# Inside Bright Eyes 1200 Faux Lumen Light



## Scott Novak (Mar 2, 2013)

The photos will pretty much speak for themselves.

The 1st photos shows the handlebar mount shaped object that doesn't keep the light in place. Note that the light is only held on to the faux mount by one screw.









The 2nd photo is just a frontal view of the reflector.









The 3rd photos shows the beam pattern. Note the yellowish ring around the center spot is not even and it is wider at the top.









The 4th photo is the parts exploded. Note that the green O-ring is glow in the dark. The last thing that I want to do is attract the attention of a thief. I tried using a sharpie marker on the O-ring, but the ink wouldn't stick.









Also note that when the battery is connected, the green power indicator light comes on even while the light is off. This drains the battery and also advertises to thieves that there is a light to be stolen.

The 5th photo shows at least 10 solder balls on the circuit board that could become dislodged and short part of the circuit. That's a Bozo No No in the electronics industry!









Also note the defective solder joint on the red wire at the top. The solder isn't properly wetting the wire. That is another quality failure.

Then note that the white stuff around the LED PWB is NOT thermally conductive paste. It's white RTV. There is a huge thick blob of it under the PWB, and the PWB is NOT flat against the aluminum disk that it is mounted on. This causes the LED to shine at an angle and accounts for the beam irregularity. This thick blob of RTV will NOT properly conduct the heat away. Also note that the aluminum disk is not smooth and has deep lathe grooves in it. This does NOT allow for good thermal transfer.

The 6th photo shows way too much uninsulated wire protruding from the white insulation that could short against something. Another Bozo No No!









Note that the inductor is NOT supported! It's wires will eventually have a stress fatigue failure and break, caused by the stress as the bicycle hits bumps and such.

Also note that the red wire is showing cuts in the insulation.

The 7th photo shows the sharp burrs that caused the cuts in the red insulation.









The 8th photo shows the broken outer jacket on the charger that occurred in less than 2 weeks of use.









I've worked as an electronic technician for 8 different electronic companies and this light would have NEVER left the factory floor in this condition at any of those companies. It's a quality nightmare!

Here is a link to a cold weather test I did with the battery pack that came with the light.

Low Temperature Li-Ion 18650 Test:
http://forums.mtbr.com/lights-night-riding/low-temperature-li-ion-18650-test-1067314.html

Scott Novak


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## Vancbiker (May 25, 2005)

It amuses me that this is the kind of $hit that so many get excited about. An incredible race to the bottom as far as quality products for riding and folks just keep coming back for more.


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## znomit (Dec 27, 2007)

LED board marked LB for latticebright. They get points for honesty.


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## Scott Novak (Mar 2, 2013)

It amazes me that companies making crap like this are allowed to sell it here. The lumen output is rarely anywhere near the actual output, which is false advertising. And as bicycle lights are safety equipment they should have higher reliability standards.

Good quality control usually saves companies money with reduced warranty claims and not losing credibility with your customers.

Somebody stole my bicycle light and needed another quickly. I bought this one dirt cheap on craigslist, so it's no great loss.

I did remove the green indicator LED so at least now it won't attract the attention of thieves. Then again, they would be doing me a favor if they stole it.

Scott Novak


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## garrybunk (Feb 12, 2014)

And "Bright Eyes" always seem to have raving reviews on Amazon! (Note: Always take Amazon reviews with a grain of salt.) These are exactly the kinds of lights recommended to riders by my local club. They propose buying cheap and just replacing more frequently. Trouble is, they don't understand the dangers with these cheap lights. 

I've just acquired and reviewed a new headlamp (over at BLF) which has one of the the new XM-L2 clones. It doesn't seem too bad actually. I do have to sphere test it yet and compare to Cree specs/tests.

-Garry


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## Dirt Road (Feb 6, 2016)

I see an opportunity for Lattice Brite with the shoddy tint shift of legitimate CREE’s latest and greatest. Xhp70.2 is a big offender with about 5 different tints in its beam. High cri rubbish. Rant over....


