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TECH NEWS
Exposure Lights release brighter lights for the winter
British company Exposure Lights has had a lot of success with its range of LED lights over the years, and while there are no changes to its road-specific Strada this year, there are plenty of updates to its mountain bike lights that are worth a look at, whether you’re a mountain biker on the side of simply want a stupendously bright light for the road.
If you want stupendous brightness, look no further than the updated Six Pack. Now in its 6th generation, the light has had its output boosted to a massive 3200 Lumens, up from 2000 last year. Critically the Six Pack retains the same battery life and the price, £399, stays the same. Always a pretty chunky unit, the Six Pack is now marginally smaller.
Besides making the Six Pack brighter, Exposure have expanded its novel adaptive Reflex Technology to all its off-road bar mounted lights. Reflex Technology uses an accelerometer to automatically adjust the brightness of the light based on the speed you’re cycling at (so brighter going downhill, less bright climbing) and has been refined, it is claimed to be quicker to adapt to sudden changes in speed. It also helps to eke out more battery duration from the light too. It would be interesting to see if Exposure can adapt this technology for the road.
Another interesting development is the new capacitive switching. The entire back plate moves slightly when you press the metal disc, and that metal disc deflects just enough to change the resistance in the circuit so it can detect touching. It’s a technology that hasn’t been used in the cycling industry before Exposure Lights tell us, but is used in other applications outside of the cycling market.
Only a light press on the metal disc is required to switch the light on and off and cycle through the different modes, and it’s very easy to use. In much the same way as previous versions of the light, you can customise the available modes by selecting different programmes, which are handily printed on the underside of the light.
There is also a new OLED screen which provides much more clarity than the LEDs Exposure were using last year. An accelerometer is used to flip the orientation of the display so even if you turn the light upside down, the screen flips so you can still read the display. That’s handy if you want to mount the light to the underside of the handlebar.
There are four models in the mountain bike lineup, the Six Pack at the top, the Maxx-D, Tora and Race. As a sign of how much LED lights have advanced, the Race's 1200 Lumens, the company's entry-level light, is brighter than the Maxx-D's 900 Lumens when it was launched way back in 2008. That demonstrates how much the LED light market has matured and developed, with increasingly better available technology and continual tweaking by the Exposure engineering team. This is the Maxx-D with a 2400 Lumen output and costing £344.95.
A light that has some appeal to road cyclists is the helmet-mounted Diablo. We know some road cyclists do like a helmet-mounted light, especially when cycling through the lanes for seeing around tighter bends and curves in the road. You could equally fit it to the handlebar instead if you want a versatile light.
The main change is the new ‘Tap Technology’ which lets you cycle through the different modes simply by tapping the light. It works really well, and doesn’t require much of a tap to activate it at all. The idea is to make it easier to change the brightness of the light when you’re cycling off-road and have gloves on, so instead of fumbling around for a small rubber switch, you can just give the light a tap. A regular button still switches the light on and off. The Diablo costs £199.95 and pumps out 1300 Lumens.
This ‘Tap Technology’ is also used in the Axis, a 900 Lumen light costing £169.95.
No changes to the Strada, it costs £269.95 and uses a twin high and dipped beam and runs a claimed 3 to 36-hour battery life. Output is 800 Lumens. It would be interesting to see if Exposure adapts the Reflex technology and capacitive switching to the Strada next year.
You can see the full Exposure Lights 2015 range here http://www.use1.com/exposure-lights/cycling-lights-2015
David worked on the road.cc tech team from 2012-2020. Previously he was editor of Bikemagic.com and before that staff writer at RCUK. He's a seasoned cyclist of all disciplines, from road to mountain biking, touring to cyclo-cross, he only wishes he had time to ride them all. He's mildly competitive, though he'll never admit it, and is a frequent road racer but is too lazy to do really well. He currently resides in the Cotswolds, and you can now find him over on his own YouTube channel David Arthur - Just Ride Bikes.
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21 comments
Last year I bought on UBERLIGHT and run it at 1/2 power most of the time on unlite country lanes, it's perfectly adequate. But gives the option for some extra limination on the odd occasion it's necessary.
A LYNZE takes care of things at the back. I have it pointing slightly into traffic to grab attention. A mate of mine has one of those super powerful back lights.... BLOODY DANGEROUS when your following, because it destroys your night vision. All you can see is red dots
I'm very much in favour of good bright lights, and used appropriately they definately make things safer. But I think you can have too much of a good thing, and when faced with the glare of one of these super bright lights aimed down the road, they become a problem.
