your website. The stock light on my Vado is a Lezyne Mini STVZO E65:
Wattage: 4 W
Input voltage: 6-12V

I presume the Katana is 12v, but what kind of wattage does it reqire? (I have no problem cutting existing wire and soldering new connections)

 

[Ravi Kempaiah]

I presume the Katana is 12v, but what kind of wattage does it reqire?

Yes, happy to offer it if it works for you. We don't sell it normally, but happy to help out a fellow EBR rider.
It depends on how much your motor controller will support in terms of Watts.
Please check Brose -specialized motor light output wattage; if it is up to 18W, it should be ok.
Here are some specs that may help. Please check the electronic details and image below.

Low Beam: 13W / High Beam: 14W
Daytime Running Light: 5W
Low Beam: 1250LM (330lx) / High Beam: 1550LM (420lx)
Daytime Running Light: 400LM

 

[fooferdoggie]

here is pics of the trek light high and low beams first time I could ride at 19mph in fill dark and feel fine.

 

[Stefan Mikes]

Joe, some loose remarks.

I do not want to talk about my special version of Vado 5.0/6.0 with automotive Supernova M99 Pro light that is amazing but requires the version of the motor you cannot have (Specialized 1.2s). My situation is similar to yours with my Vado SL 4.0. The stock Lezyne headlight is pretty good as long as its vertical angle is properly set. However, the beam horizontal angle is pretty narrow (and that cost me an unpleasant crash not long time ago). SInce, I started re-using my Cateye Volt 1700 external light as the second wide-beam source of light. I point the beam of the Volt closer than the one from Lezyne, as the Volt does not have the top cut-off, and it serves me to see the road sideways better.

The great feature of the Volt is its large battery capacity; the lamp is pretty expensive though. My other wide-beam light is a Cateye AMPP 1100 which is lighweight, adequate but the battery capacity is not that great as the one of the Volt.

 

[Rexlion]

For "dirt and paved trails" you could have some real fun with a Sofirn Q8 Pro light mounted to a Smallrig Clamp Mount. The Q8 has a 1/4" standard threaded screw hole (it'll mount on a tripod, too, for hands-free directional lighting). It's a nice floody beast of a light with 4 LEDs producing as much as 11,000 lumens at a pleasant 5,000K color temperature. Not too blue, not too yellow. I have a couple of the original BLF Q8 lights @5000 max lumens, and let me tell you, one of them will put your vehicle headlights to shame. Output can be set for stepped changes or for smooth ramping up-down, your choice. You'll be the boss of every trail. (caveat: the beam is not flat)

 

[Rockroy]

On the bike, I run a magicshine mj900 with remote battery for long life.

On my helmet, light and motion vis 360 pro.

 

[Avg_Joe]

here is pics of the trek light high and low beams first time I could ride at 19mph in fill dark and feel

Is that spill several feet above the main beam from the light itself, or from the house or something else? That's one thing I'm trying to avoid: The Ion Elite has no cutoff, which renders it kind of useless and/or dangerous for approaching vehicles and pedestrians.

 

[Avg_Joe]

For "dirt and paved trails" you could have some real fun with a Sofirn Q8 Pro light mounted to a Smallrig Clamp Mount. The Q8 has a 1/4" standard threaded screw hole (it'll mount on a tripod, too, for hands-free directional lighting). It's a nice floody beast of a light with 4 LEDs producing as much as 11,000 lumens at a pleasant 5,000K color temperature. Not too blue, not too yellow. I have a couple of the original BLF Q8 lights @5000 max lumens, and let me tell you, one of them will put your vehicle headlights to shame. Output can be set for stepped changes or for smooth ramping up-down, your choice. You'll be the boss of every trail. (caveat: the beam is not flat)

That thing looks as if you could send Morse code to the int'l space station!

 

[fooferdoggie]

Is that spill several feet above the main beam from the light itself, or from the house or something else? That's one thing I'm trying to avoid: The Ion Elite has no cutoff, which renders it kind of useless and/or dangerous for approaching vehicles and pedestrians.

only a tiny bt and I have it aimed a bit up. but on regular beam hardly anything on high there is some so you have the distance.

 

[m@Robertson]

The more I look at those Blitzu lights, the more compelling they are. What are your thoughts on mounting them down low, on the forks?

I think for an entry price of only $18.95 each they are worth the money to experiment with. Unfortunately they have been redesigned since I bought mine and that means I know nothing about the current model, other than these and other Blitzu lights I have bought have been winners - beatable by bigger spending but value for the dollar and durability in all weather have been proven. Worth noting again is I always used them at their minimum setting, so they were more than powerful enough to do the job I asked of them.

I never tried them on forks. My success with fork-mounted lights has always been while using the exceptionally narrow beam of the ones I linked. They're very powerful but the beam is so tight and narrow that their usefulness is limited, and happens to work perfectly on a fork where I want that (using them on handlebars, even paired up, one time the only way I figured out a pedestrian was standing still in the dark as I passed him was when I saw the glow of his cigarette just as I whizzed past him about 3 feet away. That episode got me to abandon their use as a standalone headlight).

If you try and use the Gators, I see two potential issues.

1. The mounts are not able to handle the size of the fork. I use the uprated sold-separately improved mount which was screw-on and definitely will not work with a fork blade unless its really small like a 20th century Columbus-tubed road bike small. The rubber versions that come with them might work. Maybe. Now that I have checked, their 'improved' mount is still on sale and its a rubber band now too. If you try the lights and like them I would get one of these and see if you like it better. I sure did.
2. The beam, which is now on its side, will spread up and into driver's eyes.

Again the price of admission on these lights is cheap so maybe it will just work. I have tried mounting lights on their side and it worked fine (see the Surly example in that article), but each of those are one-off experiments.

 

[PedalUma]

For commuters this time of year I recommend two lights in front that cost about $15 each. These are just the simple strap-on USB lights. Angles are fully adjustable and they have several modes. It is nice to think that in five weeks it will start getting brighter with each lengthening day.

 

[Avg_Joe]

I have some amber lights I am going to ghettofab-affix to my fork as a test tonight. They blink or can be solid: before I get on the trails, I'll set them to solid and see if they make any appreciable difference. If they do, they may stay on or get obsoleted by some better lights.

 

[PedalUma]

I did amber on the forks of a bike four years ago and the guy is still communing with that bike daily and the less expensive lights all still work. It has the two headlights on the HB.

 

[Avg_Joe]

Yeah so my attempt last night was an abject failure. The hastily rigged up mounting did not hold, and the lights I had lying around just weren't bright enough.

Curiously, I did find that the Ion Elite light completely washes out the stock Lezyne headlight - and to my surprise, the Lezyne is decent! The pattern and throw aren't world class, but turning off the Ion wasn't bad at all. For the really dark, unlighted trails, I turned the Ion on full blast and that turned out ok. Thankfully, there were no pedestrians or bicyclists on the trails.

I am now going to take the approach of finding some higher-lumen ambers to mount high on the fork but aimed low and to the side, keep the stock Lezyne and Ion.

Another thing that is obvious to most and of which I got a reminder: aiming is key! I was riding at 14mph on a dark trail and didn't see a stretch of mud - not a puddle, but mud. Unexpectedly hitting that at speed was an e-ticket ride.