Cateye EL300 LED light

MountainPro said:

Anyone use this light?

A girlfriend of mine has an EL300 and I decided to buy her something better for Christmas. I have three different lights for commuting and all three have better luminosity. She usually follows me or rides alongside on really black nights to take advantage of the illumination mine provide.

I modified an old Vistalite Road Toad with a halogen bulb and some better foam to hold the batteries in place. It's now a wonderful unit to carry on a contingency basis. It's tiny, it was cheap, lasts over two hours on four rechargeable NiMH AA's, and generates about 40 lumens. I don't know whether she's always using fresh batteries, but it is usually half again and possibly twice as bright as her EL300.

My favorite is a Performance Viewpoint Lazer originally made by Marwi which goes almost two hours on a charge and puts out about 120 lumens. This is what I bought her. It's nowhere near as small and handy to carry as the modified Vistalite; but as an all-in-one unit, it's a great commuter light to carry in my trunk bag when I expect to be riding home after dark.

My last light is an old Schwinn Mod 1 with a 10 Watt halogen lamp and some extra velcro added to hold the rechargeable NiMH D cells in place. Because of the lower voltage, it only puts out about 160 lumens but runs for no less than 4 hours. It's not bright enough for mountain riding, but I've never been on a road ride where I actually ran the batteries down.

In short, the EL300 has LED's and will milk the last few milliamp-hours out of a battery much better than my halogen lighting. I would rather use freshly charged batteries, watch the time, and have the added luminosity.

I just finished attaching my Cateye EL500 LED light to my bike. I took it for a spin around the street, and I can't really imagine someone needing any more light than that. Sure, more wouldn't hurt, but at some point you're putting car headlights on. If you're going off-road at night, I guess that may be helpful, but for most rides on a non-booby-trapped road, the EL500 seems like it'll be sufficiant for me. With something about half as bright like the EL300, I figure you're kinda wasting time and money on having it, since it's not really enough to do the job.

Mmmkay, I just did an extensive ride at night. For sure, the EL500 is enough to get you through the dark patches on a lit road, but it's lacking when you go through a completely dark park at midnight.

Not having enough light makes it exciting and disorienting though!

Also, it's not bright enough to go, say, 15+ MPH (I'm estimating without having a computer to calibrate me). I rode up a hill fine, but on the way down I had to ride the brakes becasue I couldn't see far enough ahead. Heh, in fact, part of that was because I had it mounted such that the beam was mostly 15 feet in front of me. While coasting downhill I detached it and held it in my hand like a flashlight, and even at a better angle it wasn't bright enough to cut through the fog and make me feel comfortable speeding down the hill.

So since I'm talking about the EL500, and according to the CatEye website it's twice as bright as the EL300, you could probably say that the EL300 is inadequate luminocity for a lot of the riding you'd be doing at night. If it's just for being seen though, I figure anything would work.