Light & Motion Arc Lion Review

After a great summer and hours of ‘Chiltern’ Mtbing my fellow Mtb riding chums decided that we should inspire ourselves to 4/5 months winter riding by exploring the thrills of night riding. To be honest, the concept was entirely new to me but I figured that it must involve a decent gadget or two so I quickly indicated my enthusiasm and started my advanced research phase.

I quickly established that I was faced with three possible solutions;

• Halogen with ‘yellow light’ and generally heavy batteries, probably entry level product and not for a Mtb gadget/technology research freak like me.
• Luxeon LED (Love the technology) Reliable, durable, generally light weight but questionable light output. Nevertheless very tempted!
• HID ‘big boys light’, high performance white light, lightweight, high end product. Just the sort of thing I’d like to impress my mates with but unfortunately, over budget!
  

That’s when Rob and Farqui came to the rescue. A work related meeting with Rob quickly degenerated into a technology debate on all things Mtb and subsequently an offer from Farqui to help source L&M ‘big boys lights’ direct from the US. I’ll be forever grateful for the final import price of £270.00 inclusive, which was just about in budget (well close enough ish..). This equated to a saving of over £100.00 on UK retail.

I didn’t have to wait too long before the excitement levels rose and I was the proud (and extensively well researched) owner of a new set of L&M ‘big boys lights’. It was like Xmas but early and I quickly rushed home to tinker and prepare for a trial ride.

My first impression of the light assembly was how could something so small allegedly provide so much light? I tinkered some more…

The HID lamp assembly unit is approximately 50mm X 70mm in size. It’s constructed from a quality plastic moulding which houses the lamp, ballast lamp control assembly and an integral on/off function switch and LED status indicator. The power cable is moulded in and the whole unit is factory sealed. The ‘Solarc’ lamp is specified as factory replacement only. The lamp assembly is very lightweight and is provided with a universal bar mount or helmet mount. I chose to mount my lamp assembly on the handlebars as close to the stem as it would go. The assembly bracket is well designed and clamped in place within seconds.
The Lion battery pack is also functionally well designed and lighter then I expected. Just like the light assembly it utilises a quality plastic moulding (with a moulded in top tube profile) with integral lamp cable socket and alignment markings and Velcro top tube strap. Again, installation to my bike top tube was very easy.
By now all that remained in the box was the battery charger. Thanks to Farqui, the battery was already fully charged and ready to go. However, the L&M battery charger is designed to charge all L&M battery technology products and consequently will seamlessly handle both L&M Lion and NmHi battery technology. I like this concept and somehow it makes me feel like I should buy another product just to take advantage of it?! Anyway, its plug….wait 2hours…and play!

Enough said. It’s a very well designed and manufactured product but does it justify the price tag and is it as bright as folk would have you believe?

Answer: Yes, WOW, Yes!

This really is a ‘big boys light’. It has two power settings: 13W (attract UFO spotters) 3.5 hours burn time and 10W (irrelevant – I like the 13W setting!) 4.0hours burn time. My first ‘virgin’ night ride was solo for around 1.5 hours. I covered a mixture of open countryside single track and dense woodland track. I was able to maintain around 70% normal riding speed (except on downhill- scary) and thanks to this great product I loved every minute of it. Quick Summary:

Pros:

• Great price (thanks Rob/Farqui)
• Lightweight
• Very bright ‘wide and spot’ light dispersal
• Excellent functional design
• Good battery performance and re-charge time
• Breakaway bracket (hope I don’t need it!)
• Versatile bar and head mounting brackets.

Cons:

• Lamp to battery cable management. I wanted something to keep my bike looking tidy. Wrapped cable around top tube but still didn’t look quite right.

Other then that I haven’t found any other cons yet. All I’d say is that in my opinion this light is a minimum requirement for ‘dark dense woodland’ night riding. Anything less would slow you down too much. To get closer to 100% daytime speed I’m sure an additional helmet mounted light would make a big difference. I missed the loss of peripheral vision. This is most prevalent when you steer the bike around an obstacle only to completely loose sight of the trail ahead.
Think I need a new gadget! I fancy a Luxeon LED helmet mounted system to complement my L&M ARC. Maybe a Cateye twin or a Hope twin system.

Farqui, any options from the US??

Rob#2