Here is a piece I posted elsewhere recently, not written as a full review but you may consider the experience and opinions helpful in deciding whether you really need a Cyo. (Personally, as will soon become clear, I wouldn't have anything else even if it were free.) One more thing, unless you really need the Cyo 60's range (which I don't think is all that much greater), get the Cyo R nearfield with the reflector -- it is a better all-round lamp. Note also that improved Cyo series two models are for sale at the end of this month.
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Went out last night at about 3am on the main road closed for roadbed stabilization. Super ride in the dark, on the main
drag and on the normally inaccessible footpath beside a section of the
main road. A good moon but overcast, so too dark to see the river, or
indeed the road without good lights. I have good lights. If I were a
motorist coming the other way, I might have thought too good. Read on.
Holy sheeet! -- is that BUMM Cyo headlight bright when you get up
round 25kph (c15mph)! Mine is set with a ruler-flat horizon of about three feet at 100 yards for riding in narrow lanes where I meet people I know who're considerate of me in daytime right close up. But at
25kph on the open main road the Cyo lights up the road for definitely
more than half a mile. This is a bike light far, far better than car
lights back in the 6V days; in fact, it is a quality of lamp that
Americans, with their pisswilly regulations, are quite unfamiliar
with. And this is only the Cyo R or "Nearfield", supposedly the lesser
of BUMM's two top lamps. I also have the supposedly "better" or "racer
model" reflectorless Cyo, claimed to throw half as much light again,
which I'll fit tonight and go see if it is any better at speed than I
thought before. (Before I thought it sacrifices too much in nearfield
light for no benefit in throw or brightness that I could make out. But
who knows what I'll think now I've got a road to bring out the speed
freak lurking in charming ol' Andre the utility cyclist...)
All is not roses, of course. The first series Cyo that I have gain
their distance and brightness by restricting the width of the beam.
Sure, at some distant extension the Cyo will light up three lanes, but
at bicycle speeds that's a minute away. At the distance where you need
to make decisions about obstructions just outside the lane, the throw
is pretty narrow. The sidespill is just enough to light up knee-high
reflectors on armco no more than ten feet to the side, and from about
twenty feet in front of you. The reflectors on this road are
triangular, on metal, bolted to telegraph pole railings. If you miss
seeing them and get too close in those places where the hard shoulder
disappears, you rip your thighs. I've said from the beginning that I
thought BUMM could have sacrificed some reach in the "lesser" Cyo
(which I consider the better suited to my sort of riding) to make it
much more "nearfield". By way of demonstration of how little light
there is in the immediate vicinity of the bike, when riding along the
painted line the Cyo doesn't light up the nearest cateye to you where
they're close-set. (All of this would make the Cyo totally useless
offroad. It is unashamedly a commuter's lamp, and a speed freak's
tarmac lamp.)
Apparently BUMM was listening. Their site shows a second series Cyo
which has additional LEDs under the main lamp. These double as
daylight running lights and nearfield lamps. They're on sale at the
end of September.
On the way back I ran into a moderate mist. The Cyo cut through it
like the proverbial knife. A heavier roll of mist surging up a cut
from the river however threw back a blinding wall of light. If I were
a commuter -- I'm not -- riding in wet and foggy conditions, I'd put
my Cyo on wingnuts for instant adjustment downwards in rain and fog,
or have two, switched, one pointed as normal, one pointing down to use
as fog light to give me reaction time closer to the bike. All of this
assumes that the commute is fast, of course.
If you have to ask what it costs, a Cyo is probably an overkill luxury
for a slow commute; if you don't, it is a necessity your life cannot
do without, however rarely you extend it. Mine are used as daylight
running lamps almost every day of the year, and I don't worry overly
much about getting home before dusk falls even on winter nights when
poor weather further cuts visibility. (in addition to the Cyo, I use a
BUMM D'Toplight XS, plus flashing lamps front and rear of my bike. You
have to be blind to miss seeing me in any conditions whatsoever.) But
my Cyo see full dark perhaps twenty or thirty times a year on
nighttime rides, and then usually on little lanes where the fast
downhill sections twist and turn so that the big throw is wasted and
the lack of nearfield light to see potholes by is an irritation.
Still, I ride on 60-622 armoured Big Apples, so a pothole has to be
very big indeed to throw me off, and the little ones hardly disturb my
line, and I haven't actually had a flat in the 18 months or so I've
had the Cyos, so the lack of nearfield light is more of a theoretical
shortfall than an actual inconvenience. Maybe the second series Cyo
will be improved to the point of perfection; after all, the first
series is pretty close to perfection.
Sorry to get down to brass tacks in a thread that started so lyrically
but, hell, I don't often get a chance to extend my lamps quite so
outrageously. Just as well that road was closed to motor traffic.
Andre "Speed Freak" Jute
Visit Andre's books at
http://www.audio-talk.co.uk/fiultra/THE%20WRITER'S%20HOUSE.html
