Bicycle Headlight Test: Lighting the Road

Vital — these are words that quite accu­rate­ly describe the impor­tance of using bicy­cle lights. Any­one who goes on a night ride with­out lights installed on the bike runs the risk of injur­ing them­selves and harm­ing some­one else. But ser­i­al bicy­cle lights, when checked by every­day life, often turn out to be too weak to prop­er­ly illu­mi­nate the road­way.

CHIP tests LED lights and presents the best mod­els in the cor­re­spond­ing rat­ing. You will find valu­able tips on the right choice when buy­ing a bicy­cle head­light in the arti­cle “How to choose a bicy­cle head­light”

Velofar test: what happens in practice?

The first thing that speaks about the qual­i­ties of a bicy­cle head­light is the max­i­mum illu­mi­na­tion spec­i­fied by the man­u­fac­tur­er. The high­er the num­ber in front of the “lux” des­ig­na­tion, the brighter the head­light shines.

As a rule, this also means a faster deple­tion of the bat­tery’s ener­gy reserves. In addi­tion, brighter LED “spot­lights” are usu­al­ly more expen­sive than ordi­nary weak bike lights.

But the data indi­cat­ed by the man­u­fac­tur­er, even if impres­sive, does not guar­an­tee that the bicy­cle lamp will work well in prac­tice. It hap­pens that expen­sive mod­els with a large num­ber of declared suites dur­ing a traf­fic test do not work as expect­ed from them.

The results of our bicy­cle head test­ing will help you make a choice. You will not find halo­gen lamps in the report, as they are cur­rent­ly only found in cheap kits with a dynamo — our testers focused on LED head­lights.

Bicycle headlight test: only two models were rated “very good”

CHIP test­ed 15 bike lights from dif­fer­ent man­u­fac­tur­ers for fea­tures, per­for­mance, bat­tery life, and more. How­ev­er, only two copies received an over­all rat­ing of “very good” — IQ Pre­mi­um Speed ​​​​and IQ Pre­mi­um, both from Busch & Müller. Infor­ma­tion about the results of test­ing these and oth­er mod­els can be found in the fol­low­ing table. And you can see pic­tures demon­strat­ing the oper­a­tion of the head­lights in our pho­to gallery.

1. Busch & Müller Ixon IQ Pre­mi­um Speed

Illu­mi­na­tion (50%)

: 100

Bat­tery life (40%)

: 95.3

Col­or­ful tem­per­a­ture

: about 6.350 K

The weight

: 453 g

Over­all score: 97.4

Val­ue for mon­ey: 76

2. Busch & Müller Ixon IQ Pre­mi­um

Illu­mi­na­tion (50%)

: 97.7

Bat­tery life (40%)

: 84.7

Col­or­ful tem­per­a­ture

: approx. 6.000 K

The weight

: 206 g

Over­all score: 92.7

Val­ue for mon­ey: 100

3. Busch & Müller Ixon Fyre

Illu­mi­na­tion (50%)

: 76.5

Bat­tery life (40%)

: 76.6

Col­or­ful tem­per­a­ture

: about 7.300 K

The weight

: 93 g

Over­all score: 78.5

Val­ue for mon­ey: 75

4 Tre­lock LS 750

Illu­mi­na­tion (50%)

: 49.8

Bat­tery life (40%)

: 99.1

Col­or­ful tem­per­a­ture

: about 6.100 K

The weight

: 168 g

Over­all score: 74.5

Val­ue for mon­ey: 73

5. Tre­lock LS 750 ION

Illu­mi­na­tion (50%)

: 50.7

Bat­tery life (40%)

: 100

Col­or­ful tem­per­a­ture

: about 5.950 K

The weight

: 144 g

Over­all score: 73.5

Val­ue for mon­ey: 63

6Sigma Sport Light­ster

Illu­mi­na­tion (50%)

: 51.3

Bat­tery life (40%)

: 100

Col­or­ful tem­per­a­ture

: approx. 5.900 K

The weight

: 198 g

Over­all score: 71.8

Val­ue for mon­ey: 67

7Sigma Sport Speed­ster

Illu­mi­na­tion (50%)

: 76.1

Bat­tery life (40%)

: 54.7

Col­or­ful tem­per­a­ture

: about 5.650 K

The weight

: 153 g

Over­all score: 68.9

Val­ue for mon­ey: 46

8. Ultra­sport Front Bike Light

Illu­mi­na­tion (50%)

: 46.5

Bat­tery life (40%)

: 97.5

Col­or­ful tem­per­a­ture

: approx. 6.000 K

The weight

: 188 g

Over­all score: 68.9

Val­ue for mon­ey: 64

9Sigma Sport Sport­ster

Illu­mi­na­tion (50%)

: 56.8

Bat­tery life (40%)

: 72.9

Col­or­ful tem­per­a­ture

: about 5.550 K

The weight

: 72 g

Over­all score: 64.7

Val­ue for mon­ey: 53

10. RCP Pow­er Pro

Illu­mi­na­tion (50%)

: 80.5

Bat­tery life (40%)

: 38.4

Col­or­ful tem­per­a­ture

: about 7.200 K

The weight

: 105 g

Over­all score: 62

Val­ue for mon­ey: 54

11. Owl­eye Highlux.30

Illu­mi­na­tion (50%)

: 67.7

Bat­tery life (40%)

: 50.7

Col­or­ful tem­per­a­ture

: about 7.000 K

The weight

: 55 g

Over­all score: 60.1

Val­ue for mon­ey: 45

12. Sig­ma Sport Road­ster USB

Illu­mi­na­tion (50%)

: 57.9

Bat­tery life (40%)

: 60.5

Col­or­ful tem­per­a­ture

: about 6.250 K

The weight

: 74 g

Over­all rat­ing: 59

Val­ue for mon­ey: 49

13 Tre­lock LS 350

Illu­mi­na­tion (50%)

: 26.2

Bat­tery life (40%)

: 82.2

Col­or­ful tem­per­a­ture

: about 6.450 K

The weight

: 115 g

Over­all score: 52.3

Val­ue for mon­ey: 39

14. Cat Eye Econom RC (HL-EL 340RCG)

Illu­mi­na­tion (50%)

: 31.3

Bat­tery life (40%)

: 54.6

Col­or­ful tem­per­a­ture

: about 5.950 K

The weight

: 137 g

Over­all score: 46.7

Val­ue for mon­ey: 29

15. Cat Eye Econom Hybrid (HL-EL 030G)

Illu­mi­na­tion (50%)

: 29.5

Bat­tery life (40%)

: 56.2

Col­or­ful tem­per­a­ture

: about 5.500 K

The weight

: 112 g

Over­all score: 42.3

Val­ue for mon­ey: 22