Review: UniqueFire HD-016 dual beam Bicycle headlight

This is an interesting bike light. It solves the need for 2 separate lights - one as high beam and one as low beam - when riding on the road at night. The shield should prevent the wide beam (which could be used as the low beam) from ‘offending’ motorists from the opposite lane. :slight_smile:

Jup, interesting ideed. Gearbest has mentioned they might be doing jointly groupbuy with some bicycle forum for it so the price can be very attractive even with battery as is.

Will take some beam shots tonight with the light attached to the bicycle bar.

I’m eager to see internal construction (heat sinking) and pwm frequency measured…

Well, I don't expect any PMW when you basicaly just turning on/off the leds. Heat sinking is to be inspected, though, but after I make beam pictures, just in case ;-)

Added some beam profile pictures and power used during runtime. Final conclusion is also there.

Anyone intereseted in some details, comments, ...?

Nice light you got there , any idea about amperage reading for every led ?

and thank you for taking the time to review

So I guess I was right. The wide beam is appropriate for lo-beam and the narrow for hi-beam. Lo-beam will particularly be useful on heavily vegetated trail rides at night where you need to see ‘everything’ near you. Hi-beam will be useful on straight roads and at higher speeds. :slight_smile:

The common problem I encountered with my bike lights (I had four plus the ledoman X6) is that its chargers are usually defective. Of the four bike light chargers (one is using Pannovo Battery Case), only one charger is currently working, one lights up but only gives 4.2 volts, one won’t function, and I had one ordered from eBay wherein I tripped the circuit breaker of my house when I plugged it in. When I inspected afterwards, the wires leading from the AC jacks were connected by a solder blob in its PCB. I assume its was accidentally done during manufacturing. :frowning:

Also, I think the tail cap current readings of the HD-016 is within what is common among Chinese bike lights. Here are the tail cap readings of my different bike lights on high:

1. SingFire SF-90 (DX) - 1.01 Amps
2. SolarStorm X2 (Cerlavi of eBay) - 0.70 Amps
3. SolarStorm X2 (green-led of eBay) - 0.86 Amps
4. SolarStorm X2 (bestsave999 of eBay) - 2.19 Amps
5. Ledoman X6 (stock) - 1.28 Amps, (modified) - 3.38 Amps

I did some dissasemblig last nigt, but haven't publish the pictures yet. There can be seen sense resistor R150 (0.150 Ohm) and LEDA chip, so the current to the led can be calculated. AFAIK feedback voltage of this chip is 0.25V. So 0.25 / 0.15 = 1.66A

As you can see on my pictures, input power is about 5W (7.82*0.65). If you put it back 5/1.55 = 3.06V. This quite good fits on Cree Vf chart. It only assumes 100% driver eficiency, which is not, of course. So I would say it is about 1.5A to the single led.

Can you explain why so big difference with third X2 against first two?

I think its simple. They are not made from the same factory and either one, two or all of them are clones. :bigsmile:

All of them were bought from different sellers in eBay, all based in China. Two are colored red and even their ‘reds’ are obviously different from each other. I think its just like what happened to the Sky Ray King. There are so many versions of the SRK that it would seem impossible to tell which is genuine. :slight_smile:

Nice review with great info and pics. Thank you :)

Thanks. Here are some new pictures.

The driver:

Internals with pill and reflectors:

TIR lenses does not fit well enough:

Tried to mod with some spare narrow OP reflector and hairsprayed wide reflector:

Did not help much with ringy beam.

But a lot of XM-L(2) leds with some reflectors have ringy beam, anyway.

Thanks for the review! Seems like deja vu! I might be interested in the group buy, though I wish it was available as a head unit only.

-Garry

Well, yes, more dedicated . Will see how will go about groupbuy. I know the head only would be better, but then yet, for the price you get nice rubber coated battery pack as a bonus.

I’d love to see something like this, with an on-off switch in the light itself, and a remote switch to swap modes between hi and lo beams, close to my thumb. It should have a jumper or group modes to select whether you want to use both beams in hi mode, or just hi beam. that would be my perfect bike light.
switching between all modes in this light when you approach upcoming traffic is a deal breaker. just hi and lo please

Wait - are you saying we can open up the battery pack/case and put our own cells in, like the Pannova case?

-Garry

Better if could get without batteries, but include wire and case

The internals look very similar to that of a SolarStorm X2. I may have more bike lights than we have bikes at home but yes I would also be interested in a group buy. :bigsmile:

It seem like a nice bike light…but not quite sure about pulling the trigger yet…maybe GB on this light to about $25 then I might take the bait ( I really hate buying from them though, their handling & shipping is too slow for me :expressionless: )