Daylight Visible Bike Light - Front/Rear Combo - 100 Lumens on 2 AA's

Step 2 How bright is it? how about the side visibility?

it's wicked bright!

we run the 3-watt led's at a conservative 1.5W (see later steps regarding the why's of this).

the red/orange led is rated 190 lumens at 4.5W, so we get about 60 lumens out of it. the yellow led is rated 110 lumens at 4.5W, so we get about 40 lumens out of it. actually we get a bit more than that since the led's are more efficient at lower power draws. that's a lot of light!

total for the front+rear combo: 100 lumens minimum! that is probably 5x more than any other bike safety light on the market.

on top of the LED we use a quality 5 degree x 20 degree lens that focuses all the light at car level instead of at the ground or up in the air. the side-visibility even with this lens is still much brighter than anything else out there. just the 5% of light scattered to the sides by the lens is enough to give great side-on visibility. and keep in mind that a '20 degree' lens still has plenty of light falling outside the 20-degree range, that is actually just where the light is 50% as bright as the center. take a look at the videos to judge for yourself! the comparison Cat-eye light has 6 rear-facing led's and 4 side-facing led's - most bike lights don't have ANY side-facing led's, this comparison is against the top-of-the-line. and crushes it, of course.