Thanks for tuning in today we're going to be reviewing the Planet Bike
Dual Beamer 120 bicycle headlight.
Be-seen lights such as this Planet Bike Dual Beam 120 are essential for riding during the day and
night and making sure you're visible. They're very compact lights that are easy to install and remove
from your bike and ensure you're visible both in daytime as well as low visibility conditions.
You see packaging has the classic Planet Bike styling you have the red printed right on the
cardboard backing and looks great on a shelf with a little circular design on the back.
Full specs are also written on the back as well and as always Planet Bike is very accessible in
terms of pricing and great warranties to back up their products so if you ever have issues
even a few years down the line they're happy to send replacement parts. You have the light
fully exposed here so you can actually interact with it directly without actually buying it.
I'll go ahead and take it out of the box and go to the specs so retail price on this 25 so
that's a lot of their products very accessible pricing you have a compact dual led design so
you can see just surface mounted with simple reflectors 120 lumen output so pretty bright for a
be-seen style light. You have four distinct modes, there is low, high and then there is Superflash
which you can see really grab your attention and Courtesy mode which is
a nice pulse pattern which is great for trail riding. You have two AAA batteries and that's
pretty unique here you don't see that a lot of new bike lights with the batteries included
and that ensures you don't have to worry about always charging your usb devices
and have higher capacity than a similarly sized integrated battery. You have their A3 cam
and i'll just take this out of the packaging with a little zip tie so a simple tool-less design
so you can see it's very simple you just have to loosen it and very similar to the
Fenix lights that we featured before so a very simple design that's easy to remove install.
The light slides on securely and has a little side to side play as well. In terms of what
comes with it obviously you get the mount, the light and then the batteries pre-installed
so two triple AAA and easy to swap out you get a little bit of manual in there as well.
So this gives you a little bit information about the light
although the operations very simple you see the mount just slides on
and a little bit of safety information on here. Now let's take a look at the weight
of the light it's pretty much a plastic construction so expect to be quite light
so the light itself is 54 grams and then the little cam lock handlebar mount that is 12 grams.
Visually the Dual Beamer 120 has a very simple construction. You have a rectangular design
that sort of tapers near the end with these rounded corners it's an all plastic design
with a semi-gloss finish. You have these little character lines running down the side that kind
of break up the otherwise flat corners. What sets this light apart from the other Planet Bike lights
is the fact that you get dual leds so it's very simple. You get surface mounted leds and they're
fully visible with the reflectors around them to help focus the beam you have cutouts directly in
those reflectors too so you can see when i have the light on you have some side visibility as well
so that's something that's really desirable when you're riding you want to make sure you're visible
from different angles not just the front so really essential a nice thing that they've included here.
Very minimal branding here you just have Plante Bike logo on the bottom
and then Dual Beamer 120 printed on the side and only one side. The mount design is a proprietary
sliding one and you can see it just slides on locks into place and you have a little bit of
side to side play so you can adjust this as you need it and then has a tab here you just pull
and then push forward. So you can see a nice simple design and what I like about this is
very similar to some of the Fenix cam locks so you simply tighten it down and then lock it in
place you don't need any tools and very quick so if you have a urban bike commuter bike and you're
gonna park it outside you can quickly throw this on or off you'd see very flexible here as well
There is a nice little bit of adjustment to it because it has a rubber on there
they also have some other accessory mounts if you want to mount this on your fork
or your helmet they have those additional options. The other thing I wanted to show you is you can't
actually adjust the mount so by default it's optimized for a certain diameter but you can
make it wider or shorter. So you want to take a screwdriver and then remove that one top screw
and you can see with this off you can take off the top piece and now you can actually see how this
works. It's a simple strap and you can either hook it at the front if you want a larger diameter here
so if you have wider diameter handlebars you can do that you can leave it in the middle which is
the default one and then you can pull it all the way to the back as well and that would be for very
small distances so if you put that all the way over there you can see it's going to be very tight
so nice flexibility and although this part does require tool you should only have to do it once
when you first install it if it doesn't fit from the factory. In terms of the interface it's very
simple you have one button on the top it's a little bit small too so you have to make sure you
press the middle. You have two constant modes so it looks like flashing here but it's actually just
a low high and then you have their super flash so you can see very bright and it flashes each one of
them and it goes back and forth so it's a very unique looking light scheme. Then you have what
they call the Courtesy mode so you can see that it switches between LEDs and then pulses on off
so a really great way to grab attention great for trail riding as it's not too obnoxious.
