Cycling light heads with beam cutoff

Can’t really find a good category for this so mods please move if necessary.

I’m looking for some good front bicycle lights for road/city riding. These must have a horizontal cutoff in the beam so they will not blind other people. Doesn’t actually have to be StVZO certified. I’m not very concerned about what power source they take as long as they use an external input. It would be nice if they are easily modifiable including reprogramming/replacing drivers or changing emitters.

I’m currently using the Blackstar 2000. This is very good quality, waterproof and has a great shape beam (wide with horizontal cutoff and good lumen distribution). It’s easily modifiable although I haven’t modded it so far: “Driver uses ATtiny 13A chip and it is FET based on IRF7811AV”. I generally use it on low or medium level. Only problem is it’s pretty expensive at $150 USD.

I also have access to the Roxim X4E at cost price through work. While it’s good quality it’s not very bright and the beam pattern isn’t so nice. I haven’t yet tried to take one apart. It’s around a third of the price of the Blackstar 2000 but still a little expensive.

Common dynamo lamps are usually not that great - even high end ones such as the SON Edelux II are pretty dim and due to that they don’t spread the lumens around too much.

Any other good recommendations? Haven’t had much luck looking for this sort of thing on the usual chinese websites. There are a few lights with a cutoff but they all take internal batteries.

Not exactly”budget” but I believe most Fenix dual beam bicycle lights have beam cut-off.

Edit: yeah, it takes internal batts, sorry.

Fenix “Dual Distance Beam” has no cut-off, it is a way to get more light just in front of the bike.
I have a Fenix BT10, and that is just as blinding to uncoming traffic as almost all the other led bikelights.

On my commuter bike i have a Busch & Muller IQ-X wich has real cut-off (approved in Germany) IQ-X - Bumm? .
The Busch & Muller is not blinding other traffic, it is one of the brightest dynamo powered lights at this moment, there are much brighter battery powered lights, but most of them are blinding for other road users, and that is why i almost always use the B&M (sometimes i also put a Convoy C8 XPL-HI (4200-4500K with hi/mid/low driver) on the bike to use as “high beam”).

I have SFL-01, not blinding oncoming traffic.
Mike

The Fenix BC30 takes two 18650’s. They are removable to recharge, and you could carry two spares in a pouch. Two NCR18650GA’s will give you roughly 7000mAh. Don’t know how modable they are, or if you would even need to mod them.

Whilst I haven’t seen a fenix in person, it doesn’t look as though it cuts off the beam very effectively compared to some of the other lights mentioned above.

Personally my preference would be for something compact with internal battery, battery indicator, constant current in all modes and a cut off beam. Something like this with the reflector/beam of the blackstar 2000.

I also saw this one and thought it could be easily modified….

I am almost a year late but in case someone is searching for a similar bike light I would recommend the Ravemen series, either the PR1600 or PR1200.

They have dual-beam, one with a cut-off lens and the other one without it. Similar to car headlamps.
I am almost sure they are NOT Stvzo approved (no sign of it in the flashlight body) but it may be enough for you if you are not cycling in Germany.

I bought the PR1200 and I would say that for me it is more than enough. I get 5 to 6h of battery life changing in between modes and it comes with a remote to change modes and avoid bothering incoming traffic.

There is a great review here in BLF by the user Lexer.

How does the Fenix bc35r and bc25r compare to Busch and Mueller in terms of efficiency and uniform beam distribution? One is using centrally positioned led with half scoop half parabolic reflector and lens molded at the top of the plastic glass, the other led mounted horizontally to the top with some kind of prism in parallel to the emitter as said by someone on mtbrforum and some online shops but not by the Busch and Mueller themselves.
Not sure if dedoming and using emitters with smaller die size such as SST-20 SST-20 95cri will increase the throw and reduce the foreground lighting in Fenix bc25r or no.