In the winter I mountain bike one to two nights a week after dark on fast technical single track trails. I have built my own lights and purchased commercially-available lighting systems upwards of $400. I have tried halogen, HID, and LED lighting systems. Until now they were all a compromise. I am now using the Lupine Tesla 700 LED light, and I have to say it makes everything I have used up to this point seem like a silly toy. Weighing a mere 102g, this light outshines my brightest HID system, is more efficient than my smallest halogen, and has the best construction, controls, and mounting system I have seen in a light.<\/p>\n
Lupine Lighting Systems<\/a> is a German company that has been around for a while, and I have always heard they make the best lights in the industry. Because of the exchange rate, shipping distance, and their base cost, however, I could never afford to even try their products. At the Interbike show in Vegas, I met their new US distributor Gretna Bikes<\/a>, and got to see their new products priced and supported for the US market. I was really amazed and, after saving up, finally was able to buy one of their lights which I am now riding with. The one I bought, the Tesla 700, is their new “entry level” light which costs $300 just for the head unit or $488 for a complete package with battery, charger, etc. It is worth every cent. This unit puts out an amazing 700 Lumens (more than the previously-reviewed Dinotte<\/a>) in a pattern and color temperature that is perfect for outdoor sports or caving. This is in stark contrast to most LED-based products I have tried which have a weirdly tinged light that even when bright enough, do not give good definition. Lupine makes larger and brighter lights, but I could not imagine what you would need more light for, short of landing a helicopter. <\/p>\n Since I have a bunch of good batteries and chargers already, I bought just the lamp unit and head-mount. I then used one of my own small (3 oz) 2000Mah LiPoly batteries and made a velcro mount right on my helmet for it. Now I don’t even have the usual annoying cord hanging down my back into my pocket, but I still get over eight hours of light on the lowest setting, and more than an hour on the highest before swapping batteries. LED technical lights have truly arrived.<\/p>\n High-output technical LEDs<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"0","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[85],"tags":[1350,691],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3507"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3507\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}