Gadget review: ViewPoint Gen3 Headlight
Commuting by bicycle at this time of the year means riding in the dark. My primary lighting until how has been a PlanetBike DualSpot which is good enough as a "be seen" light in its flashing mode. Its steady modes, I've found, however, are not great for lighting up the road ahead.
Lately, however, the roads have been torn up by lots of construction, and it's become more important for me to ride carefully, lest I drop a wheel somewhere nasty, and crash during the evening rush.
It was time to get a new light. Most battery-lighting solutions are either feeble but compact and affordable (like my DualSpot) or as dazzlingly bright as they are stupendously expensive.
Into this comes the ViewPoint Gen3 headlight, which I picked up from my local shop--which happens to be a Performance shop, about which more some other time.
For the princely sum of 39 U.S. dollars, here was a LED headlight claiming to be brighter than a 10-watt halogen lamp and run 9 hours on a set 4 AA batteries. The bulb wouldn't ever need replacing, either, being a LED. I was intrigued, and picked one up.
The lamp housing is about the size of a typical single-halogen headlamp, and it sits over the flat battery pack which holds 4 AA batteries (not included, of course). Bizarrely, there is a wire leading from the battery pack which must be plugged into the appropriate place on the lamp. I mention this because the battery pack and the lamp are actually inseperable, so I can't work out why on earth one would ever need to disconnect the power cord.
Technically, the mounting bracket and the lamp are two pieces, but, since the bracket mounts with a quick cam similar to my DualSpot's, it is possible to keep the unit together. The quick cam clamps securely to my Jamis Aurora's drop bars, although I had to loosen it quite a bit. I loosened it too much and ended up accidentally taking the cam clean off. the threads are very fine, and I was frantically trying to get things back together. Let that be a less to you, kiddies--never test gear for the first time in a dark Metro parking lot!
On the road, with the lamp on at its brightest setting, I was actually able to spot irregularities in the pavement ahead quite well. I've never ridden with a 10-watt halogen, but I can say for certain that the LED in this thing was at least an order of magnitude brighter than my previous light. While it threw a rather diffuse beam, the difference I could immediately notice was that I could see *and* be seen. Quite confidence-inspiring in early-evening, crowded suburban traffic.
In fact, the light it threw out reminded me of the last decent set of lights I had on a bike--a horrid Union plastic bottle generator dynamo lightset. My new light actually threw off as much light as that whirring contraption did which has immediately set me to thinking about getting a dynamo and a LED headlamp sometime in the future. Why not get one now, you ask? Because I needed a light *now* for commuting, and no shops in my area stock dynamos, that's why.
Overall: Money well-spent. This "high-power emitter" stuff is not a gimmick, at least not to me.
Lately, however, the roads have been torn up by lots of construction, and it's become more important for me to ride carefully, lest I drop a wheel somewhere nasty, and crash during the evening rush.
It was time to get a new light. Most battery-lighting solutions are either feeble but compact and affordable (like my DualSpot) or as dazzlingly bright as they are stupendously expensive.
Into this comes the ViewPoint Gen3 headlight, which I picked up from my local shop--which happens to be a Performance shop, about which more some other time.
For the princely sum of 39 U.S. dollars, here was a LED headlight claiming to be brighter than a 10-watt halogen lamp and run 9 hours on a set 4 AA batteries. The bulb wouldn't ever need replacing, either, being a LED. I was intrigued, and picked one up.
The lamp housing is about the size of a typical single-halogen headlamp, and it sits over the flat battery pack which holds 4 AA batteries (not included, of course). Bizarrely, there is a wire leading from the battery pack which must be plugged into the appropriate place on the lamp. I mention this because the battery pack and the lamp are actually inseperable, so I can't work out why on earth one would ever need to disconnect the power cord.
Technically, the mounting bracket and the lamp are two pieces, but, since the bracket mounts with a quick cam similar to my DualSpot's, it is possible to keep the unit together. The quick cam clamps securely to my Jamis Aurora's drop bars, although I had to loosen it quite a bit. I loosened it too much and ended up accidentally taking the cam clean off. the threads are very fine, and I was frantically trying to get things back together. Let that be a less to you, kiddies--never test gear for the first time in a dark Metro parking lot!
On the road, with the lamp on at its brightest setting, I was actually able to spot irregularities in the pavement ahead quite well. I've never ridden with a 10-watt halogen, but I can say for certain that the LED in this thing was at least an order of magnitude brighter than my previous light. While it threw a rather diffuse beam, the difference I could immediately notice was that I could see *and* be seen. Quite confidence-inspiring in early-evening, crowded suburban traffic.
In fact, the light it threw out reminded me of the last decent set of lights I had on a bike--a horrid Union plastic bottle generator dynamo lightset. My new light actually threw off as much light as that whirring contraption did which has immediately set me to thinking about getting a dynamo and a LED headlamp sometime in the future. Why not get one now, you ask? Because I needed a light *now* for commuting, and no shops in my area stock dynamos, that's why.
Overall: Money well-spent. This "high-power emitter" stuff is not a gimmick, at least not to me.