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## Scott Novak (Mar 2, 2013)

garrybunk said:


> ...Trouble is, they don't understand the dangers with these cheap lights... -Garry


Suddenly going blind at speed when your light fails and causing you to go end over end doesn't sound cheap to me.

The O-Ring mounts constantly slipping requiring me to remove my hand from the grip to adjust the light are unsafe as well as being a nuisance. Maybe an O-Ring mount would be acceptable to strap an air pump holder to a bike frame, but that's about it.

I find it very galling that an American manufacturer has to compete with overseas companies that violate our trade laws and that we don't have any reliability standards in place for safety items such as bicycle lights. There ARE such reliability standards in place for automobile lights.

At a switching power supply manufacturer that I worked for I did performance and UL safety testing on power supplies at ambient temperatures of 140°F. The equipment had to continue running while I hit the power input with high voltage surges. It had to fail safely with no fire and not be an electrocution hazard. Some customers even required that no smoke was emitted if the power supply failed. We also made a very reliable power supply that was unlikely to fail in the first place

And on the manufacturing front, in order to prevent ESD (Electro Static Discharge) damage to semiconductors, the floors were painted with conductive paint, we were required to wear static dissipative shoes, a static dissipative coat, a static dissapative wrist strap that was grounded, the benchtops had a static dissipative surface that was grounded, carts had conductive straps that dragged on the conductive floor, circuit boards were stored in static dissapative boxes, semiconductors were either stored in the static dissapative containers they were shipped in or in drawers with static dissapative bins, thermally controlled soldering irons had grounded tips, the irons had a power supply that only switched power to the soldering iron at the zero crossing when the line voltage was zero in order to prevent an inductive voltage spike at the tip of the soldering iron, all component insertion machines were grounded, and I'm sure that I missed a few items.

I performed solder joint tensile strength testing on DC-DC convertors to ensure that the solder reflow process was adequate. And that was in addition to all of the work performed by the quality assurance department.

There was also vibration testing of the power supplies.

And then there was the accelerated life testing at elevated temperatures that was performed on every product.

All of our test equipment had to have it's calibration traceable to the NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology).

We were also an ISO-9000 quality certified company.

And that's not even the complete picture.

And that was for NON-life critical business grade equipment!

A bicycle light should be a piece of cake by comparison. But these companies can't even manage the most rudimentary quality control.

Would someone please pass me a ladder? This is an awfully tall soapbox that I'm standing on.

Scott Novak


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## garrybunk (Feb 12, 2014)

I don't know how you're ever going to stop it. Ban all products from China? Ban all products without legitimate certifications? The best we can do right now is educate consumers. 

-Garry


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## Tunnelrat81 (Nov 13, 2011)

Some time ago a friend at work asked me about my bike lights (two MJ-808's with Geomangear replacement batteries), and I said I'd look around and try to recommend one for him. Although I don't have nearly the experience with this stuff that many of you do, I looked around and recommended a light that I thought looked reasonable, and gave him the amazon link to order it. A few weeks later I ask him and he shows me his new bike light that he's thrilled with, which turns out to be the exact same light as above...and NOT the one I recommended. Apparently he doesn't use computers much, and had his wife do the purchasing. Of course she looks at my recommendation and sees the links below to amazon suggestions that appear to be the same output and $20 cheaper. So naturally she bought one of them. His battery is toast after maybe 6 months of a ~5.5 mi. commute in southern CA weather, so I recently sent him a link to a Gemini battery pack from action. Hopefully his luck will be better with a $70 pack vs. the junk shipped with his.

He also stopped by my desk recently to show me his light, which had been recently repaired by one of our electronics guys because (of course) the solder connection broke inside the light head and had to be re-attached. Now, I've always been well aware of magicshine's lower tier status in the bike lighting world, and with that have accepted that there will be some quality sacrifices on machining/assembly etc.. But I was shocked at how terrible the above light felt compared to my MJ808's. The bezel threads were rough and loose. The rubber mode button moved around in it's place, and the O-ring gasket of the bezel simply didn't sit right. Coming back to my MJ808 felt like looking at a top tier light in comparison.

