I just noticed a clone of this HD-016 as light head only at Lightmalls.
-Garry
Nice find! This clone has better design imo. No silly icons and brand logo.
Well, it would be even better to have fins all over the top and the gaps little deeper. You would gain some more area to dissipate the heat.
I’ve been going through the many threads and so far it seems it’s mostly lottery lottery lottery — there might be something reliably consistently made but I’m not sure what.
Anyone got a summary with a reliable answer?
This is for a family member who’s bicycle commuting in these dark days.
I’m not looking for cheap, or for has-to-be-modified, or lottery.
I’m looking for best I can get reliably.
I’m a bike commuter with a small collection of lights I’ve accumulated over the years.
http://www.action-led-lights.com/collections/bike
sells several brands of lights that would work for them. I’ve bought from a company called Bike Empowerment in California before too that I’d like to recommend as well, but can’t find with a quick search.
Well, we are working on budget lights, right? Anyway, those are quite realiable if you are looking only the light head. Most problems lies in battery packs and chargers.
If you don't want to go cheap and want no hassle then go for some brand ones starting from Magicshine at the low side and Lupine on the high end. Gloworm and Fenix are also brands to look for. If you are in States I would start looking here.
> those are quite realiable if you are looking only the light head.
I wondered because I see so many comments about bad heatsinking
Thanks for the pointers. It’s funny how the expensive ones in the US so often look just like the many clones described here.
That’s why I asked — I know it’s easy to buy the same thing from a US seller at 5x the price, and not get anything better, without knowing what’s inside the lights (and battery boxes)
To me ‘budget’ means value for the money — not “cheap” as in corners cut where you can’t see them.
It most often seems like there will be one good product, for a while — then that’s gone and poor imitations show up everywhere.
Buying the good one while it’s briefly on the market from China seems to be the way to go. Gotta be quick and smart to do that.
Thanks for you reviews and input ledoman and garrybunk! This light looks really interesting. Do you guys prefer the HD-016 or the Yinding YD or X3 (Gearbest ones GJHS recommended) for a bar light?
I like that the leds on the HD-016 are mounted on regular 16mm stars. It would be easy and super inexpensive to reflow the emitters on Noctigons.
Are these the sense resistors to modify here (circled in red below)? Where can I get resistors from? Have you guys done the mod yet?
Yes those are sense resistors. Depends on where you live you can get resistors in local electronic shop or some web based like Farnell. If you have a lot of time you can find them at fasttech.com. The size should be 1206. I didn't mod them. At the moment I have no need to do it since I'm working more on Yinding and KD2 ones.
Depends on what style is your biking. There is no single answer which one is the best. It also depends on riding time, battery pack and terain you have. I don't have X3 so can't say for shure, but for the MTB it seems to be the best for the bar. HD-016 would be more for commuting and Yinding for the helmet. Experimenting with lenses Yinding could be for any task.
Thanks again ledoman. I’ll give the X3 a try first and perhaps will try on of these later.