Re: LED BikeLights discontinued
And... it's gone! (What else would you have expected from that faceless corporate operation?)
Dear business partner, dear customer,
On March 31, 2014, Philips will permanently discontinue its line of LED BikeLights. This includes the sale of the products belonging to the Philips LED Saferide®, Philips LED Activeride® and Philips LED RearLight product lines. All products and accessories will be retired from the market.
After that date, the products will be no longer for sale, and orders will no longer be accepted. We will continue to provide aftersales and support services for the products that have been sold in the last years, according to the terms and conditions that you may expect from a Philips solution.
We strongly suggest that you liaise with your local sales partner, to discuss a last-buy option accommodating your business' needs.
Should you have additional questions, we encourage you to learn more about the details through your direct customer contact.
We sincerely appreciate your support and regret any inconvenience this necessary action causes you.
I've received no information about the reasons for Philips stopping with bicycle lights, not even confirmation that the message on mtb-news.de was true as that was the only source I've seen so far, but, some responses and one non-response in emails to someone at Philips in mid-late 2012 make me think they were possibly already thinking about stopping, middle to end of 2012, when they were doing budget cuts in Philips in all sections.
Actually, they were strong indicators, but I didn't think they would do that, after all, with all the resources they have at their disposal, and the line up they have and money invested, it doesn't make sense to me to not give it a proper go and fix the issues in their lamps.
Now don't think other companies don't make mistakes. I read some complaints about how the problems in the lamps should have been trivial to avoid by any company, but I will list some issues that I read and issues I saw:
- Headlamps not always waterproof: I've not experienced it, but the Edelux for example also wasn't waterproof in early versions. The lens being stuck on at the front with the Saferides does mean water can come in there if the glue hasn't properly sealed it... For this case a lens within the housing, so slightly recessed, is better. This can be done easily with a top/bottom half housing... Also with regard to being waterproof, look at the Luxos U, which has a problem of not being able to withstand even a little bit of dampness on the connector for the switch. People who say any of the issues in Philips lamps could have been easily fixed with proper testing, yes, I agree, but this is true for other lamps as well such as the Luxos U.
- Not user serviceable: Almost all headlamps these days cannot be opened easily for repairs. Again, the top/bottom half way would make this possible.
- Mount point not 10mm wide: Lots of companies do that these days. I don't like it, mounts are not interchangeable...
- Early mounting bracket could break. Didn't happen to me, depends on riding enough on roads where the lamp will vibrate such that it breaks where it was pressed thinner for the bolt. Might have seemed to be a good idea but it wasn't. Then again, I've heard the same issue about the H-one S from one person who emailed his experiences and the H-one S' bracket was defective 3 times (so he go t a replacement bracket 2 times but all broke). If looking at it, the stamping causes strength difference which can cause a break from vibrations.
- Ball head mount: I commented about this without testing, I didn't think it would work, and it didn't. I don't know how this got through testing.
- Taillamp (with batteries): Water damage: This is again something I would do differently. The design is too complicated, but also, a top/bottom type design or something which at the top is not a line that if not perfectly sealed, will let water go in, is simply better.
- Complexity: The designs are undoubtedly more expensive to manufacture than lower end headlamps because of their complexity. The method of keeping the electronics fixed without vibration in the Pedelec/Saferide 60 is very complex, lots of parts, spring, small bolts. Why not simply bolting the PCB and use bottom-top half housing?
The beam shape of the Philips lamps are so far unequaled in how useful and smooth they are, which is different from how well they look on beam shots. This is the problem of lamps such as the Supernova E3 from 2010 which looked a lot better than any of the others, and in reality it's not, the same happens with the Edelux II and thus Cyo premium, and the cause is that spreading out light and especially making it wide fairly close, looks good on beam shots (a large part of the screen is lit up, larger than illuminating the same area on the road which is a bit further away, this is the issue of perspective over-accentuation but there are other reasons too) but it's not what you see in reality because in reality you look at a certain spot on the road, not at the entire picture as you see on the computer screen. In reality I find the Edelux II to be very dark, and the Saferide 60 much better. The only good point of the Edelux II is the width for curves but I never felt it was a big advantage.
I sent my Edelux II to friend btw., will look forward to his views. His views are often different than mine (e.g. he liked the original H-one S a lot for riding in the city where the squarish blob of light before the main beam got noticed by motorists...), but he's just as critical so will look forward to how he views the hotspots and darkness of the beam in the other places.
On the squarish blob of light of the original H-one S and artefacts in general: This is another issue that is hard to properly show in beam shots if aiming the lamps as far as possible, as I do. The eye then still sees the artefacts, the camera not so much.
I tried HDR btw, and it didn't work, didn't give results that showed me more how I experience lamps especially in the darker areas. I tried some gamma editing of beam shots with a computer program I made specifically for changing the darkness-brightness also depending on brightness of an area and they gave a fairly good improvement but this is still something in progress.
To do it properly, to give a good impression of artefacts, I think the only way at the moment is to make beamshots with the lamps aimed at various distances. I noticed the artifacts jump out far more on beam shots where the lamps are aimed at 25-30 m which is what many people do when riding and also when making beam shots.
But that's not optimal use of strong headlamps, at least for me, I always aim as far as possible, possibly because I like to ride fast
So possibly it would be a good idea to make beam shots aimed at 25,35,45m (and more if the lamp works well that way, e.g. LBL 70m), but doing all that would make beam shot sessions even more work.
But I'm not sure whether I will get around to this, as all this investigative stuff costs loads of time and no results for sales. Instead, I have the numbers to prove that proper reviews actually reduce sales... This is because people want to be affirmed in their views, not shown that something else they don't care about it better. A salesmen sells more by only pointing out good points of all devices then letting the customer make up his mind, not by pointing out bad points...
So coincidentally, as Philips, I've been considering how to proceed...
Wouter
