Thanks for tuning in today we're going to be reviewing the magishine MJ-902S and MJ-906S.
bicycle headlights. The MJ series of bike lights are perhaps one of the most popular product lineups
they're really well known for their high output and budget friendly prices and today we're going
to be looking at two of the brightest variations in the lineup the 902S and the updated 906S.
Now in terms of packaging it's really simple you just get a cardboard box a nice reflective graphic
on the front that shows Magicshine's iconic orange coloring here and white text. You
have all the specs of the light on the back as well as the FL1 tested data and some of the light and
beam intensity information on here. Both lights are very similarly sized they're actually identical
so i'll go ahead and open one and while I do that we'll go over the specs.
So the 902S is the 3000 lumen variation and that retails for $139.99.
It uses the MJ-6116c battery which is one of the biggest differences here this is the
slightly lower capacity battery pack. The lights are Garmin compatible which is very cool
that means you can use this with any kind of out front mount or gopro garmin compatible adapter.
Perhaps one of the biggest things here is the fact that they've integrated
the DRL so if i pop the light out of the nice foam holder
you can see the light actually is a dual led design with a drl integrated on the top with
these horizontal deflectors. That's probably one of the biggest changes over the previous 906
and 902. They're also e-bike compatible which is really cool so instead of running the battery pack
you can actually wire this directly to your e-bike and it'll automatically adjust the light output
based on the input voltage which is one of the new features. Now the 906 is the same light but with a
higher output programming. The 906S is $199.99, it's 4500 lumens and this one comes with the
MJ-6118 battery pack and that is USB Type-C rechargeable. With a higher output
something we've seen with the MOH 55 Pro and the Monteer 8000S.
Otherwise same features, dual led drl and the garmin mount.
Now in terms of what comes in the box they both have very similar packaging, foam holder and the light.
You get the handlebar mount something we've seen with all their other lights such as the
Alltys, it is really simple and I don't really like this mount. It requires a little tool and a hinge here.
You get the battery pack and as I mentioned depending on which one you pick.
The price is really driven by the battery pack which is higher output and allows you to run
it at a higher setting. You get the instruction manual and then you get a little goodie box here.
I'll go ahead and take out see what we have in here so you have the velcro straps and that's to mount it
to your bike. You get different length straps for the handlebar mount and
you have a little gasket cover for the battery pack if you
want to use a power bank instead of a bike light. Then when you want to use this bike light
you get the attachment here that just snaps into place. A little allen key for the handlebar mount and
you also get the charging cable now depending which light you choose. With the 902S
you will have the micro usb charging cable while the 906S will have a USB Type-C.
Then you also get a little adapter for GoPro to Garmin and it's a really nice feature. So if
you already have a GoPro helmet mount or any other GoPro style mount
you can just connect this to that and then put the headlight on there and use it
on that mount. Now let's take a look at the weight of the MJ902 and 906. So you can see both
headlights are actually pretty much identical, if we look at the 906S. Just the headlamp
that comes in at 78 grams and the 902S I would expect very similar so 78 grams.
The main difference here are the battery pack, so if we look at the smaller battery pack
that comes with the 902S with the velcro straps and the attachment that comes in at 302 grams.
If we do the same comparison with the larger MJ-6118 battery pack it has a higher capacity and
USB Type-C charging that comes in at 422 grams. You also have the little handlebar mount, unlike
the Monteer 8000S which includes the out front mount this just comes with the standard
a little plastic mount for your handlebar and that comes in at 14 grams so fairly light.
Now let's take a look at the fit and finish of the 902S and 906S. Right off the bat you can see
the 902S and 906S are almost identical which is one reason we combined these reviews into one.
They're a lot more compact than the previous generation 90X series where the previous 906
was huge and the 908 even larger. With these downsized 902S and 906S you get a dual led design
and integrated drls with a nice aluminum body and a simple power button on top. The biggest change is the
Garmin mount on both lights
which is one of the biggest changes. Instead of the rubber straps which were a little rough to
use before, it's a lot more secure and now you can use a lot of out front mounts right out of the box.
