Thanks for tuning in, today we're going
to be reviewing the Magicshine Monteer
6500s bicycle headlight.
Magicshine is well known for their
affordable and high output bike lights
and with the Monteer series it's been
one of their brightest collections.
Recently they've actually expanded that
to update the existing 6500 with the
6500s
as well as introduce the 3500, 5000
and the 8000s variations.
So it's really the next level of bright
headlights.
Now they've updated the lens as well as
the battery to achieve these higher
capacities.
What we have here is the updated 6500
this is now the 6500s and has the new
battery pack and updated leds.
In terms of packaging really cleanly
done you can see the nice reflective
graphic on the cardboard box. The nice
black with high contrast
orange colors are really simple
and a very large and heavy box. Let's go
ahead and take it out of the box and
while I do that we'll go over these
specs.
Retail price on this is $349, this
is one level lower than the
8500s which is $399.
It has the garmin style mounts which
Magicshine introduced throughout their
product line and it's a great way to
share the mounts with other mounts you
already have.
It has a five led design with updated led
models.
It has an aluminum out front mount
included which is a really nice touch
and it has the updated MJ-6118 battery
pack
which uses a 4x21700
lithium-ion battery so a little more
compact
and higher output.
Now inside the box you get the nice foam
cutout piece to hold everything in place
you get quite a few items. We get the
headlamp itself
so nice aluminum design five leds,
you get the out of front mount the
one-sided mount and
you get the battery pack. What's nice
about the battery pack it has that
it actually has detachable wire so you
can see this latching mechanism to
connect
and then it has the black plug design.
You also get the instruction manual
and two straps to mount the battery
pack to your frame through these slots
as well as a USB Type-c charging cable
to charge the battery pack.
Finally you get a little allen key
to install the mount. Now let's take a
look at the weight
of the 6500s bike light.
Starting out with the headlamp itself
that comes in at 144 grams so quite
light and that's the nice thing about a
wired pack design the headlamps
themselves are pretty lightweight,
it's the battery pack where all the
weight is. So the battery pack
comes in at 388 grams
and if we add the connector wire which
you need to connect to the headlamp
comes in at 412.
Finally the aluminum out front mount
is a one-sided design
similar to the tta but a little bit
stubbier
that comes in at 34 grams.
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Now let's take a look at the fit and
finish of the Monteer 6500s
bike light. If you're wondering why
this looks so familiar it's because it
actually shares the same housing as the
current 6500.
They've updated the leds and the lens as
well as the battery pack for more output
and as you can see design wise it's
pretty clean. It's very narrow because
you don't have the batteries in the
actual headlamp
you have a taller casing. It's an
aluminum design with these little
built-in fins.
You have the five leds here the top
three are designed to be
flood lights while the bottom two are
more of a spot with a 21 degree
beam spread while the top is 32 degrees.
In terms of the housing itself
pretty simple,
you have the little reflectors here a
little flat lens and
actually sits slightly inside. There's no
side visibility as you would get with a
commuter light
definitely designed for more mountain
bike riding or more serious lighting
conditions.
Now it's really designed to illuminate
the trail so you also won't see any beam
cut off
so it really spreads the light
everywhere and gives you really nice
visibility.
In terms of the housing again really
familiar as it's the same as the 6500
it shares the same single illuminated
button really easy to operate.
A single press turn on long press turn
it off double click to switch between
modes and you have three modes.
I'll go through the top three leds the
bottom two or the hybrid mode with all
them together.
Now the mounts use the garmin style
mounts they're really nice.
I really like Magicshine for doing this
as you don't have any proprietary mounts.
You can reuse
any existing mounts and this Garmin
style is really common so
it's a great way to share the same
mounts between lights and
bike computers or even cameras. The plug
itself is pretty nicely designed and
this is usually the weak point for a
wired bike light setup
with previous Magicshine lights over
the years i'd find out that
the insulation would start ripping or
the contacts would get loose.
This feels really nice ribbon style with
the thick installation insulation
it's a black plug style unlike the
orange four plug
versions you'll see in the MJ-908 and
other lights.