The whole thing has been a wake up call for me. Just because I've had good luck with a 'knock -off' light, the original MS's, has no bearing on what the newer lights will be like. Knock-offs of knock-offs of knock-offs.

Oh, and he finished our conversation by telling me that he had recently received an offer to buy an additional light head of the same type for under $15, so he happily ordered it up as a backup. I was cringing inside while holding his light in my hands thinking that even at $15 it is an incredible rip off.

This is all separate from the much more critical discussion of the batteries that are shipping with these things. Thankfully he remembered my advice from early on suggesting that he never leave the battery unattended while charging. Hopefully I can encourage him to turn his old one in for recycling to limit the risk once he gets the new one.

-Jeremy


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## Outbound (Aug 23, 2017)

I love discussions like this. 

However my two cents as to why it's been a race to the bottom for bike lights for a long time... is because there really hasn't been a lot of innovation in bike lights. The only factor that a lot of US based customers have to reference is that the bestest and brightest bike lights are essentially overpowered flashlights when it comes to beam patterns. There are some great products that really are very well engineered and have some degree of lighting design built into it.... but they are absurdly expensive for what they are, and they really aren't THAT expensive to make (talking the $400+ lights), especially when using older LED's and pretty common die cast/machined aluminum.

So I can understand from the typical consumer point of view of why pay literally 15 times as much for an item that looks very similar. For a long time a lot of those "high end" lights have been absurdly priced for what amounts to a really powerful flashlight. Combine that with the notion that lighting is rarely discussed or advertised properly. We do have some standards that legit companies try to adhere to such as STVzO for road lights, and FL1 for flashlights/bike lights, but consumers have no idea about it in the US. In Europe STVzO is absolutely required for road bikes by law, so the discussions about cutoffs, beam quality, etc. is often discussed on international forums. Lumens hardly comes up. Hell B&M doesn't even use lumens to rate their lights! (and I love that).

All in all, I hope that a lighting revolution begins when people will rate lights more on the beam pattern and quality rather than perceived brightness. Blows my mind the number of people who look directly at a light and say "wow, that's so bright! So worth it!" as if that's a measurable quality, haha.


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## Scott Novak (Mar 2, 2013)

I weighed the 18650 Li-Ion cells from the Bright Eyes battery pack and compared them to cells that came from various dead laptop battery packs. Nearly all of the laptop cells weighed 18.2% more than the Bright Eyes cells.

Here is a link to a cold weather test I did with the battery pack that came with the light.

http://forums.mtbr.com/lights-night-riding/low-temperature-li-ion-18650-test-1067314.html

The cold weather performance of these new Bright Eyes cells was abysmal compared to the performance of used cells that came out of dead laptop battery packs.

Starting at 80°F, the NEW Bright Eyes battery pack shut down after running 22 minutes at 4.9°F.

The cells rescued from the from the dead battery pack lasted 178 minutes at 4.9°F before the battery pack shutdown.

These 4+ year old cells rescued from a dead aftermarket laptop battery pack produced power 8.1 times longer than the NEW Bright Eyes cells.

Scott Novak


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## oldstrath (Nov 13, 2017)

Outbound said:


> I love discussions like this.
> 
> However my two cents as to why it's been a race to the bottom for bike lights for a long time... is because there really hasn't been a lot of innovation in bike lights. The only factor that a lot of US based customers have to reference is that the bestest and brightest bike lights are essentially overpowered flashlights when it comes to beam patterns. There are some great products that really are very well engineered and have some degree of lighting design built into it.... but they are absurdly expensive for what they are, and they really aren't THAT expensive to make (talking the $400+ lights), especially when using older LED's and pretty common die cast/machined aluminum.
> 
> ...


Don't know about US, but in Scotland I can buy a completely usable commuting road light ( B&M ixon iq premium) for £50. As you say, part of the problem is the " but see the 30 000 lumens" ( or whatever fantasy number) advertising, and partly the absence of real, enforced, standards (we don't enforce STVZO or our own outdated standard in the UK, and sometimes it shows!


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## Scott Novak (Mar 2, 2013)

I thought I'd try to repair the broken insulation on the charger cable. I opened up the case and the first thing that happened was a lead to the AC power plug fell off.









