The Ravemen PR1400 bike light ($70 as reviewed) is VERY bright in the HI / EMERGENCY mountain biking mode. Plenty of light. Blinding light. More than you should have on a road bike.
HIGH / Mountain Biking / EMERGENCY full power mode with both “high” and “low” beams at full power
Although it claims a 1.5 hour runtime in the highest setting, it actually goes for 1 hour 45 minutes in my testing, because it was producing so much heat the light would thermally throttle the light output and occasionally drop down to the “medium” setting until the light cooled down. [I was testing statically on a garage floor, so it may get more cooling airflow if you are actually riding it on a bike…]
High light setting in road biking (low beam) mode
The “road biking” modes deliver a more reasonable amount of light and it is aimed lower (think, low beam vs high beam). You get a High/Medium/Low/Eco mode in the road bike mode.
The eco mode claims to deliver 22 hours of battery life (I didn’t test this, but I believe it, as it is much dimmer than the high powered modes). I think this mode provides enough light to walk, or bike along at a walking pace, but I’d want to use the “low” mode at a minimum for most biking at night. There is also a “pulse” mode which appears to cycle between the medium and eco modes, and makes you more noticeable to drivers.
The light is charged by a USB-C cable (and does properly handle USB-C PD negotiation so can be charged by a smart phone charger, or the included USB-A to USB-C cable) and includes a handlebar mountable button that also plugs into the USB-C port. This button allows you to select between High/Medium/Low modes, or if you hold it down for 1/3 of a second, it triggers the “EMERGENCY” super high power mode until you release it.
The light also has a rear mounted USB-A output port, and it can provide 1-1.5 amps with only a little voltage sag (4.6 volts at 1.5 amps) but will shut down if you try to draw more than 2 amps. So it can operate as a USB-powerbank to charge a phone or operate some other USB powered device on your bike. (rear or frame lights?)
10 minute water submersion test
It claims to be IPx8 waterproof, and I dropped it into a foot of water for 10 minutes (while turned on) and it worked just fine. After that I disassembled it to look for water inside, and found that it had rubber gaskets on both the front and rear plugs, as well as gaskets around the inside of the USB ports, and I did not find any water inside the gaskets, so they did a great job of waterproofing it.
It has two 18650 cells inside (1S2P configuration) which are soldered onto the circuit board, but if you de-solder those two wires, you can remove them and slide in a replacement pack and solder that in. So it doesn’t really have user replaceable batteries, but if you can solder you COULD replace the batteries.
My biggest issue is with the size of the handlebar clamp. 31.8-35mm is larger than all of my bike handlebars, so make sure you measure your bike before purchasing it, as I’ll have to wrap tape around my handlebars to make it fit. Otherwise, it is a very capable, bright and waterproof bike light.
