[mtnbikerva1]

Seems useless to have say a 1000 lumen light, and then you can only use it for a short period of time before it steps down into to too low to see mode or turns itself off all together. Do all lights do this? Brands that have much better heat sinks better, quality, build etc. that don’t do this and stay bright for mountain bike riding? Thank you

 

[FreuderLocks]

Well, idk. I'm pretty sure all mine handle heat just fine. I have a Lezyne 1000xl smart connect, niterider lumina 1200 oled boost and a Gemini Titan 4000 OLED, in order of power. The first two have batteries built in, the last one has an external pack. The Titan gets hot but has not in my experience so far stepped down to a lower power level. The niterider states in the literature that it will step down (so does the Titan) but in a year of use has not dimmed once. I rarely ever run the Lezyne light at full tilt, it's really used mostly as a dtf light on my monster cross bike but the times I run it at night at full it dims Because it's running out of battery but not because it's hot.

I usually don't use any of these lights during the summer because it's light out 'later' but I have never had any of them dim on me. I've been riding when it's pretty hot at night with all of them and never had an issue (Arizona, not summer hot but in the fall, still hot af)

Hope this helps

-Paul

 

[mtnbikerva1]

I have 2 Lupine the PIKO AND BLIKA.
They are not cheap in price but I have had heat issues as well as battery.

 

[MRMOLE]

Seems useless to have say a 1000 lumen light, and then you can only use it for a short period of time before it steps down into to too low to see mode or turns itself off all together. Do all lights do this? Brands that have much better heat sinks better, quality, build etc. that don’t do this and stay bright for mountain bike riding? Thank you

Pretty much any light will step down (or burn up) with no air flow. Most though are fine with a little air flow till you get past about 95°F ambient ride temps. As far as lights being able to maintain their claimed output separate lighthead/battery lights generally do a much better job at this than self-contained but probably much more common that output is programmed to degrade (to achieve runtime goals) rather than activation of thermal protection. Too many variables to just judge by brand.
Mole

 

[mtnbikerva1]

Temperature here during usage has been in 40-60 degree F.
Even at these temperatures they blink a number of times and then shut off.
They have had issues while MTB.
Then in 70 degree static test the battery went from 80% charge to too low to use within a short few minutes.
Lupine gave me a 20% discount code for my trouble, but I am not sure I want to spend $400 and have problems again.
I have had the lights for a few years, more than 2 anyway.

 

[VegasSingleSpeed]

This sounds more like an issue with a defective light.

 

[127.0.0.1]

400 bucks ? for 300 total I'd get a fenix bc30r for bars,
and two zebralight h600w for helmet
(run one at a time, carry other in pocket as spare whole unit, or battery holder)

fenix on bars has OLED display for best
possible guesstimate of remaining runtime and it runs
a long time on plenty of lumens for singletrack

zebralights are handy to have off the bike....working on stuff,
doing things at night...whatever. so small and barely bigger and heavier
than the 18650 it runs on

 

[MRMOLE]

Like pretty much any mechanical devise its performance ceiling is limited by its weakest component. In the case of most Lupine lights it appears to be the lights mass and external surface area that limits its thermally stable output level. So even if your Pico has a higher output rating than the 4 used in the above output chart it probably will have a similar continuous output level where as the larger heavier L&M light on the chart was able to maintain a much higher stable level.

Your light will always be limited by the above discussed thermal limitations but doubtful that's your lights only problem. I'm I correct in assuming your lights worked fine when you first got them? Did the problem start after not using the lights for a long period? Again looking at the output chart at the end of its runtime it looks like it just shuts down like your light does which my guess would be when the battery voltage drops below the preset voltage floor (to protect the battery from operating at too low a voltage). So either your battery never charges much beyond that low level or something is incorrectly telling the light/battery the voltage is too low. When charging does it seem like the battery charges too quickly? Are you able to check the battery voltage (after fully charging)?
Mole

 

[Outbound]

Seems useless to have say a 1000 lumen light, and then you can only use it for a short period of time before it steps down into to too low to see mode or turns itself off all together. Do all lights do this? Brands that have much better heat sinks better, quality, build etc. that don’t do this and stay bright for mountain bike riding? Thank you

I mean.... not to toot our own horn, but our lights don't have this issue. If you are a dead stop for 5 minutes it'll pull down power. But we run 2200 lumens on a self contained unit in the Phoenix summer heat with zero issues. Granted we develop these lights from the ground up to handle the thermal loads we throw at it, and not just eyeballing it. Proper simulation and test.