Lezyne introduces LED bike lights for 2012

Ah, the joy of night riding.  This last year our local group never slacked a bit on riding as everyone geared up with high powered LED lighting for the handlebars or helmet or both.  It extends the riding season and brings in a new feel to old trails.  Night riding is magical.

For 2012, Lezyne, the guys and gals that brought you sleek, polished bike pumps and a myriad of multi tools, are now bringing a new line of high end but affordable LED bike mounted lights to a bike shop near you.  To introduce the new lights, the owner of Lezyne came into the conference room, dropping one of the new lights over and over as he walked.  That was interesting.  Apparently they are pretty rugged.

All of the lights use the best quality Cree LEDs, including the new XML.  Lezyne spent some development time on the beam pattern, utilizing a reflector in combo with the front lens to achieve what they call Uniform Power Beam.  As anyone who has seen a lot of LED lights can attest to, it is not all about light output (expressed in Lumens) but also about light beam pattern.  The LED drivers are custom made to Lezyne's specs and standards and only the best Lithium Ion batteriesare used (and Lezyne has this cool machine that tests the output and discharge curves of any battery).  As well, it is a standard 18650 type battery in the bigger lights (and yet another standard battery in the smaller ones) so if you need to, carrying a spare battery is easy enough.  The lights recharge using the standard mini USB interface so charging is easy.

The handlebar mount looks straight forward and I heard rumor of a helmet mount being in the works, but that is off in the future if it happens.  Water resistant as well, they look like they will not suffer an early 'death by plastic' being typically Lezyne-like in all metal construction.  The clamp is not metal but comes in two sizes...31.8mm and 25.4mm.  No rubber gaskets to fiddle with.  Each bar diameter gets its own separate clamp.

So, this is what there is so far on the various models:

 

Super Drive - 450L/300L/150L and flash mode.  126g High-Polish Silver, High-Polish Black, High-Polish Light Grey.

 

Power Drive - 300L/200L/100L and flash mode.  120g High-Polish Silver, High-Polish Black, High-Polish Light Grey.

 

Mini Drive - 150L/100L/50L with a high rate and low rate flash mode. 66g High-Polish Silver, High-Polish Black, High-Polish Light Grey.

 This is the battery testing machine? No, just espresso in the Lezyne deluxe kitchen.We did not have a chance to try any of them as only pre-production samples were in da' house, but they seem like a nice light option for moderate trail riding, an extra light as back-up to your retina burning light (1000L outputs are not uncommon for a serious trail light) and certainly as a commuter light.  Hopefully we can get set up with a model or two to see how they perform after Interbike as September/October starts to signal the Fall season when night riding in So Cal begins to get into full swing.

Note:  Prices are subject to change, but here is what I know so far.

Super Drive: $109.99
Power Drive: $89.99
Mini Drive: $69.99

Lezyne.com