Post by Victor KanI haven't seen the 510 and 520 lights, but I own an EL-500 and an
EL-530. I thought the EL-500 put out a nicely shaped beam, though a
little bit narrow, and not quite enough overall output (though decent
when combined with an EL-300 for in-fill on familiar roads). The EL-530
does throw farther, but as you say, it has an even smaller spot of light
(albeit a bright one) than the EL-500.
I wish Cateye put their improvement efforts in making the EL-500 have
higher output, but the same beam shape rather than making the EL-530
with its big shiny bowl of a reflector, tiny spot output and
All of these are quite bright, but the spot is just too small. Cateye is
playing games with lumen ratings, focusing less overall light into a
smaller spot so they can say it's brighter. But there's simply no way to
get as much light from a 1W LED as from a 2.4W halogen like the old Micro
has. LED's may be more efficient but nowhere near that much. A 1W LED
may give more light than a 1W halogen, but there's no way it's going to
beat a 2.4W one. The 30 hour runtime claim is a sham -- you get the same
2-3 hours of "useful" light, after which it's just a dim glow.
I borrowed a EL-5xx to ride home from a friend's house awhile ago, which
was a scary experience. It lit just a 2' patch of road, with no spillover
whatsoever, so I couldn't see curves in the road or parked cars. My Micro
has enough spillover to see this stuff.
Post by Victor Kantoo-bright
outer ring of light (I guess they did that for side visility?).
Probably. This is important for safety.
Post by Victor KanI hear a lot of praise of the EL-400, including as a good infill light
for generator light users, but I don't get it. I have an EL-400 and
while it may be fine as a be-seen light, I just cannot see how it can be
used for seeing at *any* speed. I guess I should eat more carrots.
It's not very bright, but it has a very wide, even beam pattern,
which vaguely illuminates the edges of the road, parked cars, signs, etc.
So it's fine for riding carefully at low speeds around town, through the
dark spots between streetlamps, or as an emergency light for mountain
biking at dusk.
I was caught out mountain biking after dark a couple of weeks ago. I got
home in one piece only because my trailmate had one of these lights. It
actually worked pretty well on a dark singletrack trail. No way is it a
good primary light for full speed riding though.
It has other downsides too. It uses three AAA batteries. Batteries often
can't be purchased or charged in multiples of three, and AAA's are more
expensive in watt-hours per dollar than AA's. Cateye's new ratcheting
strap mount won't stay put, and is more cumbersome to use than their older
quick release mount. I'm sure this change was made for cost savings, not
function. I wonder if the people who make this stuff even ride bikes!
So I'm really disappointed in Cateye lately. They've always had very well
designed products. Parts were always available, etc. But their latest
batch of stuff is crap.
The Tripleshot looks like a pretty good light, but for $250? Sheesh! You
could do at least as well for less than half that much.
Matt O.