Magicshine RAY 2600B Bluetooth bike light

The dual-lens Magicshine Ray 2600B Bluetooth Bike Light has an impressive battery life, numerous mounting options and a smart handlebar remote. And its powerful 2,600-lumen maximum output makes it easily bright enough for riding unlit routes both on and off road – it's just a shame such an impressive piece of hardware is paired with such disappointing software.

Whatever type of riding you do, our best front bike lights buyer's guide has the light for you – from £30 to £300.

> Buy now: Magicshine Ray 2600B Bluetooth Bike Light for £129.99 from Magicshine

As its name suggest, this is the Bluetooth version of the Magicshine 2600 Ray that Shaun raved about a couple of winters ago, which can put out a retina-burning 2,600 lumens on its maximum setting.

I moved to the countryside last year, and the bike lights I'd been using for years in London no longer hacked it. Nowhere near where I live has street lighting, so I need to light my way at all times – and with the roads more and more pock-marked with potholes I want to be able to see everything as the last thing I want to do is hit one.

The Magicshine Ray 2600B is impressively bright, with a beam that manages to both give enough spread to allow you to see what's beside you as well as more than enough to illuminate the road ahead, which gave me confidence to ride at a decent pace without being overly cautious.

The light isn't always pumping out 2,600 lumens, of course, and you can choose from three different settings. The power of these depends on what you set using the app, with the default being high (2,600 lumens), medium (1,250) and low (500) solid, but you can also include flashing, floodlight, and hybrid. Flashing speaks for itself, floodlight is the equivalent of a dipped beam lighting the road ahead while hybrid is a full beam lighting everything around you.

You can change these when the light's on the bike by using its single top button, which cycles through the three customisable modes – though there isn't an indicator to show the mode you're currently in.

Only having three options to cycle through is fairly restricting, in my opinion; I'm guessing the main reason for this counter-intuitive user experience is that Magicshine expects you to rely heavily on the app to make changes to the light. But it's just far too much of a faff. Having recently had a second child, I need to fit in rides whenever I can, and the idea that I should spend an extra five minutes setting up a light before I go out just strikes me as a bit mad.

Dis-app-ointing

The app itself is very basic and I didn't find the connection particularly reliable. Plus the instructions are very confusing, with steps such as 'Click "Add" at the bottom to set a new custom mode. Mode 1 and Mode 2 support up to 20 custom modes.' Hmm, not exactly crystal clear...

After being asked to reconnect the light five times in six weeks, I decided to just stick with what I had on the light and stop using the app entirely.

Outside of cycling I work in technology, and I found it disappointing in 2024 to be presented with the first page of an app that asks you for personal information such as your email address – and that looked liked a scam website with its name only in Chinese characters. It's all very poorly done from a development perspective.

Once I removed the stress of using the app and accepted the three settings I had, well, it was a different matter entirely and I found the light became excellent to use.

Battery life & charging

The battery life is very good, ranging from a reasonable one and a half hours at the super-bright 2600-lumen setting to 14 hours using the the floodlight mode on its lowest setting. I generally used the 1250-lumen hybrid mode for riding on totally unlit roads, which gave me a four-hour running time, using the day flash and low floodlight option for most of my early morning rides.

Charging is done through a USB C cable that takes it from flat to full in around three hours, though this will depend on the charger you're using. The LED in the top button lets you know when it needs charging.

Other nice touches include a vibration sensor that puts the light into standby if you're not moving for an extended period, which will improve battery life, and a light sensor that detects light levels in front of you and turns it on if you're going through a tunnel, for example.

Whereas the earlier Magicshine 2600 came with a cable handlebar remote, the 2600B gets an upgrade to a wireless remote that you can pair with the light – though you need to do this using the app, of course, which isn't ideal. Once linked it did work very well.

Mount

Magicshine's own mount is okay, if not better than those provided by most other manufacturers, but you can also use the light with the Garmin half-turn mount or a GoPro one, which adds marks for practicality and versatility.

So, while I did a fair number of rides using the provided mount, I mostly fitted it below an out-front Garmin one because it was possible with everything in the box. In fact, I'd say Magicshine has nailed the 'extras' in the box with this light.

Value

The light's £129.99 RRP is impressive for this kind of 'smart' light that puts out over 2,000 lumens of illumination.

The Lezyne Super Drive 1800+ Smart LED Front Light doesn't match it for power and at £150 it's also more expensive, but Steve liked a lot of things about it, and while you have the option of an app, you can use it without it.

Dave recently reviewed the NiteRider Lumina Dual 1800 Front Bike Light, and while he thought it was a decent product, it's dearer at £165 and doesn't have the Magicshine's smart elements or the same maximum brightness.

Conclusion

Magicshine has created an impressive piece of hardware with great sensors, battery life and versatile mounting options – but forcing you to rely on an app that doesn't work that well detracts from the overall package. I think it's an odd choice and it was only once I stopped using the light in the way that Magicshine intended, that I really found it so impressive!

Verdict

Impressively bright, but let down by a poor app