RaveMen liked to plug its previous PR1600 light as one you could commute with but also take off-road. It was cracking value, but it had limited run time and you needed to pair it with something equally powerful to get enough light to see the trail. That is not an issue anymore because the company’s new XR6000 has four times the lumen and a much bigger battery pack. For the first time, it feels like a proper grown-up light for off-roading, but is it worthy of adding to our best mountain bike lights list?
Design and specifications
The lamp unit features a sleek aluminum body with cooling slots machined into the top and bottom. On the left side is a Lupine lights-style bar clamp, it can’t be flipped like its German equivalent, but by positioning the lamp unit directly in front of the stem it feels equally as solid. It also has a split clamp with a thumb wheel locking mechanism, so you can install it quickly and even tweak the angle on the fly. Ravemen provides a series of rubber shims in the box for smaller bar diameters and also includes a Go-Pro mount and cable extension, allowing you to mount this light easily on a helmet.
Although RaveMen’s HiLo beam has a fancy name, the central spot with a low flood beam is a pretty standard set up. The spot is designed to pick out trail detail and spot turns, while the flood illuminates the area in and around the front wheel, creating surface texture and ensuring there’s no blind spots over logs or drops. Changing between these modes is via two buttons on the back of the lamp and you can also toggle up and down through high, medium and low power options when in either mode.
Also built into the back of the lamp is a mini fuel gauge, which displays four green bars fully charged. There’s also a secondary fuel gauge on the 8000mAh/7.2V Li-ion battery, which you can wake up without the light being on. For some reason, it displays ten chunks but it is on the top, so if you mount the battery to the down tube, you can see it when riding.
The battery cells are housed inside a hard plastic case and while it feels solid there’s not a lot of shape to the back of the case, so it doesn’t fit that snug against a round frame tube. There’s a foam pad to stop vibration, and it also comes with two wide securing Velcro straps to get it tight but it would often slide down the tube during a ride, which is not good for the paintwork.
Charging is done with USB-C, which means you can also use the battery pack as a fuel cell to charge portable digital devices like a Go-Pro camera or your phone. The head unit weighs 240g and the battery pack is 385g.
Performance
Like the PR1600, RaveMen includes some road-friendly modes and features on the XR6000, which are redundant if you’re always on the dirt but if you do hit the Tarmac, the anti-glare lens does reduce dazzle to other road users. Accessing the different light modes is simple using the small wireless remote and this is already bound into the light, so there’s no need for any programming or extra set-up. It allows you to manage run time on the fly by reducing the output when riding slowly.
However, with just the spot mode activated, the light doesn’t quite produce enough light for off-road night riding, so we’d always have both beams running. The beam pattern also has a lozenge shape to the center of the beam, and there is quite a hard edge, which can be a little distracting. The light produced isn’t quite as white or as crisp as the Exposure or Lupine brands, but you’d have to put these lights side by side to notice the difference. We had no issues picking out the detail or spotting turns with this light and as you can see on full beam the XR6000 does produce a big pool of light.
Unfortunately, it’s not going to be there for that long because on full power this light lasted over the hour mark. If you reduce the output to 3000 lumen, you’ll get closer to two but again that’s still a bit close to the bone when it comes to longer night-time adventures. The good news is you can plug a secondary power source into the USB but that is an additional cost.
Verdict
RaveMen has stepped up its game with the XR6000 and has produced a light with a ton of sensible features that make a difference when riding at night. Both the lamp unit and battery have easy-to-read fuel gauges, the on/off switch and remote are intuitive and set-up is a breeze. On high beam burn time with the XR6000 is somewhat limited but with so much light output you could easily toggle down the light on the climbs, and double the ride time.
Tech specs: RaveMen XR6000 front light
- Price: $349.95 / £389.99/ €389.93
- Weight: Lamp 240g, battery 385g
- Modes: high, medium, low
- Lumen: 6000, 3000, 1500
- Battery: 4000 mAh Li-ion
- Run Time (claimed): 1.1, 2 or 4 hours
- Charger: USB cable