Most of the size of the headlamp is the heat fins, so you can see how large these heat fins are to
dissipate the heat from the leds. These produce quite a bit of heat at 3000 and 4500 lumens, these are
really bright lights and very simple aluminum body with the rubber power button. The model indicator
is printed here and Magicshine written on top. You have nice shielding on the lens you can see
the little extension here and that helps it not get into your eye when you're out of the saddle.
You also have a nice little recessed lens here that helps the lights actually get some
side visibility so when you're riding people will still see you and that's great for commuting or at
four-way intersections where cars might not see you directly from up front.
With the lower price 902S you get a Micro USB instead of a USB Type-C
that you get with the 906S. It has slightly lower capacity which results in the lower output of the lights
and then the battery pack themselves. You can see the other one is quite a
bit larger and heavier but otherwise really similar. What I really like what Magicshine has
done with these removable connectors so if you don't want to use this as a bike light you can
actually just use this as a power bank. You remove one of the gaskets on one side and
connect a usb cable and you can charge other devices. You can also check the battery status
by just clicking that button, its a really nice feature. Same thing with the MJ-6118, so on this one it's all
on one side you can click that power button and you can see behind there there's leds.
Same three indicator and this one has USB Type-C which I think is worth the little premium
over the 902S as you don't need as many connectors. It's really nice to see the
USB Type-C gaining traction and Magicshine so we see now with the Allty light the RN1200 with the
larger battery pack. If this looks familiar it's actually because it's the same battery pack as
the 8000s so a lot of power in this that can give you up to 8000 lumens with the right led setup.
Now being a wired setup you do have to connect this to your bike and the nice thing is both
of these battery packs have built-in slots and little rubber grips here to prevent scratching
your frame. They use the same Magicshine velcro straps and these work really well.
Both of them require two to hold them securely and they don't scratch and hold really firmly as well.
Now with both lights you get 15 different output modes which is a lot and that means you can run
the DRL by itself, the DRL plus the left led only, the DRL plus the right led only or both left and
right plus DRL. As you can see here there's actually no visual difference between the left and
the right they're just slightly offset from each other so there's not much advantage to use either.
It's much better just to pick one and then use the dual mode when you need the output.
It's very obvious when you look at the side profile this light that the beam cut off is very
soft even though it has the horizontal deflectors that help focus a little bit more light on the
ground. This is still a light that has a lot of glare and should be used with caution on the
road. Now let's go over the different output modes I would describe the beam pattern of the light
to be more of a spotlight as you can see it's a brighter spot in the center with large jumps
between the four different constant modes. As I mentioned you can run left or right only and they
all look identical with the lumen going up as you increase intensity and the run time is going down.
The 906S has particularly long run time so you can definitely use this without having
to recharge the battery very often. The jumps are also quite large so as you can see it's a
thousand lumens between some of the different low, medium, high modes as well there are two flashes.
One flash mode that's really bright at zero to 2300 lumen and the lower intensity one at zero to six hundred.
Here you can see the light output on the road we found the beam pattern to be really nice for
riding with as you have nice throw with pretty good width as well as you go up the intensities.
The intensities are also well spaced so the lower settings are actually decent
when it's a little bit brighter outside and then you can definitely ramp it up to medium
or high when you really need it. As with a lot of more powerful Magicshine lights
you really don't need the maximum mode 3000 lumen and 4500 lumen for the 906S. They
are definitely overkill the lights also do heat up quite a bit so depending on which temperature
you're riding in you might notice the output drop a little bit and the turbo or high modes
but otherwise they've done a good job with the heat fins to dissipate the heat.
One thing to point out is that the previous 900 series actually used
to come with these nice fabric carrying cases and is really nice so they had a laser cut out
foam insert and a little storage area for all the accessories. If you're watching from Magicshine
it'd be great to see this return on the new Magicshine lights. Now that aside the big thing is
the battery pack, so with the 900S you get the very small battery pack this is two 18650 batteries
with the 902S you get the larger 6116 battery pack
and then with the highest output variation you get the 6118 USB Type-C which has the
21700 series lithium-ion battery. So bigger battery higher capacity same thing you have with
the montier 8000 which has a super impressive 8000 lumens of output so obviously depending on what
kind of light output you need you get a different size battery pack. They get bulkier and heavier so
if you're more of a commuter you can stick with the 900 if you're on dark trails all the time and
you want tons of runtime you go with the biggest battery pack. You can now putting the 900s side by
side you can see the main difference between the 900 and the 902 and 906 is the fact that
the 900 has a single led otherwise they all have a drl similar power button set up.