Having said that, the ability to fight back when faced with cars on full beam is very satisfying. I have a LEDLENSER head light for those occasions, but do not ride with it on unless needed.
I do a lot of night riding, both commuting and just out for a spin in the evenings.
Pot holes!
now don't get me started 
Great, looks like I can look forward to being even more constantly dazzled by other cyclists on my commute home... Its bad enough already, seems like no one knows how to aim their lights properly or cover them when another rider is coming the other way. Seriously I dont even know why Road.cc is reviewing this light, its an offroad light.
You can't really "aim" these lights, if you point them down far enough so they don't cause issues for on coming traffic you light up a small area directly in front, and because the light is so bright it actually makes it harder to see beyond the lit area.
Really would like to see a few more powerful bike lights coming on to the market instead of torches. The Strada is a step in the right direction but not quite there.
If there's no update to the Strada then why release an MK6? I was waiting for the MK6, as soon as I saw there was no update I bought an MK5 on the cheap (well, relatively speaking). Hope you didn't lead me astray road.cc...
Sorry to be pedantic. It was only regarding the vision thing. Working in vision science you see a lot of people talking a lot of shite about eyes (and bike lights). Winds me up good and proper
No worries, perfectly understandable in that case and I was pre-coffee at that point. Apologies.
'yes, you do blind people when you look around.'
No. No you don't. You might *dazzle* them, but you don't *blind* them. Don't be silly.
Oh FFS. Yes, dazzle... and, no, when I said a 'fistful' - they really didn't have an assortment of bulbs contained in their clenched mitts. I mean, hands.
The non-pedantic point was that it can create a temporary, but potentially dangerous, situation.
...any worse than a 4x4 with lights on hi-beam? Not likely...ride to the conditions. Cars can and will hi-beam you, accidentally, or coming round a corner and then dipping lights. Happens on every_single nightride I lead, weekly. We survive. We pass other cyclists with similar lights, no problem. When driving, being hi-beamed accidentally doesn't make me swerve off the road.
With millions of non-German-standards Cree-style LED lights out there, there hasn't been a bloodbath of cyclists careering off roads at night has there?
Storm>teacup.
Of course it's no worse - I never said it was, did I ? What has that got to do with anything ?
As for ride to the conditions, I try to, but i've had more than one occasion in the car where someone on the opposite pavement with a very bright, helmet mounted light has dazzled for seemingly a few seconds (looking at the queue of traffic maybe ? who knows...) - it doesn't take long for things to go wrong if the guy in front has to brake suddenly. It's just another factor that I could do without. With a motor vehicle, the beam direction is more predictable when the vehicle is in view, so I can often see when someone is on high beam and take steps before it becomes a problem.
Not sure why you seem to be making this cars vs bikes.
There was no storm - just an annoyance with a *potential* for unfortunate consequences.
Has the Revo been dropped from the range now?
Drivers will still say "Sorry mate i didn't see you"
(That's if they stop)
I've had to stop for a while rather than ride behind someone with stupidly powerful rear lights. Don't use them on the road, please.
Not sure if they qualify for 'stupidly powerful' but I'll continue using my 70-lumen Lezyne Micro Drive because dappled shade or low sun on 60MPH roads is a use case where I'll take every bit of attention-grabbing annoyance I can get.
At night, the 40-lumen setting on 'pulse' is perfectly OK to cycle behind.
Ditto for the folk sporting a fistful of Crees on top of their lids - yes, you do blind people when you look around.
For a moment there I thought that I read of a bike light one short of 400 drinking tokens. Silly me, need more wine!
Look just the ticket. I'm sick of being dazzled by cyclists with their mere 1200 lumens, fire will be fought with more fire.... much more.
Great to see some innovations that help to keep the £20 1200 lumen lights from eBay at bay.
I like the C&B Seen range but there are indeed cheap ebay clones so expect to see these all over the shop once they start knocking copies...
http://www.candb-seen.co.uk/newfor2014/city-slicker-series-front.html
For reference, I think a single car headlight is about 1000 lumens.
Some range rovers have 3000 lumen head lights.
What they need to do with the strada is work on the beam pattern further. Ive been told on occasion that it dazzles people.