Bicycle Toys

Sheesh, look what happens when you cancel a ride, you go and buy bicycle toys instead. So what did I waste good money on this time? The latest bicycle light from NiteRider. Is this a guy thing? All the guys I know love flashlights. Back in the day, having a MagLite would put a swagger in your step. Getting yet another AA MiniMaglite stocking stuffer would never bum us out, you can always use one. When the tiny keychain LED lights came out, we thought it was a brilliant idea. You’ll find us drooling over finely machined pieces of manly agressive “tactical” lights that can curl the retina off your eyeballs with batteries that require fat wallets and last about as long as that money stays in those wallets. And then stadium light technology in portable form appeared, the first one to come out nicknamed the alien abduction light. If we were to find ourselves crashed in the deepest remotest regions of Africa confronted by aborigines ready to throw us into the evenings crock pot, what would we whip out? Well, lighters aren’t allowed anymore (did they change that again?), so it would have to be the trusty flashlight in the god fearing eyes! Perhaps its this primevel fascination, the defying of something so basic, darkness, with a creation of man, the flashlight.

Am I trying to justify this purchase? Aw heck, I needed a new toy. Been enviously eyeing other’s HID alien abduction lights for their light output and burn time, but also seen the problems and weaknesses. I’ve been watching LED technology and toying with it as it’s been rapidly growing. It is now reaching the level of practicality. I was very tempted when I saw the PrincetonTech dual LED headlight setup. Doing an unscientific soda A soda B shine on store wall test it seemed to equal my old tech NiteRider Classic. The battery was a bit large, although boasting extreme run time. I wasn’t planning to ride straight through the entire night anytime soon. I would rather have a smaller lighter setup. And then came the TriNewt. Three high power LED elements in a single reflector & housing, a pretty small & light LiIon battery pack. 3.5 hours of burn time at max should be plenty of time for the rides we do, double at low power which seems plenty bright. Unscientific shine in room test shows its brighter by a large margin than the Classic. Will need to compare it to the HIDs. Its not as power efficient as HIDs requiring more battery for less time. But they also don’t need warm up time, can be turned on & off as rapidly as desired (the strobe mode is really seizure inducing annoying, but usefull if you feel the Saturday Night Fever on a ride), don’t flicker, and don’t break if you drop them. The downside of this light looks to be the weak glorified rubberband mounting system. I suppose I should actually give it a try before passing judgement, but I don’t like it. I know it won’t last as long as the original system which NR still uses today. In fact my original 1st gen NiteRider mount that the Classic is based on is still working fine and is probably going to find itself adapted onto this TriNewt.

 What I plan to do is take the clown nose ball from the helmet mount, mount it to a plate, then mount the old clip to the plate. That should then allow use of the NR “universal” mount.

There’s another thing that I find odd, the decision to put the control button on the battery pack. I would have much prefered it to be on the headunit. Dave groused about it being on the same side as the chord, but someone else brought up the point that if you run it as a helmet light, if you put in pack or pocket, it’ll be easier to access the button. Jarrel thinks they did that so they could create the geewhiz option of wireless and charge you $100 more. I sure hope that version comes with the manual button still there. Would suck to lose the “fob”. Oh, and my battery pack was being kind of schitzoid when I plugged it into the charger for the first time. The button is supposed to glow red when charging and also indicate low power, blue is good and also done charging. This pic you see was taken about an hour into charging. It’s supposed to take 3 hours for a full charge. A couple minutes the light changed back to red. The lights gone back and forth a number of times. Now after the three hours its been steady blue. Will have to keep an eye on it and contact NiteRider. I’ve heard of some batches being recalled for not charging to full capacity. Great….

Stay tuned for actual use opinions. Oh, and NR, give better stickers, that tiny sticker is pretty weak.