It's the latest in solder blob technology.









The outer insulation is some of the crappiest that I've ever seen. Probably a seriously large percentage of fillers like clay and very little PVC. It's very weak at room temperature and even more likely to crack in cold weather.









Here is a poor tack solder connection to the PWB. Notice how poorly the solder has wet the stranded wire.

















Note the crooked parts.

















While the C E mark on the label does not appear to be an obvious fake, I seriously doubt that a charger assembled this poorly would have received a safety approval. It's also missing marks from other safety agencies that you would typically expect find on electronics like this. I would rate this questionable.

FYI, I did UL safety testing of switching power supplies for 6 years, and also did safety testing to qualify the product for European and Chinese sales.

I know, I know, I know, I shouldn't expect anything close to quality from Chinese made electronics. But it still disgusts me ever time that I see such poor workmanship. I would have to work very hard to make all of my parts this crooked on a circuit board. I cringe every time that I see crap like this.

Scott Novak


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## garrybunk (Feb 12, 2014)

Wow! And the sad thing is, the "build" quality of stuff like this can vary so wildly! I can tear open a charger during a review where all looks "decent", but then the next charger could look like yours. This is what we try to tell people is the "Chinese lottery" - you just never know exactly what you're going to get.

Thanks for posting as these kinds of posts help to educate people. 

-Garry


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## Cat-man-do (May 16, 2004)

In reference to the opening post; Does any of this surprise anyone. If you buy a ten dollar light you get a ten dollar light. If it last a year you got your monies worth. Nobody who is serious about night riding would want a light this shoddy. On the other hand the novice biker can afford one of these and get enough use from it to know whither or not they really like riding at night. How many of us who were around when night riding first became popular ( with Halogen as the only option } would of loved to have had one of these. I know I would of. One of these cheap a** LED lights would of beat the crap out of my original Marwi and Nightrider setup. If I'd of had one of these as a kid I would of been happier than a fox in a hen house. The cheap D-cell bike light I had as a kid put out about 50 lumen. The cheap dynamo light I got after that only lasted about a week ( before the dynamo burnt out ). At least if you have one of these cheap Chinese lamps you have a decent amount of light and it should last at least a year, presuming of course that you have a half-decent battery.



Scott Novak said:


> I did remove the green indicator LED so at least now it won't attract the attention of thieves. Then again, they would be doing me a favor if they stole it.
> 
> Scott Novak


Goodness man, why would you try to remove the voltage indicator? If you unplug the battery from the lamp the led will go out.


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## Scott Novak (Mar 2, 2013)

I forgot to mention the plastic that the connector body is made of becomes very stiff even before the temperatures drop to the freezing point and it becomes extremely difficult to separate the connector.

Also, to conserve the battery capacity, I usually have the battery pack tucked inside a pannier with clothing around it to help insulate it from the cold. It's a PITA to disconnect and reconnect the battery. And if you forget to disconnect the battery pack after riding, the indicator light will drain the battery.

I disconnected the Green On indicator LED, which does NOT indicate voltage. I don't need an indicator light to tell me that the light is on as it's pretty obvious when the headlight is on. 

During the cold testing of the Li-Ion cells that I liberated from a dead computer battery pack, the RED low voltage indicator on the bright Eyes light turned on 19 minutes into the test. The light continued to operate 2 hours and 39 minutes more before the low voltage battery protection turned off the batteries.

The RED low voltage indicator LED on the Bright is useless. As it is, the RED LED also stays on when the light it off, so I will remove that LED as well the next time I open up the light.

The novice cyclist may not know that they are being ripped off with shoddy workmanship and a product that doesn't meet it's advertised claims.

At the very least, you should be getting what is advertised. Anything less is fraud, no matter how inexpensive it is. At least in the USA, there is a reasonable expectation that anything you buy should last at least a year, unless there is some disclaimer to the contrary, OR if the product is a consumable. An alkaline dry cell or a pencil is considered a consumable. A bike light is NOT considered a consumable.