Then you have the nice garment mounts underneath so if I grab the 906
and the previous 906 this is one of our favorite lights you can see the 906 used to be
actually used to be five lights five separate leds instead of two leds and a DRL.
You can see it's a much larger body and the big difference here is the mount so before you had
a little simple rubber strap to hold it in place now you have a Garmin mount which is much better.
So you can actually use this on all your out front mounts or accessories
as of the previous generation it's all heat fins and they've really modernized
the new 900. They're all one color instead of this aluminum with the orange power button
and pretty simple though otherwise very similar shape. Unfortunately they have
not returned with the 908, now the 908 was a beast you can see this side by side
this is just a baby compared to it. The 908 was 8000 theoretical lumens it only really put out
4000 due to the battery pack limitations but you can see it was just massive and it was one of
our favorite lights. The nice thing about this was it had an OLED screen
that actually showed you the runtime indicator which mode you're in so with the new ones you
have 15 modes for the 902S and 906S you don't really know what mode you're in and there's no runtime
display. That was one perk of the previous 908 but with the 906 and 902 you never got the
display so that you haven't really lost anything but you can definitely see they've improved design
and made it more modern now. These designs are very similar to the Allty series, you can see
the previous Allty 2000 you had a nice led here the drls so same thing here
with the MJ series. They've extended the horizontal deflectors down
to help some of the anti-glare abilities of the beam but again very soft beam cutoff. I
think the big thing here is i really wish they included a oled screen as
it was kind of one of the best features of the Allty 2000 so it showed you the runtime mode and
how much battery you had left. It has really nice display to have here again you're kind of
in the dark and if you want lower output they have smaller variations of these so you can see
if you were to compare the 900 versus the little Allty 400 which has 400 lumens this is 1500
and this is I believe $30 vs $70. It really is a great value to get the 900S but you do have a
battery pack with the Allty 400 you can see it's about maybe 40% bigger but it's all self-contained no
battery no wire to deal with so really depends on what you want. If you want to commute definitely
recommend sticking with the Allty or the RN 1200 or Allty 1000 2000 but if you want more
power and the ability to use a power bank and swap battery packs easily definitely go with the MJ series.
Speaking of the battery packs this is the older battery pack and you can see they've really
improved the shape and design of these these were a lot harder to grip they had the slots on the
outside with these be now integrated. I found they work a lot easier. Another comparison here this
is the Monteir 8000 so the brightest light in their current setup and you can see compared to
the 906 which is 4500 lumens much more compact easier to use and easier to mount on your bike.
Now let's go over the pros and cons for the MJ lights. What we like about them is the fact that
they have integrated DRLs. This is the first time the MJ series has it, and it's a really nice feature to
have when you're riding in the daytime. They are also compatible with E-bikes and the provided
battery packs which means if you have an E-bike you can directly wire it in and take advantage
of your on-board battery which is a nice feature. They've also switched to the Garmin compatible
mount design which means you don't need any rubber straps and you can mount this on a helmet
or out in front mounts. Some of the cons for the lights is the fact that they include a
basic handlebar mount. Even the more expensive 906S doesn't come with a out front mount which
we would have liked to see. They also have a very confusing number of output modes, you don't need 15
modes and it's very easy to get lost since. there's no mode display you just have
to click through them and look in front of the light to actually see which mode you're in.
Finally there is no remote for helmet mounting which makes helmet mounting a little bit difficult
especially when you have 15 modes and you have to click without seeing what you're doing.
Taking everything into account would give the 902S and 906S an 8.7 out of 10. These really extend
the heritage of the MJ series and provide a lot power for really budget price. Thanks for watching
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