Review: Xeccon Spiker 1207

When we received the Spiker 1207 light from little known brand Xeccon we weren't entirely sure what to expect. I'll be honest I've never heard of this brand before, so my first port of call was to see what their website had to say about the light in question…

"The Xeccon Spiker 1207 is a super bright twin XM-L LED bike light with a new and daring design. This new Cree U2 LED bike light's max output can reach 2200 lumens, which is powered by a 6600mAh battery pack."

This description made for some fairly pleasant reading and got us all quite excited to see how the spiker 1207 performed in the flesh.

The light arrived in a great little padded carry case and included a vented helmet strap, a handlebar mount block, an extension cable, mains charger, the light unit and its considerably sizey battery along with some instructions. Best of all you get all this for just over £115, which on paper is undeniably a great deal.

Xeccon Spiker 1207 Light
LED Emitter	2 x Cree XM-L
Max Output	2200 Lumens
Run-time	2.3 hours (4400mAh)/ 2.7 hours (6600mAh)
Light Unit Weight	125g
Fitted Weight	410g

Design.

Don't be fooled by the like batman looks,  this light is far from child friendly and packs some serious punch from the dual LED's. The lights body is machined from 6061-T6 Aluminium alloy with some cool styling features and a slick black and red finish that adds a bit of bling. The cable out of the light unit is mounted at the rear on the right hand side of the body. It sticks out from the light at right angles and doesn't feel like the most sturdy cable entrance but on our test model it never once faltered.

Mounting the light.

The actual light unit mounts are reasonably versatile. The vented helmet strap gave a very secure and adjustable fit with the common rubber band solution to secure the light to the mounting said strap or handlebars. It is also supplied with a very robust bar clamp that gives a very sturdy fit on the handlebars. My personal preference was to use the simplest rubber band mount for just plain and simple ease of use.  Frustratingly to swap between the handlebar mount and headtorch it required a screwdriver and a really pretty fiddly process to swap the mounting plate on the light. 

The Battery.

The battery used to power the Spiker 1207 does pack a hefty 6600mAh, but consequently it is about the same size as a breeze block… There is simply no way the battery could ever be mounted to the rear of your helmet as the shear weight of the thing will strain your neck. If you are planning to use the 1207 on your helmet, the only sensible way is to carry the battery in it's own small trailer you will be forced to tow behind you when out on the trails at night with an extension cable stretching up to power the light… In all seriousness the battery is very large and heavy therefore meaning putting the battery in a backpack is the only real answer.

If you are planning to use the light on the handlebars you may be in luck as I feel the batteries primary design is for it to be mounted on the top tube up near the front of the bike with the short cable leading to the handlebar mounted light giving a neat and tidy set up.

In Use.

Mounted on the handlebars of your bike the 2200 lumen light throws a pretty awesome spread of light a very long way ahead and generally illuminates the trail well. From our experiences the consistent wide spread of the light and battery mounting lends itself more towards handlebar mounting, so for the majority of time during testing that's where it spent it's time… I did use the light attached on a helmet mount but the weight was an issue and obviously the battery mounting that I eluded to earlier held the spiker back somewhat.

In terms of burn time the light always performed well and out lasted the length of my night rides every time but worryingly always ended on the flashing red function far before the advertised 2.7 hours. I conducted the highly technical "iPhone timer to time how long the lights run in the office test" to see how long this light really would last for!

After 55 minutes use the rear LED was showing blue indicating the light only had 70% remaining. After 1 hour 41minutes LED was showing red meaning 40% remaining. After 2 hours 40 it begain flashing red to show the battery had less than 10% remaining and I expected the light to have another 5 minutes maximum before eventually dying. This was not the case…

Battery Indicator Level
Green	100% - 70%
Blue	70% - 40%
Red	40% - 10%
Blinking Red	Less than 10%

The light soldiered on with less than 10% battery for 1 hour and 12 minutes extra to bring the final burn time to a respectable 3 hours and 54 minutes which smashed the claimed burn time by a whopping 72 minutes.

Summary

So to summarise the Spiker is really fantastically bright, has reasonable mounting capabilities and will last for nearly 4 hours at the full 2200 lumen setting which would get even the hardiest nutcase through a cold winter night ride.

I can't really comment on Long term reliability as it has only been with us for about three months, but we did develop some slight worries… After about 10 minutes the whole light unit became increasingly hot… After 20-30 minutes the light was about the same temperature as the inside of the sun with a slight whiff of burning. Touching any part of the alloy case would have most definitely burnt your skin.

The Spiker looks great,  is competitively priced, is amazingly bright and has some good accessories included but fiddly mounting solutions and catastrophic heat problems let it down.

Words: Angus McIntosh
Photos: Mitchell Gatting