Lupine Product Line Overview

No matter what time of year it is, it is never a bad time to talk about lights. I typically don’t ride in the dark often, but I always ride with lights on my bike as a way to help make myself seen by other road users when riding. Bill Gentile, the North American Director of Sales for Lupine reached out to get me set up with a set of Lupine lights to use for my road and gavel season. I did make a point to get out at night to test them out and see what the StVZO standards are all about, but I also used the set up during the day for training rides and gravel events throughout the season. Before I get into that review, let’s talk more about Lupine, and give you a high level rundown on their light offerings.

Lupine is a German brand that has been a leader in lighting for over 25 years. They make LED lighting for helmets, bikes, and flashlights, with a focus on advancing durability, light quality, and versatility of their lights. You can easily find cheaper lights on the market, but Lupine lights will last multiple lifetimes of the cheaper lights and provide better light quality.

While other brands may use plastic in their housings, Lupine mill their casings from a single block of aluminum to make them light, waterproof, and durable. Inside, they use top quality Cree XM-L2 U4 LED’s and components, mounted behind custom designed optics, and a high-performance heat management system to help them perform in the most demanding conditions. The light temperature Lupine uses is about 6500k, which is the same as day light and is optimized for the human eye, and also happens to be great for photography and videography.

Another thing that sets Lupine apart is that you can replace many parts on them, while many other brands treat their lights as being disposable. If something happens to a lens, or a battery isn’t holding the charge it did years ago, you can swap them out to refresh your light and keep it running for many more years. Some of this work you can do yourself, but if it is more extensive, Lupine offers a service that you can send your light back for repair.

Lupine has multiple different product lines to help you find exactly what you need, and it isn’t just for riding. They make headlamps that have you covered for running, hiking, night time work, really, any time you need light with various mounts to attach to a head strap or various types of helmets, like cycling, mountaineering, or even a hard hat or military style helmet. They also make flash lights, or torches, depending on the part of the world you are in.

Before I get into the high level overview of their products, Lupine has “light classes” that extend across various product lines. These cover the output of lights in Lumen.

• Alpha – 8100 Lumen
• Betty – 5400 Lumen
• Wilma – 3600 Lumen
• Blika – 2400 Lumen
• Piko – 2100 Lumen
• Penta – 1400 Lumen

There are other lights that don’t fit into these classes, but you’ll see these names referenced across product lines below.

All of Lupine’s lights are loaded with different features, including different light output levels, flashing patterns, etc. This will help customize your experience to get the brightness or the runtime you need. Many also come with Bluetooth remotes, or can connect to the Lupine Light Control app that allows you to customize settings right from your phone.

Headlamps

Lupine’s headlamps are some of the best out there. Their modular design allows them to seamlessly move from a head strap to a helmet mount using their FrontClick mount, along with the ability to swap batteries quickly and easily. The standard headlamps come with an adjustable three point head band that wraps around your head with another strap going overtop for stability. The lamp mounts on the front, with a guide to run the cable around the side on the strap and down your back to the battery that can go into a back pocket or backpack. Optional helmet strap wrap through the vents in your helmet to mount the lens onto your helmet. Some lights are available with “All-In-One” options that include this strap. You can customize your set up even further with your choice of a battery size that fits your needs, ranging from 2.0Ah to 13.8Ah batteries

As mentioned earlier helmet lights are offered across the range of from Betty to Penta. All include external batteries, except for the base Penta.

Bike Lights

Depending on the style of riding you do, you might want your light on your helmet or on your bike. Maybe you even ride with both. Lupine offers their bike and helmet mounted lights from the super bright Alpha, down to the Piko. For many, these are more of your off road lights used for mountain biking. Just like the helmet mounted lights, the bike lights are modular, so you can find the right battery size for your needs. Lupine also offers a bottle mount battery that stashes easily in your bottle cage.

Lupine also their Gravel/Road Safety lights in the form of the SL line. These range anywhere from the 3800 lumen SL AX down to the 1300 lumen SL Nano, all of which have an external battery. The 700 lumen SL Mono, which we will be reviewing, is an all-in-one unit with a built in battery. It comes with a handlebar mount, but also works with a GoPro style mount that can go under your computer.

Lupine also has a small range of tail lights in the 45 lumen C14 Range. These offer various mounting options, and the ability to hardwire them into an e-bike system. More on that below.

This category is where Lupine offers StVZO compliant lights. This includes the entire SL range and the C14 Mag StVZO, as long as they are mounted per the StVZO standards.

e-Bikes

When it comes to e-Bikes, that’s where things get interesting. When meeting with Gentile to learn more about Lupine and pick up my lights, he pointed out a wall of wiring harnesses. E-Bikes are perfect for Lupine’s higher powered lights, because you can add them into the bike’s electrical system instead of having to carry an external battery. The challenge is that there are so many different wiring harnesses used by manufacturers. Lupine continues to work with manufacturers to stock wiring harnesses that will connect a bike to their lights and help you integrate them into the system. In this case, it is best to work with your local dealer or reach out to Lupine North America (Gentile and his team) to make sure you get the right wiring harness for your bike.

I’m not going to dive into the models available for e-Bikes as they are generally the same as any of the external battery options in their Road Safety category, but they come with the lamp and the wiring harness needed to connect. These include the SL X, SL MiniMax, and SL models. For the tail lamps, the C14 is available in a hard wired option for a rear rack mount, seat collar mount, or on the seat post itself.

Flashlight/Torch

Finally, we have the flashlights. These are going to be you every day handheld torches used to light on the go. The nice thing here is that there are two different lamps, and two different battery packs that can be mixed and match. The Betty TL2 Pro is slightly larger and heavier than the Betty TL2, making it a better option for the larger, 10.4AH battery tank, and the TL better for the 6.9AH battery tank. Both throw 5400 lumen.

There is also the Piko TL and TL Minimax. Just like the TL2/TL2 Pro, the main difference is the larger battery, giving you a longer run time (1-47 hours for the TL, and 1:30-80 hours for the Minimax) at the cost of a slightly heavier lamp, about 35g. Unlike the Betty torches, the Piko torches do not have a removable battery pack.

Accessories

Along with the lights and batteries, there are tons of accessories and parts you can get for Lupine lights. For any Lupine light that you can mount on your handlebars, you can get a GoPro mount for. Pair that with a KOM Cycling computer mount with their Quarter Turn Accessory Adapter across multiple bikes, you can easily move your light from one bike to another. You can also buy additional mounts, which came in handy for the C14 Mag, allowing me to mount one on my road bike, and one on my gravel bike, and again, I can easily swap between the two.

There is so much more I could dive into, as far as details and specs, but Lupine’s website has all of the info you will need. We will have the SL Mono and C14 Mag reviews coming very soon to tell you more about those specific lights, and why I run them on my bike every time I ride, day or night.

www.lupinenorthamerica.com