Busch & Müller: Lumotec oval senso plus

Tested/used: Spring 2010

This headlamp is an example of obsolete technology...

The front plastic is partly a retro-reflector and this transparent plastic is not covered on top. Quite a bit of light 'escapes' upwards which is bad as it diminishes your night vision. This is why I put a bit of black tape over it.

The lamp doesn't give light at walking pace contrary to say the Edelux. The lamp has a capacitor feeding the standlight, which is a separate low power LED that gives quite a broad beam and is very useful to put away your bike in, say, the shed, without turning on the light there. The halogen light beam is pathetic. Before the introduction of the IQ Fly/Edelux this was already the case of course, and I found all dynamo powered halogen lamps to be very poor for badly lit roads especially when cycling fast (say around 30 km/h). Using this lamp after having used a lamp such as the Edelux for a long time really emphasizes how poor the lamp's beam really is. The first night I rode with it, on a long unlit road, I almost rode into a guy who was walking with a defective moped, that didn't have lights and he had no reflective clothing (he was walking on the wrong side of the road; In the Netherlands, pedestrians are supposed to walk on the opposite side of the road compared to other traffic, as they are slow and usually without lights; this way they can see oncoming traffic and can jump out of the way should they be overlooked). Using an Edelux I would have spotted him much sooner. Finally, there are almost no reflections from traffic signs, and you only see a small spot on the road. In other words, this lamp is obsolete!

Perhaps it's an option to modify this lamp with a Cree XR-E LED or similar.

September 2010: As an experiment I've modified it with a XP-E R2 cool white and a XP-G R4 neutral white which give a huge improvement and make the lamp useable on unlit roads... I also used this to experiment with how a neutral white headlamp is compared to cool white.

28 October 2010: Beamshots of this lamp modified with XP-G R4 neutral LED, see Experiments with LEDs: Frankenlamp.

January 2011: Beamshots of this lamp with the original halogen bulb, on icy/wet roads, see the page with the review of the Supernova E3 pro StVZO.

Conclusion

Obsolete, only useful as a be-seen lamp, for use within cities.

Last modified: Tue Feb 19 15:48:25 CET 2013