Gloworm X1 and XS lights – Review
The nights are dark and wild, Tom’s been out shedding a little light on things with the Gloworm XS and X1 lights.
Gloworm are a New Zealand based company producing a full range of LED bike lights. They offer awesome levels of weather sealing, and fully customisable lighting levels in a compact and robust looking package. After a few years of making do, mending and wondering if I will burn down the house using the £20 eBay specials I was really excited about getting out for the winter with these little guys.
The X1 is the smallest light in the Gloworm range, featuring one CREE LED emitter. The head unit is tiny, barely an inch across and under 60g, including the remote button and the included Go-Pro mount. The inclusion of Go-Pro mount is a superb idea making fitting it to your helmet super easy. There are also some straps provided so you don’t have to use a permanent mount if you don’t want to stick one on your lid. Once mounted you can use a little velcro tab to secure the remote in a convenient position. Each light set comes with about 75cm of extension lead so you can run your battery in a back pocket or in a bag.
The battery for the X1 is made of two cells, totally weather sealed and with an easy to use green/amber/red run-time indicator. It also comes with sticky back foam and stretchy velcro to protect and attach to the a bike frame. Also included in the box are a range of different optics and a handy little case for everything.
The XS is a bigger unit, with 3 LEDs, but you could hardly call it big at 110g, light enough to mount on your head if you wanted to . It runs off a similar battery with 4 cells, again totally weather sealed, and with a power indicator. You get both a GoPro mount and a bar mount, for users of 35mm bars there is an aftermarket clamp available. As with the X1, it’s controlled by a remote button that can be mounted on the bars.
All the Gloworm lights are fully programmable through a few clicks, double clicks and holds of the button. It’s worth having the manual open in front of you if you choose to customise as it’s easy to get in a bit of a muddle if you just think you can click about randomly until it works! Happily there is a reset that reverts everything back to the pre-assigned brightnesses. At 100% using the double battery the X1 throws out a very respectable 950 lumens and lasted just over two hours, both pretty much bang on the specs given in the manual. The XS throws out a massive 2200 lumens, enough to light up even the fastest and wildest of trails, and at full power will run for just shy of two hours.
The chargers remain cool through charging and come without any of the “should I leave these unsupervised?”excitement of some chargers… UK plugs and proper fuses for the win here.
I had a good play with the different optic available (Flood, Wide and Spot) before settling on Spot for the X1 on my head, and Wide for the XS on the bars. I then programmed in 3 modes – 100% for descending and tech, 30% for climbing and 10% as a “just in case” to get me home. With these set ups, and the easy cycling between modes I could happily ride pretty much anything I ride during the day, and get in 3+ hour rides with no concerns that I might run out of power. One nice touch is that as you cycle through the modes you don’t get an “off”, reducing the chances of randomly ending up in the dark at just the wrong moment.
I’ve crashed a few times now running these lights, as well as subjecting them to a lot of rainy riding. The X1 has ripped off my head, snapping the GoPro mount in the process, but Ison Distribution, the UK distributors have been great, stocking plenty of spares as well as advise on how to get the best out of these lights. They have also got a service centre set up to handle both warranty and non-warranty electrical issues, I’ve yet to test it but it just adds more value to your purchase knowing that they have got your back if something goes wrong.
Also worth a look is the X2 that has, you guessed it, 2 LEDs and a 1500 lumen output. I’ve not tested it myself, but one of the regular Tuesday night afterworkers uses one on his head as his only light with no problems at all.
Overall, I’m really pleased with both of these lights; rugged, plenty bright enough to embrace winter and totally tuneable to your needs make these both a great buy, and UK based back-up just adds to that. Highly recommended to keep you going long after the Oriental specials have given up the ghost!
X1 RRP £139.99
XS RRP £234.99
Action Photos – Skinny Dave Morris