REVIEWED: Lupine Edison 5

I featured the Lupine Edison 5 in my Fresh Meat feature last month. I won’t go into details as to how nice the light looks but a bit more about how it works while on the darker side of the trails.
Light systems have come a long way and have been refined in order to burn longer, have brighter light output and reducer overall weight. Doesn’t matter if you’re a commuter, weekend warrior or Endurance racer - everyone can benefit from high end lights!


First as a preface I would like to point out that this is my first real light system. In the past I’ve tried some cheaper alternatives and some not so successful home made lights. If you’re not too savvy when it comes to electronics, do yourself a favor and just drop the coin on a good light system. There is more that goes into a good reliable light system than a battery, lamp and a few wires soldered together.

Once on the bike when everything starts shaking and/or when exposed to foul weather – that’s when the problems surfaces. If you’re in group rides, then the rest of the riders might get pretty impatient while you try to fix your light. If you’re like me and ride solo most of the time, then I sure hope you’re packing some candles and matches.

So to supplement my review, I’ve asked a few local Lupine users to contribute. Many of which used other light systems previously.

Lamp Head: 151g
6.8 Ah Li-Ion soft case battery: 330g
Helmet mount with uncut straps: 30g
Remote Controller cradle: 17g
1m Extension Cord: 50g
I do most of my night riding before dawn. Yeah I know it sounds a bit crazy and many of my friends call me a vampire - but I like to go ride as soon as I can. I actually go to bed excited to get up and ride! Riding this early also gives me the opportunity to ride again in the afternoon when time permits. There is nothing like catching a nice sunrise on a clear morning ride!

Believe it or not, before getting the Lupine I use to chase sunrises with two inexpensive non rechargeable battery CatEye LED lights attached to my handlebars. Every time I picked up momentum, I was pretty much guessing my way down the trail. Let me tell you, I used to be pretty happy when the sun finally came up, but that’s a thing of the past now.

The Lupine Edison 5 got me completely hooked on night riding. On my first test ride, I used my CatEye lights to make it to the trailhead, at which point I turned on the Edison 5 – WOAH! I wish I could have taken a picture of my face – I had the facial expression of a kid seeing Santa for the first time.

I opted for the helmet mount setup and even dedicated one of my helmets for night riding. Also gave me a good excuse to get a new lid for this season. Now whenever I want to go night riding, I just pick up my “night riding” lid and go…

Affixing the head mount to your helmet is child’s play and literally takes seconds. If you can tie your own shoes, then this part should be a piece of cake. During my first ride it took me a few minutes to adjust the light to where I wanted it to point and haven’t touched it since. I was so impressed with the bright 16W light output that after my ride I realized how crappy the lights on my car are!


The Lupine Edison 5 head lamps comes stock with 18° beam divergence angle, which is narrow enough to give you a nice bright spot but at the same time wide enough to satisfy your peripheral vision. Todd at Gretna bikes was telling me that and advantage of the Edison light is that you can get a 10° bulb instead of the standard 18°. The 10° has over twice the through that the 18° has. Todd at Gretna Bike was telling me that it has been measured at over 300 yards vs the 18° that has about 75 yards. Put that in your pipe and smoke it! The 10° would make a killer setup for the crowd that hits over 40mph on there bike often, and holds that speed for an amount of time. Perfect for those nighttime DH runs!



Whichever mounting method you choose – Lupine uses simple o-rings to mount the head unit to either the handlebars or helmet. This simple mounting method also applies to the nifty handlebar remote controller cradle, which is included with the Edison 5. Just another example of Lupine’s attention to detail and simple, yet effective, design.


Remote Contoller Cradle
The Edison 5 comes with a compact 6.8 Ah Li-Ion soft case battery that is no bigger than a deck of cards. If you choose the helmet mount, the battery fits nicely in your pack or jersey pocket. So light you won’t even notice it’s there. The battery might be small, but packs a lot of punch - enough to power the light for 3 hours in the 16 W high setting and 5 hours in the 10 W low setting. The Edison 10 comes with a 13.8 Ah Li-Ion bottle battery that gives you a whooping 6 and a half hour burning time at full 16 W.


Charger One unit
Supplied with the Edison light system is a microprocessor controlled charger dubbed “Charger One”. Being unsatisfied with current chargers on the market, Lupine developed their own. The Charger One is a beauty and features a fully illuminated LCD display that indicates charging voltage and current as well as the charged capacity along with audible tones. It looks complicated but in reality isn’t! All you have to do is plug the battery and let the Charger One take care of the rest.

Charge time for the 6.8 Ah Li-Ion battery is around 4 hours. I’d like to point out that the Charger One works with every Lupine battery – even older Lupine batteries. I’d also like to point out that Lupine also includes an in-car adaptor for the Charger One, which allows you to recharge your battery while on the road.


