Gaciron Raptor-3000 front bike light

The Gaciron Raptor-3000 is a very bright light with excellent High and Low beam patterns. The remote button is a great feature at this price point, and it can be mounted above or below your bar. It is let down by the software design for swapping modes, though, even if it's not alone there.

> Buy now: Gaciron Raptor-3000 for £55.37 from AliExpress

Gaciron is a Shenzhen China-based brand which sells online (with free shipping). Its Raptor-3000 is a metal-bodied light that feels every bit a premium product. It's rated IPX6 water-resistant, meaning it's good for 'high-pressure water jets from any direction'.

In the box you get the light, a mounting bracket of the 'threaded strap' type, a GoPro adaptor, a short USB-C cable, a remote button, and a screwdriver and Torx for swapping the mount position.

The GoPro adaptor can be mounted facing in either direction, giving you options on attaching and removing the light from either the front or rear. The provided bracket has enough threaded strap to wrap around a 35mm diameter bar with ease. It's lined with rubber, and didn't budge at all despite battering over pretty rowdy terrain for hours.

You can also pivot the light to the left or right in small increments up to 90 degrees, so you could in theory mount the Raptor-3000 off a set of tribars or the front of a curved handlebar. This is an excellent feature if you need to cram a light into an already-busy bikepacking or commuting setup.

Keeping the body of the light in the designed upright orientation is critical, as it has High and Low beams that really work.

Party tricks

The first party trick of the Raptor-3000 is that in a minute or so, as alluded to above, you can swap the mounting 'slide' from the top to the bottom of the light, allowing you to put the light above or below the bar without messing up the beam alignment.

The slide is metal, held in place by three T10 Torx screws that are Loc-Tited to ensure they stay put. Nice.

Another useful feature is that if you're slinging the light into a bag or there are kids about, there's a lock mode, activated by a five-second press when off and deactivated by five quick presses.

There's also an illuminated rubber button, with an eagle's head on it, on the top next to the three-bar LED display. The bars are small, medium, large, to show the light output, and are coloured either green for Low beam or red for High beam.

Charging in or out is via the USB-C port under a thick rubber bung at the back. It's a 10,000mAh powerbank, too, as many lights are these days. Don't expect the full 10,000mAh into your phone or whatever, though, as inevitably you lose a third of that in power conversion between the battery and port.

The rubber button illuminates when pressed briefly with the light off to show the charge level. A long press turns the light on, and the button light is on constantly then to show battery level.

Which brings me to my first grumble: you only get three levels of indication: blue (100-61%), yellow (60-21%) and red (20% and lower). So you might have a full battery, or just over half. You might have nearly two-thirds of a charge, or about one-fifth… Sorry Gaciron, but this level of under-information really isn't good enough for 2024. Once you get to 10% the light goes into 'Breathe' mode, which is a low-beam, lowest-power slow pulse that is actually good enough for riding slowly home to. Almost certainly not road legal, though.

When charging up the light the indication is worse, in that it simply flashes red the whole four and a half hours, then turns blue to say 100%. Again, an incremental show of progress would be appreciated.

Next grumble: yes, it's USB-C – but not fast charging. Getting a full charge into the Raptor-3000 is 4.5 hours, even on a high-output PD-capable USB-C charger. It's limited to 5V 2A in or out. You can run the light while charging it but only at the lowest setting on low beam. Good enough for daytime running or urban riding, but not dark roads at speed.

On the bright side

Some good news: the brightest setting of high beam is stupidly bright and is more than capable of lighting a 20mph descent over rough terrain or a road blast at 40mph. The spread of the beam is perfect – even and focused where you need it, with enough peripheral bleed to light up side tracks, tree branches, or large prey animals about to pounce into your path on an attack vector (common occurrence during Scottish winters). The beam is so good it beats that of my 3,300-lumen Exposure Flex E-Bike MTB light – which costs £275.

The mount is strong and with tight enough tolerances that it only shows slight signs of vibration over the very roughest of surfaces, and even then not distractingly so. I was perfectly happy blasting rocky and twisty trails with the Raptor-3000, and over gravel or on tarmac there was no notable movement in the beam.

