I've had a hard time squaring Outbound's approach with my experience. To be clear, this isn't me "throwing shade" (see what I did there?!) at Outbound, but rather, I'm borderline needing new lights, and I'd very much like to get them, but as I said, their approach doesn't match my experience:
For some context, I've been night riding since the days of homemade halogen lights in copper pipes, soldered to a home-alarm SLA battery... so not new to this!
In my experience, I've always preferred a tight spot that has a lot of throw to see what is coming up ahead when I'm riding fast downhill. the bar light is there to provide contrast. what I noticed is that the brighter the bar light is, the stronger I need the headlight to be. It dawned on me that is is because my eyes adjust to the amount of light closest to them i.e. my pupils close a bit, so they can't see what is being illuminated far up the trail by the headlight. The solution I've found is to run the bar light as a flood, on low, and tilt it up so it's not illuminating the ground too close to me. Then I run my headlight as a spot. I crank it up to max for DH sections, and leave it on low or medium the rest of the time.
I'd love to try the Outbounds to see if their approach works better, but it's an expensive proposition, especially when it doesn't seem to reflect my experience over the years. If they're still reading the comments, I'd love their perspective on this...
Nov. 22, 2024, 6:52 a.m. - slyfink
I've had a hard time squaring Outbound's approach with my experience. To be clear, this isn't me "throwing shade" (see what I did there?!) at Outbound, but rather, I'm borderline needing new lights, and I'd very much like to get them, but as I said, their approach doesn't match my experience: For some context, I've been night riding since the days of homemade halogen lights in copper pipes, soldered to a home-alarm SLA battery... so not new to this! In my experience, I've always preferred a tight spot that has a lot of throw to see what is coming up ahead when I'm riding fast downhill. the bar light is there to provide contrast. what I noticed is that the brighter the bar light is, the stronger I need the headlight to be. It dawned on me that is is because my eyes adjust to the amount of light closest to them i.e. my pupils close a bit, so they can't see what is being illuminated far up the trail by the headlight. The solution I've found is to run the bar light as a flood, on low, and tilt it up so it's not illuminating the ground too close to me. Then I run my headlight as a spot. I crank it up to max for DH sections, and leave it on low or medium the rest of the time. I'd love to try the Outbounds to see if their approach works better, but it's an expensive proposition, especially when it doesn't seem to reflect my experience over the years. If they're still reading the comments, I'd love their perspective on this...