Overall really compact and nice it
definitely gets hot when you're riding
but as long as you're moving I found the
heat management pretty good.
Also I think the big thing here is
the battery pack
that's the big upgrade here and that
really enables the higher output.
It's still the same name it's still the
6118 battery pack but it's been updated
to have the 21700 batteries
so it's a little more compact. It's still
quite heavy of course since it's such a
high capacity
as it has 10000 milliamp capacity and 7.2 volts
so
more than enough. What's really cool
about this is it's not just for your
bike light with a detachable wiring you
can actually use this as a power bank
for your
cell phone or any other on-the-go
charging.
It's usb type-c which is really nice to
see you have this nice
thick rubber grommet covering the usb
port
so really easy to charge and it's nice
to see usb type-c and more
products. The other really unique thing
about this
is that the wires actually fully
disconnect so you can see previously
with Magicshine
batteries you'd also have a wire
sticking out but with this you can take
off.
You have a latching design for
the plug
so you simply plug it in and you can see
it latches in
and now you can plug it into your
headlamp when you want to use it as a
power bank you pull it off put the cover
on
and then simply attach a USB-C plug to
either
discharge or charge it. You can also
check the battery status
by clicking the button here you get a
three led indicator
which gives you enough information to
know the current state.
This is not quite as fancy as the Lupine
smart core lights which also
can double as a tail light and have
audible clicks but it's a really nice
advancement compared to the other
previous batteries. Mounting is really
easy to have this thick rubber strip
and then these little slots here that
you can run the velcro through
so really secure but it will take up
space so you put on your top tube or
down tube.
I also want to take a look at the mount
so it's really nice that they included
this instead of a
more basic mount. It is similar to the TTA
except it's left mounted
and a little bit stubbier. It's also
one-sided
but it looks like it has the threading
for the second side so if you had the
puck
you could probably add it on there.
The way the wiring is set up
it's a really clean design so you put it
in here
nice and secure and then the wire sticks
out under so wrap
under your headlamp under your
handlebars and to the battery pack.
This is more than secure enough with the
single bolt and hinge design.
With the Monteer 6500s you have three
different modes, you have spot
flood and hybrid and this activates
either the top row or bottom as well as
all five side by side. They don't look
very different
it's really hard to differentiate
between either spot, flood or hybrid.
It's only obvious that hybrid is active.
Now with the single button interface you
have an impressive 15 different modes
with each mode you have four different
intensities:
economy, low, medium and high as well as a
flash.
So in total you get 15 different options
and they're a little bit difficult to
tell apart on the road it's a little bit
difficult you have to kind of peek over
but as you can see eco and low modes are
usually more than enough and the beam
distribution is wide and even.
It's very nice to ride with
especially off-road or even on-road
and with the updated 6500s they've
redistributed the lumen amount so you
can see here
throughout it's a little bit brighter
than the previous model and the runtimes
are even higher
thanks to the bigger battery pack. One
thing we found
annoying is that flash mode is present
for each of the modes and you have to
cycle through them which can be really
disruptive
so you have to be prepared and click
through it quicklyi. As you can see
the full 6500 lumen
amount is quite absurd you don't need
this much power but it's nice to have
with two hours of runtime it's very
impressive. Here's some riding
runtime footage and you can see this is
what I believe low or a medium mode
and it's more than bright enough. The
beam pattern's nice and wide
you can really see down the trail. We
found that we didn't really need the
higher modes at all the medium
and high modes or kind of overkill
so for most riding you should be
comfortable using the eco
and low modes which means you don't have
to really charge it very often.
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So now let's do a little comparison
between the Monteer and some other
bike lights on the market.
As you can see here I have many of the
Magicshine light variations,
the MJ-908, MJ-906, Eagle f3
as well as the associated battery packs
to show a comparison as well as some of
the commuter lights like the Allty 2000
and the FEnix BC21R v2.
Now right off the bat I have both
Monteer 8000s
and the 6500s and you can see they're
quite similar.
