Review: ThorFire BL02

Other Types of Lights LED Headlamps
1

This is a review of the ThorFire BL02 (my first review on here).

The ThorFire BL02 is a LED bike light that comes with a selection of accessories including a rear light.

The best performing bike lights all use Cree LEDs and this one is no different, it uses a pair of Cree XM-L2 LEDs and the manufacturer claims 1400 lumens. When you turn it on, you notice that it is bright, on “high” it lights up a room, if you cycle through to low it takes your eyes a second or two to adjust because of how bright it is on high! I can’t give you numbers but the 1400 lumens is believable.

The light has a battery indicator and turns orange when the voltage of the battery drops.

The light is made from anodized aluminium and the finish is perfect as we’ve come to expect from ThorFire. Each of the LEDs is surrounded by a stainless steel bezel which gives the light an attractive look. There is a single button on the top, hold it down and the light turns on. Pressing the button cycles through the three modes, high medium and low. A double click will switch to full intensity strobe, holding it down again will turn the light off. On high it is bright, the 1400 lumen figure is very believable unlike a lot of cheaper lights. The light is IPX6 rated and is well waterproofed, the lenses are protected with o rings, while the switch has a rubber cover over it and there is good sealing around the cable entry, plenty of attention to detail has been made to keep the water out. The reflectors have an orange peel texture on them to smooth the beam and they are of course flawless.



The battery pack consists of 4 18650 cells, which give a good 2 hour battery life on high, 6 hours on medium and 24 hours on low. It comes with a nylon case which uses velcro to attach to your bike frame. It uses a fairly standard connector so you can use it with other battery packs if you wish to.

The rear light is made from plastic like many, but unlike most it includes a pair of lasers which project a bright red line on the road to the each side of your bike. In the dark these lasers give a much larger area for drivers to see and to judge distance off which should improve safety.

What’s in the box?

The front light
Two rubber O rings to clip it to the handlebars, one larger, one smaller.
The rear light
A mount for the rear light
The battery pack and its case.
The charger and two adapters (UK and euro plugs)
A charging cable
A cable to run the light off a USB power source

Overall I think that it works well and is good quality! I would have preferred a better waterproofed battery but I don’t ride my bike in the rain.

2

Thorfire has been on the ball lately.

3

Yup

4

like the lasers, one creates a bikelane wherever, nice idea

5

Battery pack looks very poor. No waterproof in a bike is dangerous you never know when its going to rain.

6

Hi,
Does the battery pack “look/feel” as if it has a charge balancing PCB under the heatshrink? Thanks!

7

The battery pack is the fairly standard type that we’re all familiar with, I didn’t post any photos of it in my original post so here are some now:

You can see something within the shrink wrap that looks like a protection circuit of some type:

This is the battery in it’s nylon holster, you can use the Velcro lid to tidy up any excess cable so it doesn’t flap:

And this is how you attach it to your bike:

I’ve had more time to use this and I’ve come to the conclusion that “medium” is bright enough for most of the time, if you think you need more light you can always crank it up to “high”!

8

The battery pack is the standard type that many bike lights come with. The combination of the nylon holster and the shrink wrap (which is tight to the pack) gives IPX6 protection, i.e. it’s been tested for 3 minutes with a hose see here for details on the test procedure. There are battery cases which are ‘O’ ring sealed and will withstand immersion in water, but I don’t immerse my bike in water, I check the weather forecast and use them to plan when I ride my bike. If the rain is so bad that IPX6 protection isn’t good enough for you, you must be pretty hardcore, rain that needs better than IPX6 protection is unpleasant to ride your bike in.

9

Hi
I reviewed the thorfire bike light too , its great but i would not use the charger and adapter, it is potentially very dangerous, and is listed on the site below and does not meet any UK standards, just use it with a uk spec 2a output usb charger. Thorfire have responded to me and are going to change it in the future which is good news.

http://www.bs1363.org.uk/html/adaptors.html

10

I have been using one of these lights for a couple of years but recently lost the charger. Tried a conventional 2A USB charger but it wouldn’t work (the charger fried - it seemed the battery discharged through the charger but not sure) so maybe the original charger is not the same as a USB charger - voltage / polarity? Also have tried a USB power pack (4800MAh) but this doesn’t work either. Does anyone know if it’s possible to buy just the charger or charger + battery from a company in Europe?

Thanks for your help. Ricardo

11

Thorfire doesn’t make these bike lights anymore. You could try contacting these guys

12

Thanks Robert, from the information on this website it seems that the batteries are 8.4v which is why my USB charger fried trying to recharge the battery. Someone has suggested using a conventional USB charger but these are 5v so probably not good advice. Will order an 8.4v charger asap.