Wuben B1 Review | High beams for your bike

Disclaimer: This flashlight was send to me by Wuben free-of-charge for review. I don’t earn any money from the sale of Wuben products.

Table of contents:

Price and versions

There’s only a single version of the Wuben B1.

Link to the store page: Wuben B1 LED Remote Control Bicycle Light (tracking link*)

Wuben gave me a -20% discount code: aff20

* – Tracking link disclaimer

I don’t earn money from the sale of Wuben’s products. The link has an “ref” at the end, so that Wuben can track sales and clicks coming from my review.

Packaging and contents

The package contains:

• Wuben B1
• Manual
• Battery pack
• Charger
• Remote with a rubber band

Build

The Wuben B1 consists of two main parts: the head and the battery pack.

A mounting clamp is attached to the head. The head can rotate in 45 degree increments relative to the mount.

The light has a IP65 rating, meaning it’s dust resistant, but not entirely water resistant. It should probably be fine in a light rain, but I wouldn’t use it in any worse weather.
The barrel plug connection between the head and the battery pack doesn’t have an o-ring.

Mounting on the bike

Below in this section, you will find a video where I install the B1 on my bike.

The head can be mounted with an attached clamp:

The mount can be mounted to handle bars no thinner or thicker than from 27.5mm to 32mm.

Sadly, the handle bars in my bike are too thin (26mm diameter), so I had to add a piece of rubber when testing the light.

Here’s how the battery pack mounts to the frame of the bike (slides):

Installing the Wuben B1 on my bike (video):

Size

Lenght	~53mm
Head diameter	40mm
TIR optic diameter	26mm
Height from the handle bars to the top	52mm
Weight	164g

Lenght	80mm-90mm
Width	70mm
Height	~48mm
Cable lenght	~540mm
Weight	391g

Size compared to other lights:

Akumulator B1 | Convoy M21E | Wurkkos TS22 | Lumintop B01 | Sofirn SP35 | Sofirn SC31 Pro | Wuben B1

More photos with the Lumintop B01:

Switch and UI

The Wuben B1 is controlled with the buttons on the head, or the remote which can be mounted on the handle bars.

The remote itself can be moved left and right inside of its mount, so that it can be installed closer to your hands.
The remote uses one of those flat alkaline batteries. The range of the remote is about 5-6 meters.

UI explained:

There’s no last-mode memory. The flashlight always turns on the lowest mode.

What I like:

• Simple UI. Works well in a bike light.
• Two switches to intuitively change the output.
• Turbo activated from a double click, not in the main mode rotation.

What I would like to see changed:

• The “lighthouse” mode flashes every 1 second with a pretty powerful flash. I’d like to see an ability to change the brightness of that flash.

---

Here’s how the head and the remote indicate battery level.

Emitter and beam

Wuben B1 uses a single XHP70.2 LED.

Here’s the beam shape on a white wall:

The Wuben B1 isn’t a great pick for city streets as it lacks a cutoff, the light will blind upcoming traffic. It should be great thought on dirt roads, in the forest or anywhere that the lack of a cutoff won’t be an issue.

For example, here’s a beam shape of a bike flashlight with a cutoff, the Lumintop B01:

---

Model	cd/lm
Wuben B1	5.6

Candela/lumen ratio explanation

A good way to determine the beam profile of a flashlight is to divide its candela (cd) by the lumens (lm) it produces. In return, we will get the cd/lm ratio. Here’s an approximate scale of what those values mean:

• 0.1 cd/lm: light bulb
• 1-3: flooder
• 5-15: balanced EDC-style beam
• 30: compact thrower
• 100: dedicated thrower
• 500+: extreme thrower
• 10000: laser

---

Opple Light Master measurments:

Mode -> Medium	CCT	Duv	CRI
Hotspot*	6523K	0.0021	72.7
Corona*	5384K	0.0112	66.2

* – Terminology

Beamshots

The first set of pictures shows all the modes of the Wuben B1:
(Medium and Low was slightly brightened in post, to accurately show how bright those modes look in real life)

Comparison to other lights:

(Models Sofirn SC31 Pro and Sofirn SP35 have a similar beam profile to the Convoy S2+ SST40 and S21A SST40)

Wuben B1 vs Sofirn SC31 Pro

Wuben B1 vs Sofirn SP35

Wuben B1 vs Wurkkos TS22 XHP70.2

Wuben B1 vs Convoy M21E XHP70.3 HI

Wuben B1 vs Lumintop B01

Runtimes and measurments:

Here is the B1’s specification given by the manufacturer:

Standard ANSI FL1

Standard ANSI FL1 describes how companies should measure flashlight specs. For lumen brightness, the measurment is supposed to be taken 30 seconds after turning the flashlight on. Runtime is measured by the time it takes the flashlight to reach 10% of the original output.

Learn more about the ANSI FL1 standard in this article.

Mode	Candela	Range	Estimated range*
Turbo @ 0s	21462cd	293m	100m-150m
Turbo @ 30s (ANSI)	20971cd	290m	100m-150m

* – Explanation

The throw/range of a flashlight is defined by the ANSI FL1 standard. It says that a flashlight’s range is how far it will light up a surface to 0.25lux, which is about as bright as full moon.
This most of the time isn’t bright enough to actually see what you’re shining on, so I added in an estimate to what you can expect the maximum range of the flashlight to be.

Mode	Brightness (0s)	30s	10 min
Turbo	3850lm	3762lm	2964lm
High	3170lm	3123lm	2964lm
Medium	1007lm	1007lm	1007lm
Low	226lm	226lm	226lm

---

At the start, I’d like to point out htat my measurments don’t entirely reflect how a flashlight will perform in its work enviroment.

• I run my measurments inside my house, where it’s usually hotter (20C) than outside at night.
• Outside the flashlight gets cooled by the wind and fresh air.

The “cooled” runtimes mean, that a fan was directed at the flashlight while it was measured. With the B1 it’s to simulate the light getting cooled while riding the bike.

Runtimes:

I’m not quite sure why High cooled is shorter than the Turbo cooled. It could be a mistake on my part, although I’m sure I checked if the battery pack was fully charged.

Below another set of runtimes, but created a few months back during summer, when the ambient temperature in my room was 30C.

* – The head can overheat when there’s no moving air or wind to cool it down (like in my testing, it was in an enclosed space). If the head reaches 80C, it will stepdown to 25lm and indicate overheating:

Will it overheat in normal working conditions?
I doubt so, as I tested it inside a house, not on a bike outside. In reality, it will get cooled down when in motion on a bike and by the wind.
2000lm for 30 minutes before overheating is still quite a good result. With sufficient cooling it can even sustain 3000lm non-stop.

Could hot summer night be a problem then?
I’m unable to give a straight answer.
Here are 3 different Turbo Uncooled runtimes done in different ambient temperatures (note that the “10C” runtime was done outside, on a balcony with a occasional slight wind):

On one hand, in hot weather it should be able to sustain those 2000lm for about 30min, 60min or maybe not overheat at all.
On the other hand, we can always just lower to the Medium mode, which gives us constant 1000lm. It’s still quite bright (as seen on beamshots) and the head won’t be able to overheat.
For comparison, the Astrolux BL06 (which I will mention in the Competition section) sustains 1000lm.

Does the flashlight correctly react to overheating, by dropping to 25lm?
Instead of decreasing the output so fast and so low, I would suggest for it to start decreasing brightness a bit faster, but lower it to 400lm-600lm to let the head cool off. This way, the light wouldn’t just unexpectedly drop the output to next-to-nothing in a matter of 30 seconds.

---

Runtimes compare to other lights:

* – M21E XHP70.3 HI Explanation

In the cooling runtime, the M21E didn’t perform as it should. Here it sustains 3000lm without stepdown, which puts a lot of strain on the cell. The cell voltage during Turbo sags so much, that the M21E prematurely detects it as a dead battery and drops the output (LVP), but when measured, the cell still has about 40% charge.

In the uncooled runtime, the M21E used a Liitokala Lii-50E cell, but in the cooled runtime I used a Samsung 40T cell, because it has lower voltage sag and would drop output later (30min for 40T, 20min for Lii-50E).

After brightness drop, I set the mode to high (3/4) and continued the runtime. At the end, the 40T had 3,2V so I just concluded the test.

With its big battery pack, the B1 has pretty great runtimes compared to the other lights. It also sustains a very high output.

Battery and charging

The Wuben B1 uses a battery pack that can be mounted on the bike’s frame.
The battery pack itself has “6600mAh, 7.4V”, which is the equivalent of 3x 21700 4400mAh cells.

The battery pack can be charged with the included charging brick.

From 0 to 100% my battery pack took 6 hours and 4 minutes to charge. It’s a bit slow in my opinion.

Manual and warranty

Competition

Among the flashlights mentioned in this section, only the BL06 and B01 come with a handle bar mount. The other lights require a third-party mount. Also, all the other options (other than the BL06) have a smaller battery than the B1’s battery pack.

---

• Astrolux BL06 – Lower price. Battery build into the flashlight (similar capacity to B1). Two beam types. Remote on a cable. Lower max brightness. Screen. USB-C charging with a powerbank function.
• Convoy S2+ SST40/Sofirn SC31 Pro – Lower price, two can be bought and both mounted on the bike to increase brightness/battery capacity. Sofirn, compared to the Convoy has a more complicated UI (Anduril 2 UI), side switch and build-in USB-C charging.
• Convoy S21A SST40/Sofirn SP35 – Lower price. Bigger cell than S2+/SC31Pro. More focused than S2+/SC31Pro. Lower max brightness than B1.
• Wurkkos TS22 – Lower price. Very wide beam profile, 70.3 HI version will have slightly more range. Sustains a high brightness, but still lower than the B1. Lower max brightness.
• Convoy M21E XHP70.3 HI R70 – Lower price. Sustains a high brightness, almost as good as the B1, great performance overall. More focused beam with higher range. The M21F model will have a wider beam and uses the same driver as M21E.

The Lumintop B01 is a great city bike light, but I wouldn’t say it’s a direct competition to the B1. They are both bike lights, but because of the beam profile they have different uses.

Plusy i minusy

+ Good build quality
+ A remote to control the light wirelessly
+ Simple to mount on the bike
+ Separate battery pack with decent capacity
+ Simple UI
+ Great performance (better than specification would suggest)
+ Efficient driver, sustains a high brightness

+/- 150$ MSRP, 120$ after applying a discount code

– Slow charging (from 0% to 100% in 6 hours)
– The head mount won’t fit all handle bars
– When clicking too fast, the remote sometimes doesn’t register a click
– I wouldn’t recommend using it in heavy rain
– In the wrong conditions, the light may overheat if it’s in the High or Turbo mode

Conclusion

The B1 is Wuben’s first dedicated bike light and it performs surprisingly well. It generates a standard beam without a cutoff, so it’s best suited for forests, dirt roads, mountain biking and other places without traffic to blind.

The performance is really good. The Turbo output is great and most likely more than what most might need. It can sustain a pretty high brightness and the driver smartly adjust it based on what cooling the head gets. Just my small nitpick is that I would prefer it never allowed the head to overheat (even if that can only happen if the surrounding temperature is high and the light sits at full output in still air, so the worst case scenario) and just reduced the output even further.

The UI is quite simple and easy to operate thanks to the remote. The beam is balanced, it has quite a good range but lights up a pretty wide area too.

I see it being a pretty strong competitor in the 150$ range and it’s definitely an option to consider.

---