By Steve Bush 30th August 2022
As an enthusiastic cyclist, driver and pedestrian, I feel the need once again to bang a drum that I need to pick up all to frequently: Bicycle lights should not dazzle anyone, while putting plenty of light where it is needed.
As an enthusiastic cyclist, driver and pedestrian, I feel the need once again to bang a drum that I need to pick up all to frequently: Bicycle lights should not dazzle anyone, while putting plenty of light where it is needed.
Lidl has proves this is possible, once again: this time with a set of rechargeable front and rear lamps that both manage light properly, all for under £13.
This is in a world where other companies, even well-known ‘specialist’ companies, charge far more – even hundreds of pounds more – for lights which spray lumens into the air, where the cyclist can’t uses them, and where other road users are dazzled by them.
In this case, the front light is one that Lidl has shipped before, which uses a top-fire (led pointing straight down) sculptured reflector (left) that makes a very nice flat-topped (like a car ‘dip’) beam which fills the road ahead well – this means the beam has very little above the horizontal, a bright bar just below the horizontal, then intensity tapering down below this – all with controlled width.
As an added bonus, the front light can be set to dim automatically from its 70 lux maximum to save battery life where there is street lighting
Despite its angled mounting, the top rear lamp emits light horizontally like the older bottom lamp
The back light is innovative.
It clips close onto the seat post (right, top lamp), in a position that many rear lights only illuminate the rear wheel as their light emerges at 90° to their mounting face and therefore downwards when mounted directly on a seat post.
However, Lidl’s light has a surface-mount led over which a shaped prism hovers (left) to push light out horizontally when the unit is mounted at the usual seatpost angle (~73°) – very clever.
It also has a Fresnel lens on the outside (below right) to spread the light wide, into the appropriate pattern for rear visibility.
I am not letting Lidl off the hook completely here: it is quite capable of stocking dazzling bicycle lights, and the front light in the above set is prone to sliding nose-down while riding if the handlebars are smooth – add a layer of tape to the bars first for grip.
Tagged with: EinW Engineer in Wonderland forward lighting lamps LED headlamps led lighting
It seems appropriate to share this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL7jyXCQ2Zc
And here’s the one with products and little bad language:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-8GeEHR0mc
It would be interesting to know if it cost any more to produce a light that had a good beam (i.e. complies with German standards) versus one that was just a basic round beam (like a flashlight/torch). I would guess that the difference is small. Here in the USA, there is nearly no awareness of what a good beam could/should be. Most lights are sold to be used in the daytime, as “be seen” lights, so a round beam is fine. Unfortunately, there is also the belief in some areas that brighter is always better. Not so bad in the middle of the day, but can indeed be dazzling in low light conditions. As far as Lidl, they are just starting to get into the market here. Haven’t seen one here myself.
Morning Mr Kurt My guess is that a lot of bike light makers don’t have the in-house optical design skills to create complex asymmetric beams using reflective or refractive optics. While they can do simple rotationally-symmetric reflectors, while rotationally-symmetric collimators can be bought-in. Also – ‘mountain biking’ is an excuse for not trying hard as light everywhere is ‘good’ – even though a rectangular beam might (without a cut-off) be better off-road. Ho hum. Any, I agree with zeitghost, the temptation to buy tools at Lidl is hard to resist – Aldi too. Just in case you don’t know, Aldi and Lidl have the same food in each week, but different non-food items – generally arranged around a theme such as DIY, horse riding, fishing, skiing, back-to-school, and on…. Currently, my local one has rather tempting inverter-style arc-welders….
I’m starting to think that the Aldi’s over here are not the same as the Aldi’s on that side of the Atlantic. Ours are strictly groceries and a few household items. Rather sparse in general, and I tend to not shop there. That said, the produce has been pretty good. Definitely no welding equipment! 🙂
Morning Mr Kurt Hmmm, what a shame – although it will save you a lot of money 🙂 Can you see the aldi.co.uk website, so view what you are missing? – although the welders are at Lidl at the moment. Aldi keeps last week’s stuff on their website site, Lidl seems to clean the website once the goods are out on the shelves for a few days.
I took a look at the UK Aldi site, and it looks like a very different store! Ours are just a conventional grocery store, except that they rarely sell name brands… almost everything is the Aldi brand goods. It’s quite inexpensive, but most items are noticeably a step down from the name brands (imho, etc.). As noted, the produce is inexpensive, and as good as other grocery stores. So.. no Aldi bike lights for me!
I bought the Lidl inverter welder, it works ok, but I prefer the old buzzbox that I’ve had for 30 odd years or so.
It’s probably down to lack of practice.
Morning zeitghost Interesting… My welder friend put me off by saying that (reading the box) they sounded a bit gut-less – but he welds big stuff. What was the disadvantage compared with your old one?
Along with ancient welding rods that worked ok with the buzzbox but not so well with the inverter welder.
It’s a nice light machine that seems to do the job.
Thanks zeitghost I have a feeling my incompetence at welding* will trump yours, so maybe that is another reason I should steer clear 🙂 BTW, there seems to be a review of the (more expensive) TIG-capable PTMI 180 version bysomeone who can weld https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8I9hFnIeB5c
*I can’t weld, but did enjoy gas brazing.
Ah, Lidl, suppliers of a fine assortment of tools, some of which seem so fine I’ve bought them twice by mistake.
There’s boxes of them in here.
Morning zeitghost I also feel that urge, and have three boxes of unopened angle grinder discs, all the wrong size for my (non-standard*, it turns out) angle grinder
*Did Betamax do angle grinders?
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