Monday, weather was crystal clear, this night freeride was just Ckucky, Scat and me. Now by the time we got loaded up and headed up the hill, the light was getting low. Scat was connecting with his inner and outer child riding in the back seat watching a DVD on the screen in Ckucky’s van. By the time we got to the top and started unloading, the sun had set. Geared up, we set out for the park. Scat and I were rocking the newest light from NiteRider, the TriNewt three blazing LED element LiIon light. We’d been told that these are the brightest NiteRider lights and we were curious to see about that since Ckucky has the HID.
When you first fire them up, you get full brightness so they were brighter than Ckucky’s HID. Once warmed up though, it’s hard to say. The HID has a tighter focused center bright spot that looks a good amount brighter than the TriNewt. The TriNewt has a nice very even broader bright beam without a hot spot. Even though it didn’t look as bright, we all liked the TriNewt pattern. It gave your eyes a wider view of the trail instead of having tunnel vision. Compared to the 6V Classic was night and day, I could actually pick lines in advance instead of just reacting and bashing through a path. So light wise this gets happy monkeys. Now the nit picks. The button on the battery is a pain. With it mounted on my frame under the top tube I found it difficult to find the button since its hidden behind the frame tube. On trail its not too bad since the tendancy is to turn it on and leave it on, on road its nice to be able to throttle the light. But I can live with this. The big nit is this new mounting strap. I can appreciate the simplicity and low profile, but it’s got disadvantages. The bigest of which is I can see the rubber band failing. Also in use, I found it shifted a little with the intense jostling of rocky downhill. Perhaps if I tried the next notch in the band to make it tighter. Readjusting was easy, just a matter of moving it by hand, but that also shows how much clamping force there is, or isn’t. Charger worked as speced, although the indicator light on pack acted schizophrenic blinking between the red charging and blue done charging many times throughout the entire charge cycle. Will have to see if it does this again on second charge. So there you have it, light performance gets happy monkeys, the mounting strap gets sad monkey. Sorry, no comparison pics of beam shots, Ckucky’s HID died out halfway on the trail. Next time.Oh, and for the amount of benjamins you have to dole out for this light, you’d figure NiteRider could include some velcro straps and a bigger sticker!
Dude, definitely Happy Monkeys on that light. Very happy with it’s performance. If you think the strap on the Tri Newt is lame-o you should see the one on the Mini Newt, or whatever it’s called. The dang thing is held on with O-rings…seriously, O-rings! Design department fell asleep halfway through.