Now you don't have really battery indicator with this because you just have the batteries
and what's great about a standard battery light is these will dim over time so if
you notice it's getting dimmer that probably means your battery is starting to get weaker.
Battery replacement is also really cool so the front actually separates from the
back and you can see this is all just battery and all the leds and lenses just in the front
you can slide these out and then easily replace them. You can even put rechargeable
AAA batteries and it has this nice lock design so very sleek. You don't have any hardware
and again no tools required so you can just grab this pull it out and swap batteries in.
There are four modes with the light you have low which does one led for 15 hours high which is a
full 120 with six hour run time and then two flash modes super flash which is kind of erratic flash
between the each led and 70 hour run time. Then Courtesy which is a ramp up and down for 25 hours
obviously you're going to want to stick with super flash gives you the most run time and
makes the most sense you're definitely going to want to use this during low visibility or
daytime riding as that's what really the light is meant for so whether you're on your road bike or
commuting it's a great option as the light is very compact and you can just throw on your handlebar
and then easily remove it and with the long run time you don't have to worry about batteries.
Now let's compare the Dual Beamer 120 with some other lights on the market. The most
direct comparison are the Topeak Headlux series so this is 100 lumens versus the 120 from the
Dual Beamer. USB style charging and what's cool about the Headlux is that it actually has a usb
directly built in so you don't need a cord or anything and you don't need extra batteries
like you would need with the Dual Beamer. The other thing about the Headlux is it has this
hoop style mounting versus the more proprietary style with the slide-on cam the Dual Beamer is
a little bit bigger though and gives you the convenience of the fact that you don't have to
constantly recharge it. Topeak has larger versions of the Headlux too so metal body 400 lumens
so a lot brighter and same dual beam style but again higher price for the higher output.
Light & Motion motion has a lot of interesting lights with thier Vya series
this is the Vya Smart Pro and it has the usb again directly built in goes into the mount itself.
If you hold it you can actually trick it to turn on really good visibility from longer distances
but quite a bit more expensive than the Planet Bike. You can see very
unique form factor with no buttons so you just turn it on and that's it.
There's also much more expensive options like the Bontrager Ion so really popular ones the Ion 200
RT. It has bluetooth connectivity with your head units multiple flash modes light sensors nice side
visibility and a very compact form factor. You can see it's really the size of just the front
of the dual beamer the dual beamer is also not a replacement for a normal headlight so we
definitely recommend something like a Magicshine RN1500 we have here you can see bigger a lot more
battery capacity and then 1500 lumens of output so that'll really light up the road versus the very
small beam of the Dual Beamer so you want to use these in combination so during the day you would
use this and then at night you can actually use both of them together or just your headlight.
The other thing I want to show is the fact that the cam lock design with this mount
is very similar to the Fenix. It's just a lot smaller as you don't have a big bulky headlight
so very similar design where you can pull the cam out and then lock it in but again
the phoenix is just a lot bulkier for the higher weight and very nice design you don't need a tool
don't need allen keys and it's a lot less finicky to put on and take off.
Now let's go over the pros and cons for the Dual Beamer light. What we like about it
is a very affordable price and is backed with Planet Bike spare parts and customer service.
You have daytime visible super flash and courtesy modes which are great for low visibility riding
and it comes with the tool free mount which is really easy to install and remove from your
bike. Some of the cons for the light is the fact that it does use a proprietary mount instead of a
more generic quarter turn Garmin style that we see in other brands. Also this uses simple but
less practical AAA batteries so you don't really want to use the constant modes as they'll drain
the batteries quickly and you'll have to buy more of them or buy rechargeable AAA batteries. Also
the power button requires a fair amount of force to use it'd be great if it's a little bit softer
and larger. Taking everything into account would give the Dual Beamer 120 and 8.7 out of 10. It's a
simple daytime visible light it doesn't have all the tech features some of the other lights have
but it's much more affordable. Thanks for watching the review don't forget to like and subscribe.
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