If you have spent any time at all on this web site, you will know that I am a long time proponent of superbrightleds.com - and a long time customer. They have consistently been at the forefront of LED technology, and offer several things that the majority of eBay and other LED resellers don't provide: Consistency, quality, and service. Consistency, in that if you buy something from them, you know that you can go back to them six months later, and find the exact same product again. The same definitely cannot be said for the majority of eBay sellers. Quality - their products work, every time, and do not fail shortly after you install them. Service - if you DO have a failure, or other issue, they work to resolve the problem, quickly and to your satisfaction. This is not some business brochure I am getting this from, it is based on many years of my own personal experience as a customer of superbrightleds.com. When they approached me to review a couple of their products, I agreed, knowing that the products would very likely be of good use to members of the site. I was not mistaken.
The units reviewed here are chrome with 45 degree spread. I had another set of similar lights from another vendor to install on my wife's Pacific Coast, which does not have much excess electrical capacity, so LED lights are perfect for it. I figured I would compare these lights with the other vendor's lights.
When the lights arrived, the first surprise was the heft. These are not thin-walled sheet metal enclosures, they are solid cast aluminum, and weigh a good half a pound. The brackets are quality stainless steel, with quality bolts and locknuts.
The second surprise was the wire. On the other vendor's lights I was planning to use, the wire was extremely thin and seemed to me quite fragile. The superbright wires are not only of a considerable gauge, they include a tough PVC cover to protect against chafing and wear.
The bezel is secured with several hex bolts, and a gasket under the bezel ensures the lights are rated IP68 waterproof submersible. IP68 means "dust tight" and "protected against complete, continuous submersion in water." So while it is not mentioned as an application, apparently these lights could be utilized for underwater illumination on your boat!
Also interesting is the voltage rating - rated for between 10 and 30 VDC, meaning they can also be used in 24V applications such as large trucks and non-certified aircraft.
The first thing I did, of course, was hook it up to a 12V battery and see just how bright it was. The light consists of a single 10 watt CREE LED that puts out a whopping 700 lumens at 5000K color - not quite bluish, a very white light. It draws 530mA while doing so, consuming 6.4 watts of power - which is really nothing when it comes to auxiliary lighting. The LED has a clear window over top of it, with tiny lenses cut into the window around the LED to pick up light and direct it in the correct pattern.
Looking into the light is not recommended - it is blindingly bright, and will sear a bright spot into your retina that will persist for several minutes afterward. Ask me how I know this.
Held up six feet in the air and pointed at the floor at an oblique angle, the relatively tight flood pattern is readily apparent. The bright central area fades quickly to darkness outside the beam area, with no wasted light being lost outside the desired angle of illumination.
Installing the lights, I crimped connectors onto the pigtails on each light, to allow for quick disconnects in the future when disassembling the bike. On these lights, the blue wire is the ground and the brown wire is positive. I ran the ground to a solid ground point on the bike's frame, and ran the positive through a 2 amp fuse to a power source that switched on with the keyswitch. This ensured the lights came on whenever the bike was on.
I used the supplied brackets to mount the lights to existing body hardware just below the headlight on the Pacific Coast. Physical installation took only a few minutes, and looks quite clean.
Once installed, I adjusted the angle that the lights pointed, so that they illuminated the road from directly in front of the bike to about 15 feet out - an area that was left mostly un-illuminated by the aftermarket HID headlight on the bike. I took care to make sure the lights did not point upward too much - they are so bright that they can very easily dazzle and blind oncoming drivers at night! When looking at the lights at the level of the headlight, the driving lights are much brighter than the already extremely bright HID headlight - too bright to look at directly.
Standing up slightly, so that the plane of view is from about 1 foot above the headlight, the headlight has dimmed appreciably, yet the driving lights are still extremely bright. This is misleading - they seem almost dazzling at this point, and seem like they would be dazzling to drivers, but they are not - the vast majority of the light from them is being directed down onto the ground.
Looking closely with the camera aperture closed tight, you can see that the light output of the driving lights based on area actually exceeds that of the headlight.
All of this is well and good. But what is it like to ride with? Quite literally, like night and day. The driving lights not only illuminate the road in front of the bike, with the way they are adjusted (to avoid dazzling oncoming drivers) they also illuminate off to the side of the road, giving the rider excellent reassurance that there are no invisible wildlife about to leap out in front of him. Riding with the HID headlight is quite excellent, but riding with both the HID headlight AND the driving lights combined is far superior - so much so that riding once again without the driving lights turned on leaves you feeling like there is something you are missing - you just don't see as well.
But this isn't the main benefit of these driving lights. The main benefit is during the DAY. These lights are so far superior to headlights when it comes to daytime visibility. The tight, concentrated point of light really attracts attention, and lets drivers know you are there.
My overall conclusion: These are an exceptional deal. Made to last, heavy duty quality, and feel like they should cost three times what they are being sold for. Unbelievably bright, and easily aimed, without much oversplash. These lights will be staying on the Pacific Coast - the lights from the other vendor that I had originally sourced for this bike are still in the box, and will now probably not be used - they aren't half as bright as these, and the build quality isn't anywhere as good. I'm even thinking of replacing the large halogen auxiliary lights on my GL1500 with another set of these lights - they're that good!