Car Adaptor
Last week I made a point of not recharging the battery, just to see what the signs are right as the battery is about to die. Guess I timed it just right since the battery died RIGHT as the sun was coming up - Booyah!

Since the controller is on my helmet, I can’t see if the red and yellow lights are one, which means the light will automatically switch off in a few minutes. The light did go from 16 W to 10 W, which is an indication that the red and yellow light came on and is a warning that the lamp is about to switch off…which it did.

Ahhhh but this is when the “reserve tank” feature comes to save the day (or is it night?). If you "double click" the switch it activates the reserve tank which provides some additional minutes of emergency light on low beam (10 Watts). A flashing red LED signals the reserve tank has been activated. Its duration depends on the battery condition.

Never been so happy! Yes good lights are expensive, but being able to ride any time of the day is PRICELESS! Trail riding at night is pretty damn fun, especially on familiar ones. Using the Lupine Edison 5 is almost like riding during the day – it gives the trials eyes!


The only time I wasn’t too stoked about a night ride is after getting caught in thick Bay Area coastal fog. Doesn’t matter how bright your light is! It takes more than that to cut through that thick wall of condense water! Definitely made for an interesting ride – also had me wishing I was running some fog lights on my fork lowers ;o)


One good thing night riding teaches you is to look AHEAD and where you want to go! This is especially important if you’re using a helmet mount. Looking down at your front wheel while riding at night doesn’t work too well – you have to constantly look where you are going.

I also took this simple little video as a visual comparaison between the 16W and 10W light output. You can either stream the video, or right click and save as:

LUPINE EDISON 5 VIDEO HERE

The Lupine Edison 5 is more than a simple “switch on/off” light. The PCS 4.1v Remote Controller is a pretty advanced and complex piece of electronic. I strongly suggest you read the user manual and Technical Information PCS 4.1v documents to get a better understanding of the device before hitting the trails. All those nice LED lights that come on and off actually mean something.

One night I got all my stuff ready and drove a good 40min to this local trail I had never ridden at night. Got there just to realize my Lupine light wouldn’t turn on! I had no clue why.. Most of the time a simple reset (e.g. holding the switch button down for 25sec) will do the trick! But if you didn’t read the manuals first, then you wouldn’t know that. Situations like these can quickly put a end to a potentially great night ride.

No matter how great a product is there will always some room for improvement. Believe it or not, I wasn’t able to fault the Lupine Edison 5, other than maybe the price. But you get what you pay for. But there are a few things about HID’s that you should know.

• The lifetime of Welch Allyn bulb is approx. 500-700 hours. However this is limited by the number of times the lamp is switched on and off. In order to maximize the bulb life, only switch the lamp on and off when necessary. Switching the lamp between high and low beam does not affect the life of the bulb. This is not an issue with LED lights. So try not to crash when you’re out night riding!!

• Metal Halide lighting systems need some time to reach suitable conditions before restarting. This takes approximately 8 seconds and is signaled by the fading green LED and the blue backlight. It is absolutely necessary to wait until the green LED is almost invisible and the blue backlight LED turned off before switching the light on.

• You shouldn’t use the Edison 5 light without air flow for more than 30 minutes or it may suffer damage from heat.

• Price: Indeed, $750 US is a lot of mola to drop on a single light. But once you’ve experienced it – it almost pays for itself! As a heads up, the Edison 5 is currently 20% off at Gretna Bikes.

Lupine Rrcently announced a new Wilma LED system that outputs a whooping 830 lumens – that is only 70 lumens less than the Edison 5 HID system. With the same 6.8 Ah Li-Ion battery you can get one extra hour burn time out of the Wilma at full 15W output (4 hours when compared to 3 for the Edison). Better yet – since you have the ability to adjust the light output from 1W to 15W, you can get up to 42 hours of burn time.


Lupine Wilma
Other advantages of LED lights are that they don’t overheat and bulbs aren’t as expensive as HID’s. I’m really looking forward to trying one of these new Wilma LED light systems to compare to the HID. Maybe later down the road…

Here you can see the comparison of Lupine's new Wilma LED light and the Edison HID:


Pic Above: 15W Wilma new (830 Lumens)

Pic Above: 16W 18° Edison (900 Lumens)
Rider: Steve "IRON" Parsoneault
Lives: Scotts Valley
Favorite place to ride: Santa Cruz Mountains
Lupine user: 6 months - 1/week in the winter
Preferred Lupine setup: Helmet
Preferred riding: Aggressive Trail Riding
Other Lights Used: Jet and NiteRider

STEVE SPEAKS OUT• My light went dead after maybe 3 rides. I sent it back and they replaced it with a new one. No hassles, but I was still surprised it went out on me.

