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| Installed with a normal allen key. It has 2 different bracket inserts for different thickness handle bars. |
This is the second light I have been testing out this week. Actually I have used them together to be able to ride well in dark mountain conditions on a cyclocross bike 4:30 am. This is the way a night biker should ride. One helmet mounted and one handle bar mounted light. This way you can always see what is exactly ahead of your bike, but use your head to focus on objects and highlight the sharp turns too.
The BBB Sniper is a 1200 lumens double LED XML Cree-U2 bike handle bar light. If I understood the Cree chart well, this is the highest output Cree LED with the lowest relative energy consumption.
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| It is all sealed with those 4 bolts you can see on the front. So even if you melted any of those LEDs or damaged the lens, BBB should have a replacement part for you and the guaranty procedure should not take long. |
When you see lights coming out with 5, 10, 15000 lumens from one single LED, those are mostly measured very bizarrely as the strongest Cree LED (applicable to bike lights) is 1040lm as maximum light output goes. Of course for dental lighting or stadium illumination there are 5 to 15000lm LEDs, but imagine the size and energy need of those !
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| Fits nice and stiff on my cyclobars near the other mounts. |
So in case of the 1200lm Sniper, it means that there are 2 of these Cree LEDs in the lamp, charged up to 600lm each. Why is it better than having for instance one single chip ? Heat ! Yeah two lights generate more heat, but still a lot less, than one single light giving you 1200 lumens. Counting luminous output is a strange art, cause lights add up for sure, but having 2 x 600lm LEDs slightly overlapping, is it gonna be really 1200lm ?
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| I would love to see thicker brackets and some elongated oval ones with some kind of security lock. Like this we could install the light on the headtube or stem and maybe the on the fork. You can definitely install it upside down if you wanted to. |
Either ways, these are bright and really focused. It has of course some front lightning rays, but mostly a huge long beam ahead. I think the application of this light is rather limited to dirt roads and pavement. Single tracks and enduro parcours would need more sporadic and complex lighting. This is why it works in great harmony with the Scope 1500. One is a distance light while the other is showing the surroundings.
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| You can see the USB port for charging and the micro jack like remote control plug, both well sealed. If it was me, I would have put this more likely on the side or at the back, to 100% avoid direct water splashing and to get better draining. |
The metal heat conducting frame feels like very solid, sturdy and high quality. Te heat production of this light is a lot lower than the Scope, so there are no exposed radiators needed to dissipate heat. It still gets hot, but not that hot !
Finally ! The lamp is USB rechargeable and it comes with a microsUSB cable. This ensures that even if you went for multiple days, the battery would surely hold up or could be recharged from an external battery bank, solar power or any USB energy output. There are now possibilities to use phone batteries to (de)recharge other USB devices and batteries. It has two samsung lithium ion batteries 2 x 18650 (1300mAh), 2600mAh , 7.4v . Again, probably they used two batteries to avoid high inner heat production, to get down the size and the make charging faster.
2 hours of all out BEAM mode maxi and about 6 to 10hours on the lowest light mode. 4 options are choosable with one single press of the button, and it circulates inbetween them. You can turn the light off by holding it down or 3 seconds.
I did not take it with me to the test, but there is a remote control installable on the handlebar, in case you were lazy to reach for the top on/off button of the lamp. I don’t find this really useful, as for road cycling, the terrain is never technical, that you got to be careful about using only one hand. Also where all the cables come out under the handlebar tape, it is already hard to install the lamp itself as you got your Garmin and GoPro posts, so it becomes very annoying to have one more cable running around.
When mountain biking however, you have already, a lockable fork, rear shock and possibly a dropper seat-post with 2 or 3 buttons, so a 4th one would be an abuse on the already space ship deck looking raiser handlebar. For me it is a no
The one single button operated control system. Honestly, it works just fine and it is more than enough.
The lamp comes with the button operated hard to dismount universal locking system. If you had multiple BBB lights, you can swap them over and actually with the helmet mount, despite this lamp is heavy due to the integrated battery, 210g, you can have this light installed on your bike helmet.
It retails for 199.95 and it is in fact a good price for a light well built, good looking and powerful as this is. It is recommended for road cycling as your main light, especially if you were riding on really dark and empty roads or for mountain biking as a secondary light on your bars. I would rate the light a 7/10, what is a solid score.
It would need some improvements, like the elimination of the remote control, what would increase waterproofness, decrease price. A 129.99 would be a nice place to shock the market !
Also, the placing of the USB port, in my opinion is a bit sketchy, but also the quality of the sealing, what should be a bit different, more durable. I am always looking for long term resistance and multiple years of use !
In a couple of years, I think all of us will have universal induction chargers for charging, mobile phones, lamps and lights and probably many more things, like car batteries in the parking lot.
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Thanks to BBB and Chullanka for the test products:
