Ayup Roadie - Ayup Multisport revisited

I did a post on the Ayup roadie lighting kit a while back.
These lights are a bit viral. Once you see them you just have to have them. At least 4 of my workmates have them now, and 1 nutter has 4 pairs. Everyone I know who has brought lights in the last year has gone for Ayups, except for 1 person who opted for the grunty NZ made Night Lightning. More on that later.

The attraction to these lights seems to be the overall package. No one thing really stands out, except maybe their simplicity, and the weight. If you are a weight weenie, this is the system for you. The Ayups are so small and light that you can even mount the 100 gram 3-hour battery on your helmet and hardly notice it. The light units themselves weigh only 58 grams. This is where all the other systems come a distant 2nd place. The aforementioned Night Lightning iBlaast has a large unwieldy lamp, and the battery is large and heavy by comparison (to the Ayups). There is no doubt the iBlaast is more powerful, but that is the one thing it has over the Ayup. A very important consideration for sure. The Ayup Roadie Kit is now called the Ayup Multisport kit, which is pretty much the same, except you get 2 x 3 hours batteries instead of 1 x 6 hour.

There have been a few upgrades from Ayup in the last year, and they now have a dedicated head mount for night running and multi-sporting which seems to work well with their minimalist approach.

I had never actually run my battery completely out, so I decided to test it to failure the other day. You are supposed to get 6 hours out of the bigger battery, but 8 hours later it was still going. Admittedly it was a lot dimmer, but they weren't going yellow, just a very gradual lessening of intensity over time.

After a year my battery’s cord developed a small nick in it where the cord comes out of the casing. An email to Ayup and within a week they had replaced my battery. That’s pretty good service.

I think the next part of their arsenal to try is the new “gecko” version of their helmet mounts. The old one didnt agree with my old helmet’s worn out padding so well , so I will let you know if I get my hands a the new one.

The heavier 6 hour battery still only weighs 156 grams and is about the size of a pack of cigarettes.

Shown here are the handlebar mount, helmet mount, light and a 6 hour battery (and a ballpoint pen for scale).
Another review here from a unicyclist.

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