• Besides brightness, I like the simplicity of light attachment - 1 big o-ring. In Engineering we say "Keep it simple stupid" - they succeeded)

• The light is decadent, basically, ridiculous illumination - as good as my Cayenne and almost as expensive ;-)


Rider: Eric "Led Foot" Mellegers
Lives: Santa Cruz, CA
Favorite place to ride: Redwood singletrack, whistler
Lupine user: 3 years, two night rides a week during the winter
Preferred setup: Edison 5 on the bar and the helmet. If forced to choose one it would be the helmet.
Preferred riding: pinned....uphill and down

When I asked Eric if he was interested in contributing this is what he said: “I would love to contribute to a Lupine review, as I am their biggest fan this side of the pond.”

ERIC SPEAKS OUTBeen riding an Edison 5 for three years now, and have not replaced a bulb, ran out the battery, or had the light not fire. With two Lupines (yeah, that’s how I roll) I am comfortable riding anything in the dark that I would during the day.

The color of the light is more natural than other HID's and highlights subtle things on the trail like a drier or muddier patch of soil. I don't think I need to say this sucker is BRIGHT.

Most memorable Lupine moment happened on the railroad tracks one night. As I approached an intoxicated homeless person they shrieked, covered their eyes, and then melted into their boots while repenting for their transgressions. My $.02 for what it's worth.


Rider: Paul "Let's RIDE" Albe
Lives: Scotts Valley, CA
Favorite place to ride: Santa Cruz Mountains
Lupine user: 6 months – night rides 3 to 4 times a week
Preferred setup: Helmet Mount
Preferred riding: Like to ride aggressive trails and races expert DH. He likes to teach trails a lesson!
Other Lights Used: NiteRider

PAUL SPEAKS OUTI'm going to skip the obvious stuff about how it's the nicest/most expensive light I've ever seen.

Here are some of the finer details about it that I don't think get noticed in reviews:

• The mounting system works REALLY well. People mention this but what they don't say is how it doesn't shake on a rough downhill section, and doesn't move when you hit a big drop. It's always right where you put it, yet still easy to move and make adjustments if need be. My NiteRider mounting system used to shake like crazy down those rougher Santa Cruz trials, so bad that you would start to lose track of where you were going. It's also simple to use and easy to change from helmet mount to bar mount.

• How the brightness effect your riding style? OK so we know that it's really bright, but what does that do for us? I was used to a 2 beam NiteRider classic (which I think is a 20W and a 12W lamp). I realized that when I switched to the Lupine, I had to change the way I focused my eyes on the trail and where I was looking on the trail as well. So I guess I'm trying to say that the lupine was so bright, at first it was sort of blinding me. You will need to adapt to riding with the lupine, but eventually (2 or 3 rides) you will be a lot faster. The brightness really helps the most with high speed situations, and the difference is incredible.

• The Edison works best mounted to your helmet and not your bars. If you need a bar mount, I would actually recommend a halogen (with an SR bulb), and then use the Edison in combination on the helmet. The Edison has a limit to the extreme left and right, so there are certain situations where you need to tuck under a branch or tree and corner at the same time, you realize that since your head isn't pointing where you are going that you are essentially blind. It's probably not within the scope of most people to own two really expensive lights, but I think it's smart to always have a backup light for night rides, so pony up for the dual lamp situation.

• Having a lighting system that weighs so little is a huge advantage. I can't tell you enough what a huge difference it made in my night-riding to lose 2 or 3 pounds when I stopped using the NiteRider. Li-Ion batteries are the best and totally worth it.

• The battery lasts a long time. You can relax a little bit more because you know that you have plenty of burn time. I know that I had to hobble back home more than once with the NiteRider with a friend lighting the way behind me using the Lupine Edison.

• Gretna bikes are great to work with. They have been really awesome from the get go, very responsive and overall a great rep for lupine. I know Steve had an issue with his Edison and Gretna warrantied it with no problems. I think it took a week and a half total, and that's including shipping all the way across the US both ways during the snowy winter months. I think it's worth mentioning this, for anyone who has ever tried to buy a Nicolai, they know how "easy" it is to get stuff from Germany. Just hope the donkey that is carrying your frame across the Atlantic doesn't drown.

• It's one of those things in cycling where it's hard to justify the purchase at first, then afterward it's hard not to justify.

Thanks to Todd Nicholas at Gretna Bikes for making this review happen! Also to Paul, Eric and Steve for the contributions.

I strongly encourage you to check out the following links as they contain all the information you ever wanted to know about light systems – and more! Specs, Manuals, FAQ’s, Forums, Pictures – they got it all.

North American Lupine distributor: www.gretnabikes.com
Home of Lupine: www.lupine-lights.com

Bikes are cool - get out and ride! Go FLAT out....

Posted In:
Reviews and Tech Reviews