As mentioned, you get three steps of high beam – 750, 1500 and 3,000 lumens, labelled as good for 8, 4 and 2 hours. I found run-times to be better than claimed in an indoors test, but outside in close to freezing that dropped below indicated by maybe 10%.

With great power comes great heat to manage, and with 3,000 lumens belting out the Raptor-3000 gets seriously hot. It has a protection circuit that kicks in at 75°C. Yes, that's right, 75 degrees – more than hot enough to burn yourself (ask me how I know). When the light gets that hot, it drops to the lowest power setting until it cools down. Fortunately it would be rare to get that hot while riding, but if you're using it as a torch, you'll likely need to wear gloves.

The Low beam behaves exactly as you'd hope – switching off the centre high beam spot LED and leaving the two side LEDs on. They pass through fresnel lenses to direct the beam downward. Again you get three power levels of 400, 800 and 1,200 lumens, good for 16, 6 and 4 hours. I rode into a stream of UK winter evening traffic on the highest setting of low beam and not a single flash of headlights. Result.

There's a 'hidden' mode, as Gaciron calls it, activated by a two-second-long press when on, which then cycles through the aforementioned Breathe pulse mode (50-100 lumens, 40 hours) and Daytime Flash – a short-long flash pattern, not a seizure-inducing disco strobe, thankfully – rated at 1,000 lumens for 55 hours. This would do well for multi-day touring or a week's commute.

You select these modes by pressing the button on top or via the provided Bluetooth remote button. Yes, as mentioned earlier, for this little cash you get a Velcro-strapped remote button with a rubberised backing, actuated by your thumb in the drops or the tops depending on location.

It's luminous as well, giving a perfect green glow that makes it easy to find in the dark.

Mode selection

So far, so amazing for a £90 light – it would be great at twice the price. But then we come to mode selection...

In order to swap between High and Low beams – for example, when passing another road or trail user – you simply double-push the button on either the light or remote. Great! Couldn't be easier. BUT – the newly selected mode defaults to its lowest power setting. So once back into High beam you then have to press it once, pause, then once more to restore the highest output. So going from high in High to low in Low and back requires no fewer than six button presses at differing intervals. There's a fair chance you'll faff it and need to try again.

On multi-hour rides this became rather tedious. And during mountain bike rides I was also juggling a dropper switch and gear levers – another button demanding even a second or two more attention is not good.

Having spent the last decade or so with Lezyne lights set to 'Race Mode' or Exposure lights where your options are highest of high vs lowest of low with a single or double-push, the mental work and physical gloved dexterity required to manage the Raptor-3000 through no fewer than a half-dozen actuations per switch was, frankly, a deal-breaker. Yes, technically the Lezyne and Exposure lights don't have an angled 'low beam' – but you get the point.

Conclusion

Would I want to live with the Raptor-3000 for a dark-riding season, let alone multiple years? Not unless I only rode in remote areas, where the need to afford fellow trail or road users courtesy of dipping my beam occurred maybe once every half-hour or so.

And that's the conflicted rub with this light. The build quality and beam pattern are top class. The omission of USB-C PD charging or output is forgivable at the price point. The mount is solid. But the mode selection – the most critical factor of 'liveability' with any light – falls short of what even a sub-£100 light should deliver.

The trouble is, on price and output – a 3,000-lumen light for under £100 (even £200) – it's in a class of one. The closest match on output at the lowest price is the Lezyne Mega Drive 2400+, a 2,400-lumen light for £180 – so twice as expensive as the Gaciron. Under £100, there aren't many lights over 1,200 lumens.

> Buyer’s Guide: Best front bike lights

Clearly the Raptor-3000 is a stupidly powerful light for an amazingly low price. Both beam shapes are excellent, and the build quality is high. The mounting options are equal to lights at three times the price, and the Bluetooth remote button is a definite bonus. It's an absolute belter of a package in both lumens and value – but only if you can excuse the frustrating mode switching.

> Buy now: Gaciron Raptor-3000 for £55.37 from AliExpress

Verdict

Very bright light with excellent beam shapes and mount, but annoying mode selection