Friday, November 13, 2009

Sigma Evo Pro Headlights


My normal riding schedule has me rolling out of the driveway at 6:00AM. For a good part of the year, it’s dark at that time of the morning and a good lighting system is neccessary .

My research began, both on-line and at various LBS. After balancing price and quality, I settled on the Sigma Evo Pro. Good quality build, good design and as it turned out; slightly above average lighting ability and very poor battery life. I was penny wise and pound foolish. The LBS would not exchange, nor allow a return.

I believe this two light, one battery system was bundled by Sigma from existing, but separate product lines. The battery plugs into a yoke splitter which connects to each light head. The battery simply cannot support both lights at full power for more than 30 minutes. Fortunately, one of the light heads has a full power/low power selector switch.

So the work around for this shortcoming is to only use both heads at full power in the darkest, ie. park trails, or high traffic areas. Otherwise, it’s one head at full and the other at half power. It’s not terrible, and I have become accustomed to the characteristics of the two light beams, one being a flood and the other a spot. I simply direct the flood down to the road in front of me, which illuminates approximately 15 feet up front and 10 feet to either side. The other head, the spot, drills through the darkness out to about 40 feet and it’s spot circle is approximately 6 feet in diameter. That’s at full power...low power is not much help at all.
 With this workaround, I get just over one hour of battery life, which is OK with me most of the time, since the sun comes up just as this battery dies down.

The system is designed such that a second battery could be mounted so each light head has it's own. WIth the added expense of an additional battery, the system is still priced far below the fine offerings available today.

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