*PRODUCT REVIEW* Light and Motion Vega LED Bike Light

Photo courtesy of Light and Motion site, www.bikelights.com

"YOU HAVE 36 pairs of cycling gloves ... and you're still looking for the perfect pair."

So says famous satirist Maynard Hershon in his all-knowing essay "You Ride Anyway" (Half-Wheel Hell and other Cycling Stories).

In my case, it's bike lights. I've been looking for the perfect bike light for years - one that burns bright like a semi-trailer on high beam, lasts for hours, nay, days, doesn't chew through batteries, weighs less than an empty Powerbar wrapper, small as a stick of gum ... dream on.

With a penchant for loitering with intent in foreign backyards, I needed a light I could rely on for post-sundown socializing in the badlands of Nicaragua, or more likely, losing my sense of direction in the hedge-mazes of Cornwall way past my bedtime.

For this reason I chose an old standby: the AXA Dynamo with a Cateye Halogen - no problem with dead batteries, power as long as you pedal. Problem with a dynamo light - when you stop you're plunged into darkness, necessitating a secondary battery-operated backup light to read your map or fix your flat. (Since that time, clever charge-retaining setups have been developed, but with limitations).

For commuters, however, the small halogens - in particular some of the better CatEye and Planet Bike models - offered good, compact illumination that lasted just 'til you got to your mailbox - who hasn't raced home to a light dimming like the setting sun itself? For serious commuting there were models with a battery the size of dive tank, which still only gave you an a hour or two at best. L&M now have the batteries down to the size of a pack of cards, but these still afford only an hour or so of light.

Advent of the LED headlamp. LED's have been used for years as red blinky tail lights, but have really come to the fore as head lamps, given their incredible efficiency.

Light & Motion, a Monterey company founded in 1989, hit the limelight, so to speak, with their innovative and powerful diving lights. Now if you can make a light to dumpster dive the Titanic you should be able to cater for us poor cyclists stuck at 10pm on a raining Oregon winter night!

Until the Vega, most LED bike lights have featured a series of between 1 and 7 weaker bulbs in various arrangements, which give you a light more to be seen, rather than see. The Vega features a single, mother-of-all-LEDs: a Luxeon Star 3, and the strength and duration is impressive:

Power Level Lamp Power Burn Time Lumes
(Watts) (hr:min)

High 4 2:00 85

Medium 2 4:00 55

Low 1 8:00 35

Flash 2 24:00 35

You can read all the technical specs nicely laid out on the L&M here, but for now, I'll just give you my user impressions.

Unit design. The Vega is a sturdy, compact little unit that feels robust and slightly heavy in the hand. It consists of the lamp with integrated NiMH battery, charger and handlebar mount. The mounted light measures around 220 g (just under half a pound) with dimensions 1.5" x 1.5" x 3.75". The lamp housing has the sturdy, weighty feel of a precision piece of tooling. The mount itself is a tool-less screw with a knob. It's a bit fiddly, as it's quite a thin screw that has to go into quite a thin hole. Trying to mount it in the darkened Bike Friday garage took me several attempts. I am not sure why they did not opt for a kind of quick-release lever style mount that Planet Bike use even on their cheaper little lights. As an aside, the best mount I've seen is one used on the Marwi NitePro Bullite. (Bike Friday salesguy Walter Lapchynski just loaned me his to test - you might see a mini-review of this 6W super halogen - watch this space).

The charger is a chunky but fairly light, two-pronged AC 90-260 volt 'cellphone-like' adaptor that charges the battery in under 2 hours. Although the variable voltage means you can travel internationally with it, I lament that the prongs don't fold like my cellphone charger - you're likly to snag something on them like your nice off-the-bike cocktail dress. Apparently the folding design is patented by Motorola, and I was told it would have made the unit too expensive. How about retractible prongs then? Or make it an upgrade if people really must have it - like me? (Ah, no shortage of bright ideas people, right?).

