Thanks for tuning in this is The Sweet
Cyclists and today we're gonna be looking
at the Magicshine MJ-906 5000 lumen
bicycle light. Here we have the
packaging for the MJ-906 comes with this
nice premium carrying case, it uses the same
Magicshine colors orange and black. Lets open
this up take a look at the contents,
it's pretty packed in. You get
the head unit itself,
that's 5000 theoretical lumens you get
five Cree LEDs. You get the external
battery pack and you also get a tail
light included with this package so it's
a compelling package. You can see the
light design itself pretty similar to
the other Magicshine products you get
the metal aluminum fins for heat
dissipation and a plastic body with
the orange buttons. You can see the LEDs
themselves don't take much space
up and it's mostly the
dissipation fins here. If we look in here
this is the tail light itself that you
get with it this is similar to some of
their previous ones. You can also buy
this separately it is claimed
to be 15 lumens and it's pretty bright. I
find the wiring a little bit annoying
and it has the same kind of rubber mount.
Note this headlight uses
the black pin style and not the orange four pin
that comes with other lights. So if
you have multiple Magicshine you have
to be careful about interchangeability.
This also comes with the remote control
which is a little bit interesting. I find
this pretty convenient to use for the
tail light you don't have to go reach
over. Here you can use one button for the
front one button for the rear, it's
wireless and I'm not sure what happens
once the battery dies, but It is probably
replaceable. You get the standard six
cell battery pack, its a hefty unit and the
straps work pretty well and it grips the
bike pretty well. You have these little
rubberized bottom pads here and then two
straps that holds it in place. Also with
the kit you get these rubber
straps for a different style different
thickness handlebars for mounting. You
get the normal wall charger, this has a
little light here that goes from red to
green once it's charged.
You get some different length
straps and you also get this little
extension cable so this is pretty nice.
This light is actually light
enough that you can really consider using it
as helmet light. You can
helmet mount it and use the extension
cord here to
run the cable on your back down to
your jersey to wherever the battery's
mounted. The packaging feels
really premium and especially at the
price point, and it's a lot of theoretical
power. Alright now let's go over the fit
and finish of the MJ-906, like a lot of
siblings I feel like the MJ-906 is
overshadowed by its bigger brother. So
let's look at the MJ-908 at the same time
you can see the differences. The MJ-908 has
a theoretical 8,000 lumen
while the 906 is theoretically 5000. You
might be asking yourself why is it
theoretical and not actual? It seems a little
odd to advertise it that way but what
I've read is each LED in here for both
units is rated at about
little bit over thousand lumens each
theoretically. Whether you have enough
battery to run them all out a thousand
I'm not sure but it's interesting that
they advertise it that way. You can see
in terms of design the MJ-906 is a
miniaturized version of
the MJ-908. As
you can see really just the front part
of it is just the LEDs themselves and then
you have these aluminum fins that
take up the rest of the space with
the plastic casing. You get a single
button interface.
There are basically four constant modes:
low, medium, medium high, high and then a
blinking mode. The single button
is illuminated to indicate the
battery status. It's a little difficult to
tell how much battery is left but
overall the size is really small. I also
have the Monteer 1400 here I can show you
size-wise it's pretty similar. It's kind
of the same width as a Monteer but
obviously much shorter and much
lighter. There's really not much weight
to this and I like the mount
itself. It is really nice, I've had some
problems with these with
previous Magicshines where this mount
would actually start coming off the head
unit. With this it's actually a metal
piece, and looks much more secure. You little
rubber strap here and then really simple
rubber band interface.
You just throw it on so overall I like
it.
The lens doesn't have as much in terms
of beam pattern modes like the
Eagle F3 does with its spot and
diffuse modes, but I think with the
5000 lumens this is a pretty nice
sized package and feels well built.
Now let's take a look at the MJ-906
mounted on my Specialized Roubaix here, it's
mounted on the handlebar with the little
rubber strap. I have the battery pack
strapped to my top tube, I found
this kind of the best placement
especially for a road bike the battery
pack is quite large. You can see here
over the headlight on its really
blinding. It has five LEDs here and there's
not much in terms of beam cutoff so it
has a lot of glare.
The blinding strobe mode is close to useless
and you do unfortunately have to cycle
through the modes and through flash to
get to the other settings. The
battery pack is pretty well designed,
it's a newer design compared to some of
the older models and waterproof
with the four plug orange connectors/
It's a really nice connection but it is
bulky so you do have to make sure you
strap it down well. I found the velcro
strap works well, but I usually put some
kind of cloth behind it to protect the
frame from scratching. Otherwise it's
it's a good light, it's fairly big but it's
not as big as a MJ-908 thankfully. Now let's
take a look at the beam pattern outside,
here I have the bike on low setting
which is 20% output. If we cycle up to medium
this is 50% and go to medium high it's a
75% output. You see the claimed run times
drop drastically with the output. In high mode you're
down to two hours and once you hit flash
you get about seven hours at about 75%.
Comparing the three modes here you see
the high mode is really bright, the beam
is sort of square beam with pretty
good diffusion and lacks a
hot spot, I think it's good balance. The
only drawback here is it has a lot of
spread vertically so you have to be
aware of that. Additionally I took some
side
shots of the MJ-906. Here I'm leaning the
bike up against a vertical wall and that
white horizontal line is the
horizon. It's lined
up with the light itself and you can see the
light has a pretty good spread. It's very
even, there's no cutoff here being a
mountain bike light and you see in the
high modes there's a really dense bright
spot in the middle just from the sheer
output of the light. It's a pretty
impressive, alright now let's go
over the pros and cons for the MJ-906. I
think one of the first pros is the
compact form factor of the light unit
itself, it's really lightweight and small
so it doesn't take up too much space on
the handlebar which also makes it easy
to put on and also take off. The second
thing is the power output is really
great even though it might not be 5000
theoretical lumens it puts out a lot of
light even at low settings. The third
thing is the beam pattern is really nice,
it's a great mix
between a spot and flood so you get a
nice peripheral view as well as
the further distance you need to see ahead of
you when you're going faster. For some of
the cons I think the single button
interface is a little hard to use, it
doesn't come with the LCD screen as the
higher end model do. You don't get
a runtime count down and you
don't see which mode you're on without
putting your hand in front of it. This makes a
little difficult to gauge the battery as
well because it only goes between green
and red and those percentages are pretty
steep so you'll realize your red status
too late into a ride. Another con
is that there's not much of a beam cut
off here so it's pretty blinding, it's
more of a mountain biking light so if
you do intend to use this on a road bike
I would be cautious about it and
angle it downward. Lastly is the
measured lumen output is not published.
Now that we've reviewed the pros and
cons for the light let's give it a
rating, I think overall this is about an
8 out of 10 for me. It's a really compact
and powerful light, I think it's missing
some of the key features that make some
of the higher-end models nicer like the
LCD screen but for the price I think
it's a it's a compelling package.
Thanks for watching this review
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