Photon Max Extreme 1350 Lumens
I did a lot of research into all the rechargeable bike lights that are available and what makes some lights better than others. I even talked to guys here in Australia at NiteFLUX on a couple occasions to discuss the product with them.
So if you interested read on - I was upgrading from an ageing/problematic NiteRider HID system so I really looked into it, I wanted to make sure choosing best rechargeable light for me.
I ended up purchasing the new Photon Max Extreme it puts out 1350 Lumens, I thought it was the most complete package on the market as well as one the brightest at any price point.
Something like a Ayups outputs about 280 Lumens so you would need to run 4 Ayups lighting kits to be in the same ball park, that’s if you had the room to mount all the headlights on yourself and your bike, you would actually need 5 kits to be brighter than Photon Max Extreme.
One of mates has a Ayup kit and you can not even tell it is switched on when I am next to him with the NiteFLUX Photon Max Extreme. When I come up behind him on single track he waves me through as he literally finds it hard to see with my light flooding through from behind casting a large shadow.
One of the most critical areas of high performance, high wattage LED lighting is thermal management of the LED lighting source.
What most bicycle lighting companies don’t tell you that thermal management of the LED light source is critical, elite LED manufactures like Luxeon and CREE literally spend millions of dollars trying to improve how the LED transfers heat away from the central chip inside LED that produces the light, by improving the thermal stability of the LED it can run at higher temperatures small improvements in these areas yield large increases in light output.
If LED’s get to hot you just loose intensity and you potentially damage the LED and reduce the useable life of the LED. There is a safe upper limit that lighting manufactures can safely power the LEDs too, but the bottom line is the cooler the LED the brighter it is, therefore the more effective the thermal management the brighter the light output.
The Photon Max has a radically different headlight design, when compared to most of the Headlights available on the market.
NiteFLUX have followed the lead of quality LED manufacturers as the Photon Max headlight design is all about maximizing the cooling ability of the headlight by way of a well thought out design and utilized the most relevant materials.
NiteFLUX do this by radically increasing the surface area of the headlight and carefully sculpting the headlight body so air can flow unobstructed around and through the center of the headlights body, air can freely circulate around the bottom of the headlight, around the sides of the headlight over the top of headlight and the quite radically through the main body of the headlight.
The Photon Max headlight has what NiteFLUX call Forced Air Cooling – the easiest way to visualize this is to think of a high end GIRO helmet, large frontal vents duct in cool air into the deeply finned alloy headlight body and exhaust vents to allow the hot air to escape.
Some lighting brands have no fining, some have slight surface ribbing and others have deeper fining at the rear of the headlight, none of these designs utilize the natural air pressure that is situated at the front of the headlight to cool the LEDs inside the headlight, A simple example of this is to think of Car Radiator, if the radiator in your car was situated at the back of the car without any significant ducting the car engine would blow up.
To further aid the cooling of the head unit internally the Photon Max has custom substrate, the substrate is a special aluminum plate with embedded circuitry, this is the first stage of heat sinking that LED manufacturers recommend to use when mounting Hi-Watt LED’s to lighting housings. Typically most bicycle lighting manufactures use off the shelf substrates that are designed to be multi purpose in there application.
NiteFLUX have specifically designed there own custom substrate that maximizes the surface contact area of the substrate with headlight multi fined forced air alloy body to further aid the heat transfer directly from the LEDs.
This substrate also has temperature sensors embedded into it, these sensors are also a integral part of managing the thermal discharge of the headlight.
Every part of the headlight has been optimized to be the most effective heat sink but still remain compact and light weight.
Even the switch and power control electronic have been moved to the top of the battery as to have these parts inside the headlight would make it heavier and it would also compromise the thermal design and thermal ability of the headlight.
Headlights are often subjected to a lot more abuse than the batteries so it makes sense to locate the switch and the potentially fragile power electronic parts inside the battery canister where they are protected by a circular alloy battery canister, this also keeps these electronics away from the extreme heat generated from the LEDs.
Remote switches I have had bad experiences with they are weak point in most systems and quiet often the first part to get damaged or fail with normal use and frankly they are pain to mount every time you want to go for a ride.
I actually mount the Photon Max battery to the shoulder strap of my camel back when helmet mounting this gives me instant access to the switch and it is actually easier than reaching for switch on a headlight or trying to switch a hard to find remote switch.
The Photon Max Extreme uses the latest in top of line Multi-Chip LED’s it has 2 x 8watt LED’s and 1 x 4watt LED’s, with 20watts on tap with 1350 Lumens output I think the old NiteRider HID put about 450 Lumens so the difference is incredible.
The Photon Maxs the high beam can potentially generate extreme heat and if the headlight was not in motion the heat sink could become overloaded, that’s when the light will sense it is getting too hot and it will automatically throttle the power back, once the headlight is at a safe temperature for the LED to return to Hi-Beam the power will automatically return to full.
This also protects your expensive multi chip LEDs from being damaged, even in unforeseen circumstances like the light turning on accidentally in sports bag.
To have a light without different beam choices (like Ayup) may make it okay for point A to Point B drag races but for every day and training use I really like the flexibility of 4 different power levels and the flash mode to match performance to task at hand.
When you buy a rechargeable light one of its most important features is that it reliably recharges and can be recharged regularly without any danger of over or under charging. NiteFLUX have proprietary charge electronics called Intelligent Charge Control.
Unlike most lighting companies NiteFLUX give a full 12months warranty on the battery and charger where 3months appears to be the norm from most other companies, if companies cant stand behind there charge system what are they really selling?
NiteFLUX lights are one of the few companies the state that they have AAA Gold Standard Charge Control, the charge control is built into the battery and it automatically analyzes the battery cells every second of the charge cycle for temperature, voltage and voltage balance between the cells.
This electronic ICC circuitry is a proprietary design unique to NiteFLUX, the make this part right here in Australia so they have complete control over what is arguably the most important part of rechargeable lighting system.
You can leave NiteFLUX batteries on the charge for 12months at a time with out any worry of overcharging the battery, while the NiteFLUX battery is on the charge it is automatically balancing the charge capacity in all the battery cells equally and keeping all the battery cells fully charged this ensures your battery is in the best possible condition.
The NiteFLUX charger/power supply will not draw any more power than a DVD player on stand-by once the battery is charge.
NiteFLUX have a 4 hour charge time, but you can link 2 chargers together via a y-cord to recharge the battery in 2 hours, this allows you to recharge faster than you can discharge if you are charging up between laps in a Enduro team race situation. NiteFLUX call this piggy back charging, so for the cost of y-cord and charger you can negate the need for buy a expensive second battery.
NiteFLUX have a very well established background in Australia they are actually longest running Australian owned producer of high power rechargeable lights as they have had lights in production since 2002. A couple of years back they partnered up with another Australian Lighting Company Vicious Power, Vicious where renowned as being the most advanced makers of high power HID lighting in the world, the NiteFLUX lighting range was previously solid and well rounded/versatile, currently it has became absolutely cutting edge.
If you really want have something that gives you the best lighting performance and is extremely versatile and with a very well thought design and engineering that is more than skin deep marketing fodder the NiteFLUX lighting range has to be seriously considered.
