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Axa pico 30

Specifications:

Pico 30 in box Pico 30 in doos, rear Pico 30, contents of the box Pico 30, mass

Mass: ca. 65g with mounting bracket and cable to dynamo and taillamp.
Size: width: ca. 38.2 mm, height: ca. 68.9 mm, length ca. 45.1 mm.
Mounting width: ca. 8.3 mm (not the standard 10mm)
LED: ?, The LED light colour ?
On/off: The tested auto on/off version has a switch which slides left/right to choose between 'on' and 'automatic'. I first thought it was some slightly too big cap to cover up where a switch would be. It should protrude more which would make the switch easier to operate and it would make clear without looking at the manual that it is a switch.
Price: ca. € 25,-

Pictures:



See also the Bicycle lamp size page for comparison pictures with other headlamps.

Experiences

The beam is fairly strong, but is composed of 2 parts, the wider beam and a narrower beam. This is similar to the original Magicshine MJ808 battery powered lamp, and seems similar to Fenix' BT20 lamp (where this 'feature' is advertised as a feature but it's not really a feature. The best beam is an even beam, not one with various sections that are brighter than others). When you aim the lamp correctly so that opposing traffic doesn't get the full beam strength in their eyes, the narrower beam stands out a lot (which is bad). But worst of all is the problem that plagues many low lux rating lamps: Because the cutoff is not very strict, it's very hard to aim it correctly, so opposing traffic will get annoyed by this lamp in many cases when people aim it too high. On long unlit roads I felt that with the aim of the lamp very high (which would blind oncoming traffic) the illumination of the road was best. This means people will tend to aim it too high which is bad.

The standlight seems fairly weak, but I haven't tried to put away my bike with it yet in my shed.

The light flickers a lot at low speeds (ca. 5 km/h), this is one of the worst lamps I ever tried in this respect.

The lamp lets light go directly to your eyes and for that reason you should put some black tape or paint on the top of the lens. It's not just at night that it can annoy, I even had it in sunlight, where the reflected light was as coming from a point source, and scattterd as in a prism, so the colour you would see depends on the angle between your position and the lamp. I made some pictures showing green and red/purple:

This was even more annoying than the light from the LED at night...

Conclusion

It gives plenty of light, but in beamshape I'd recommend the H-diver.

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