Drinky said:Does anyone have views on how these things stack up against each other in terms of performance
and reliability in actual use. I'm particularly interested to know if the claimed burn times and
battery life (in terms of charging cycles) are for real.
I don't know about these units, but I do know a little about metal halide discharge lamps (which is
what I believe is lurking in there), and one thing to bear in mind is that they don't much like
switching on. In particular, you get incredible life if you switch one on and leave it forever, but
if you switch it on and off and on again and so on, the lifetime is much reduced.
Also, while they're striking teh arc, teh power consumption is higher than when running -
potentially, a start-up current around twice teh running current for teh first few minutes (and a
strike current of 25 x that for a few milliseconds). So, switching off and on, unless they're going
to be off for quite a while, might drain more battery than leaving them running.
And finally, you can't actually switch them off and on again immediately - they won't start if
they're too hot. If you switch them off, you need to let them cool down somewhat before it's even
possible to switch them back on.
I don't actually know to what extent these problems affect teh bike units - my interest is in higher
power units. I can imagine that the smaller, lower power units are less troublesome, at least in teh
last two issues, because running twice teh current for a minute or two may not be a big deal, and
being so small, they might cool down so quick that you never notice they won't re-light immediately.
I'd be interested to hear from someone who's actually used them whether these issues show up...
regards, Ian SMith
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