So same housing essentially they just
changed the
output on these with these and you get the
same battery packs as well. While the
lower Monteer variation
use a smaller battery pack, they're
simply programmed to put out more power
further beam and maybe a little lens
modification as well.
So comparing these
to your standard commuter light
you can see commuter lights with the
batteries
integrated within the headlamp you end
up with a larger
headlamp compared to the Monteer. It's
almost half the size as you just have
the heat sink
and the leds so that's one big advantage
of this
and you can get a lot more output while
these are usually limited to under 2
000 lumens.
Here's the Allty 2000 you get the OLED
screen which is something I wish the
Monteers had
but again a lot bigger and same garmin mount
but you can see just a lot larger form
factor.
Obviously all in one design means you
don't have to lug around a big battery though.
Now comparing this to some of other
Magicshines
mountain biking lights, this is
actually my favorite the Eagle F3
a four led design. Same idea though you have
the
flood and then the spotlights you can
see similar form factor.
The F3 is actually bigger they have a
two button interface and a more obvious
battery indicator so that's a nice plus
of this
and a bigger heat sink design. It's
actually surprising that the Monteers
have such a small
form factor as you would think the heat
would actually require larger fins but
actually they work pretty well
despite the smaller size. So you can see
they've really
improved the build quality as well where
this is all plastic this is full
aluminum and really clean.
Now some of their newer MJ lights, this
is the
MJ-906 so you get the 5 led design
this puts out I think about 3200 lumen
you can see smaller form factor but a
little bit taller and again more
plastic.
It uses their old rubber style
mounts I think the newer ones actually
have switched to Garmin which is a
better design.
Now if an 8000 lumen
Monteer light sounds familiar it's
because they actually have an 8000
lumen
MJ-908. This was a theoretical 8000 lumens
though so you don't actually get that
but much larger form factor you can see
almost double the size it's all heat
fins which is something again i'm
surprised not to see here
and larger overall taller wider. You do
get the
led screen which is really nice so you
can see which mode you're in
with the Monteers you don't really
know the mode without peeking over
but definitely nice to see more output
more real measured output versus
theoretical
in a smaller form factor.
The other thing I really like about the
updated Monteer lights especially with
the 6500s
and the 8000s is that the battery packs have
improved.
Previously they use the 18650
lithium-ion battery packs this had
six batteries in here so you can see
three here
it's heavier and chunkier.
They also had a even larger one
this is the MJ-6090 so you can see really
large it essentially takes up your whole
water bottle cage
but it had a nice removable mount here
but very heavy it has more capacity
than the other battery packs we're
looking at. It has 10,400
versus the 10,000 that we see with the
Monteers but you can see quite a bit
bigger. Putting these side by side you can
see
they've really slimmed it down and made it
easier to carry
and with the removable plug you can see
how it's not removable
that's what I really like about the new
montear battery pack. You can simply pop
this out put the dust cap on
and then just stick this in your pocket
carry a spare one if you're on the road
or use this as a power bank.
Now let's go over the pros and cons for
the Monteer 6500s.
What we like about it is that it's
ridiculously bright at 6500 lumens it's
more light than anybody really needs
and with 15 different modes you can find
the right output for your ride.
We also like the USB Type-C charging
battery pack
which lets you use the battery pack as a
power cell for your cell phone or other
type-c devices. Finally it's really
well built and has durable wiring
connections, this is one weak point we've
seen with other Magicshine lights
and with this it looks like they're more
reinforced and durable.
Some of the cons is the fact that it
lacks DRLs that would have been a nice
feature to see here and
something they have on some of their
commuter lights. You also have to cycle
through flash mode which is really
disruptive so especially as you're
riding at higher speeds
the flash mode can ruin your depth
perception so you have to be really
quick to get out of it.
Fnally the retail price is pretty
close to the Monteer
8000s. It's 50 dollars less than that light
and 1500 lumens lower so for us if
you're going to spend this much money in
a bike light
we feel like the 8000s is really
tempting.
aking everything into account we'd give
the light an 8.8 out of 10.
this really is the muscle car of bike
lights and provides a lot of power with
a really simple
feature set. Thanks for watching this
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