The L&M charger. Chunky little devils, aren't they - but a necessary evil. Thanks L&M for this shot direct from their site.

Integrated battery: 'water bottle cages are for water bottles', claims the maker. The Vega battery will last for 3 years or 500 cycles. Product Manager Patrick Pillar says, "The dT/dt (i.e. change in temperature over change in time - to give you Calculus 101 nightmares) charging algorithm we use allows the battery to be charged at any time, as well as letting the user leave the light/battery on the power supply indefinitely w/out risk to the battery." Yes, we're flat out watching out our weight, weekly budget and PDA's, thank you for your consideration!

Replacing the battery. L&M say they are able to replace the battery once it has lived a useful life. The 500 cycles is rated to 80% of capacity, so you theoretically should have 1.5 hrs of run time even at the autumn of the battery's life. I would prefer it be self-serviceable so you don't have to send it away.

The light than led me home. Despite L&M's thoughtful design of the beam for cyclists, I'd prefer a slightly wider one. View movie clip of the Vega in action(2.9 Mb)

Vega in action. Check out the movie clip showing me heading up the dark street to where I live. For straight and narrow riding I found it great - a strong white beam about the width of the bike lane, far superior the Cateye $35 Opticube, which, for all its 5 LED's cast a way-too-defined 'limelight'-like spotlight.

However, when negotiating the twisty path near where I live, I would have liked a slightly wider, more diffuse beam, offered by most of the hi-power halogens. I had to keep my eyes peeled on a couple of turns or go off into the grass. Perhaps L&M's thinking is that commuters tend to beat a straight and narrow path home. You can compensate for this to a degree by tilting the light up slightly - but the mount makes it difficult to do on the fly. It does not have any purpose-built 'point up and down' motion, which is useful when you want to throw light out further or in closer while riding. For this you'd need to loosen the clamp on the handlebar ever so slightly, otherwise risk breaking the head off from fairly skinny neck of the clamp entirely.

One nice feature is that the head swivels 360 degrees on the mount - I found it excellent for trying to find the number on a house one night. You have tighten the screw that controls that periodically as it tends to loosen.

At first four settings seem somewhat superfluous, but you'll like the hi-beam so much you'll tend leave it on and burn battery power unnecessarily. L&M say their technology ensures the light remains bright 'til the bitter end, unlike some lights which decline in a gradual arc and give sub-optimal illumination for a goodly part of the charge. I found this to be true - the hi-beam was strong even when the battery warning indicator had been flashing for several days.

Security. When parking your bike it's a lot easier to remove the light from the mount and take it with you. But it's a bit of a yank - rather than having little catch to release it like most bikes it's held in by friction. Whether the skinny neck of the light can withstand months of yanking in and out, and whether the sliding surfaces start to wear remains to be seen.

Conclusion. The Vega is probably the most powerful integrated-battery LED commuter bikelight you can buy today - it'd want to be, at around $US175. You will get people telling you that you are blinding them. While still not as luminous as the bath of incandescent light offered by some of L&M's bigger-battery halogens, the beam is a good compromise between illumination, efficiency and compactness - and no separate, stealable battery to unstrap every time you park your bike.

I'd prefer a charger with folding prongs for overseas travel. If minimalism when you travel is a big deal to you, a more compact and dual-purpose solution is to take a couple of the AAA-battery Petzyl Tikka Plus LED headlamps (around $35 a piece) strapped to your handlebar - since you can usually buy batteries in Botswana. (You can also read better to the more diffuse beam of several LED's - single watt LED's are a bit harsh).

You can buy the Vega soon from your favorite bike shop and online. Some of the Bike Friday hardcore mountain bikers have already invested in the spendy $300+ HID lights they also sell. I'd like to hear your opinions of this light. If you like it enough we might even start selling them at Bike Friday!

Copyright 2005 Lynette Chiang

Emailable link to this article: http://www.bikefriday.com/bf/vega

For more information, follow this link http://www.bikelights.com/Products/vega.htm.