| Light
& Motion, a player in the underwater cinematography lighting field, has
parlayed their extensive knowledge into a line of lights for us landlubbers.
The Dual, Solo and Cabeza Systems offer some unique features. For starters,
there's the aluminum housed Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH) battery that "docks"
into a mount which you strap to the top tube. Simply slide the battery into
the slot and it clicks in place, nice and secure. The mount is lightweight
and unobtrusive so you can leave it on your frame even when not using the
light. For retro people, there's a water bottle style battery. Either way,
recharging is a no brainer, since they use a plug and forget type charger.
This protects the battery from damage be reducing the charge to a trickle
once the battery is fully juiced. Also, the Apex's custom lamps and reflectors
claim to yield more light output than other lights of similar wattage. Hmmm.
They seem awful bright. But that's not very scientific. The accompanying
literature places the lamp efficiency at 30 lumens per watt. That's scientific.
An efficient system provides longer burn times, which is the key to night
riding. Anyone who has had a light go dead before the end of the ride knows
what I mean. These lights also feature adjustable beams and positions. The
pivot bar mount allows adjustments fore and aft as well as left to right.
This proved beneficial when I smacked a tree - I went left and the bike
went right. The light head took a direct hit, but only swiveled backwards.
A lot of other mounts would have broken. The beam pattern is adjustable
from a tight spotlight to a broad beam, similar to a Maglight. With the
dual beam system, it's possible to set the low beam on wide and the high
beam on spotlight for the best-of-both-worlds approach. The Apex lighting
line consists of six different light heads and five different batteries
so you can configure a system based on your needs. Three of the light heads
offer Logic circuitry, which digitally chooses between three levels of light
output for extended burn times. In addition, the Logic models feature a
three step LED display on the light head. The Apex Dual and Solo are handlebar
mount systems, while the Cabeza is a lightweight (only 60 grams!) helmet
mount. I found the switches to be a little hard to depress, maybe due in
part to the fact that my system was a pre-production sample. Overall, these
are high quality lights from a company that knows its stuff. The batteries
are either NiMH or nicad, range from 2.2 to 3.6 amp hour capacity and 7.2
to 10.8 volts and have protective circuitry that provides a 'reserve tank'
of 15 minutes before shutting off. Single beam Apex lights start at about
$150 retail while the top of the line Dual Logic System with the Pro NiMH
battery runs about $325. -- Chris Cosby |
