NiteRider Lumina Dual 1800 Front Bike Light

NiteRider's Lumina Dual 1800 light is a decent offering and works well as a mixed-terrain choice, but it doesn't really stand out against the best front bike lights and it's a touch heavy for the bracket that Niterider uses across its range.

NiteRider markets the Lumina Dual 1800 as a bit of a jack-of-all-trades, saying it's bright enough for 'navigating the toughest off-road terrain, while being nimble and versatile enough to tackle those long and arduous paved commutes'.

It's a chunky light with an IP64 water/dust rating – decent rather than great – and a side-by-side LED arrangement with ports on either side of the light to give some useful side visibility. It certainly feels well made, and at 258g is pretty beefy. NiteRider lists a helmet mount as an option but this isn't really a light you'd want up there.

The mount that it ships with is a quick-release one that's common to most of the NiteRider range and it's fine, although the weight of this light does mean that it jiggles about a bit over rough terrain. It never worked loose on the bars, or fell out of the mount, though.

Beam & modes

The NiteRider Lumina Dual 1800 isn't in our beam comparison engine, but you can use it to compare other possibles.

The beam shape is certainly more off-road than road, very slightly flattened thanks to the side-by-side LED setup, but basically round, with no real cutoff. That limits the modes you'd want to use on the tarmac, but 1,800 lumens is too much for road riding anyway unless you're tearing down a twisty B-road in the middle of the night.

You only get 45 minutes on maximum blast anyway; the medium (700 lumens/3 hours) and low (350 lumens/6 hours) modes are better for the road.

There's a 100-lumen walk mode but it's a pity there isn't something between the two: this light could pump out 200 lumens for a whole night, but there's no option for that.

The 1,500 lumen high mode gives you about 90 minutes of impressive illumination for trail riding, and if even that isn't enough you can double click the mode button on top to enter boost mode.

As well as the static modes there's a pulse mode (low with flash) that's good for daytime riding and a flash mode that's pretty antisocial.

I used the Dual 1800 for a variety of riding about town and past the city limits, and it's definitely a light that's more at home on unlit lanes and trails. There's plenty of power there and the modes are easily accessible from the big button, although double-clicking for boost isn't something that's necessarily that easy to do on the go, so not the best if you find that you're under-lit for a technical section you didn't know was coming.

On the road I was wary of using anything more than the low mode, given the beam shape, although if you're on your own on the lanes the higher modes can be useful for quicker riding. The pulse mode is good for daytime urban riding. Or any kind of daytime riding, really.

Battery & charging

Battery status is shown by the button: it's blue until charge reaches 20%, at which point it turns red. That's not especially helpful: turning it on and seeing a blue light might mean that the light is full and you've six hours of medium mode lighting, or you might get not much more than an hour if it's only just above the warning threshold.

Like the Ravemen LR1600 that I tested recently, it's just poorly thought out; there are two LEDs in the button, so it shouldn't be beyond the wit of the designers to at least have a third available display with them both on, giving you a blue > cyan > red progression as the battery runs down.

Once you've run the battery down you can charge it again pretty quickly. NiteRider says it takes three hours, although I found it was nearer four. The charger is a mains one, with a proprietary plug, so there's no topping this up mid-ride from a battery, or charging it at work from a spare lead.

That's a definite minus point: nearly all the competitor lights here offer USB charging (including NiteRider's single-lens ones) and USB-C lights charge in about the same amount of time from a decent supply. There's no real reason for it to be mains-only.

Value and conclusion

My overarching impression of the Dual 1800 is that it's a decent light, but not as good as others I've tried in the same kind of power bracket.

The aforementioned Ravemen LR1600 is a great light, for example, with a more road-friendly beam and a remote, for £50 less at rrp. The Giant Recon HL1800 that Leon tested a couple of years ago is also a good deal cheaper (£119.99), and performs really well. And the Lezyne Mega Drive that Ashley tested last year is well worth a look too, at £160.

The NiteRider isn't bad – it's a decent light – but it doesn't really stand out as a top pick.

Verdict

Decent if unexceptional dual-LED light for a wide range of riding