Properly used, semiconductors do last upwards of 15 years of use. The only electronic components that have a seriously limited lifespans are electrolytic capacitors and batteries. But with the light duty use of a typical bike light, even a cheap electrolytic capacitor should last 4 or 5 years easily. A good quality electrolytic capacitor could last 15 or 20 years or more in a bike light. 

Unless of course you have poor thermal management and overheat the components until they go to an early grave.

The one thing that should NEVER fail in a bike light is a solder joint. At the low current levels inside a bike light, a solder joint should last longer than you do. A solder joint should be strong enough that the foil is ripped from the circuit board before the solder joint fails.

I'm getting down from the soapbox now.

Scott Novak


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## Scott Novak (Mar 2, 2013)

It bothered me quite a bit when I noticed that the LED PWB was RTV'd to the baseplate. Even if they used a thermally conductive RTV, the blob of RTV that they used was way too thick and the PWB was cocked at an angle instead of being mounted flat against the baseplate.

I removed the LED assembly from the bike light. As the LED assembly didn't have the benefit of the heatsinking by the case, I used the low power setting. The temperature at the side of the LED was about 75°C. The baseplate temperature was 5.0°C lower than the LED temperature.

I carefully pried the LED PWB from the baseplate. I scraped of all traces of the RTV and removed any burrs from the Aluminum PWB baseplate. I smeared some 25 year old zinc oxide based silicone thermal joint compound and rotated the LED assembly back and forth to squish out any excess compound.

I remeasured the temps and this time there was only a 2.1°C temperature differential between the side of the LED and the baseplate.

Also keep in mind that the best of today's thermal compound and thermal pads have far better thermal conductivity than the old zinc oxide silicone paste that I used.

Granted, Lattice Bright LEDs may not have the best thermal conductivity in the world. But did they have to make it even worse with a generic RTV?

How can a Chinese company screw up a bike light? Let me count the ways.........

Scott Novak


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## Outbound (Aug 23, 2017)

Scott Novak said:


> How can a Chinese company screw up a bike light? Let me count the ways.........


It really is fascinating sometimes.


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## Scott Novak (Mar 2, 2013)

The LED aluminum PWB was glued to an aluminum base with what appears to be generic RTV that is NOT thermally conductive. There is a long thin thermal path from the baseplate to the case. There was no thermal paste between the aluminum base plate and the case. All in all, the LED is not cooled effectively. No big surprise.

The following is a lumen output versus time graph of the Bright Eyes 1200 from the website: We Test Lights | Bright Eyes 1200 Lumen Test and Review









Note that in less than 5 minutes the output drops from about 400 lumens to about 250 lumens. I'm sure that a good part of this is due to the LED getting hot.

There is also a good chance that the LED driver current is also dropping. There doesn't appear any intentional thermal feedback circuit from what I can see.

It would be interesting to see how much drop in light output is due to the LED heating and how much is due to the LED driver circuit.

I added thermal compound between the LED PWB and the baseplate, and between the aluminum baseplate and the case. Theoretically it should boost the light output a little. But it wasn't enough of an improvement for any noticeable difference on the road. At least it may run a little cooler and more reliably.

I've already expended more effort on this light than it deserves.

Scott Novak


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## garrybunk (Feb 12, 2014)

Scott Novak said:


> I've already expended more effort on this light than it deserves.
> 
> Scott Novak


This was my thought exactly when I started reading your post! It would be an interesting experiment to see the real effect of applying good thermal compound vs. the RTV crap on the lumen output graph.

-Garry


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## Scott Novak (Mar 2, 2013)

@Garry,

I'm doing this more for the curiosity factor than anything else.

I'm also curious to see how higher performance thermal paste or thermal pads would work and how much further they would reduce the LED temperature. I think that the best of today's thermal paste and thermal pads have almost 4 times better thermal conductivity that this old zinc oxide silicone paste that I'm using.

Another thing I'd like to see is how much longer run time you would get with a larger capacitor across the battery. The batteries wouldn't see as high current peaks, so there would be less voltage losses across the internal resistance of the batteries and longer run time before the LVP circuit tripped.

Scott Novak


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