Tumble & Fall Halo light kit review

Specialising in lights and pumps, Tumble & Fall’s offerings are enticing thanks to their especially long claimed battery life and relatively low purchase price. So, sould you be tempted by the potential for a bargain or does a lower price equal lower quality?

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Tumble & Fall Halo details and specification

The claimed maximum output of 2,000 lumens is generated by two Cree LEDs, where both are always illuminated regardless of which mode the light is in.

The main beam has four settings: low, medium, high and flashing. Surrounding the two LEDs are circular BMW-like ‘angel eyes’ that have two modes: constant and flashing.

The angel eyes can be operated individually to the main beam and the functions are changed by two LED-lit buttons — one to control each of the lights' outputs — on the rear of the device.

The buttons don’t change colour or flash when different modes are in use, but they do turn red when the battery is running out of juice.

A helmet mount, a head mount and a handlebar mount are all supplied with the light. The bar clamp rubber O-ring stretches around the bars and clips back on to the light and is replaceable for shorter or longer ones, and two lengths are supplied in the box.

The rubber O-rings are suitable for both 31.8mm and 35mm handlebars and could stretch to bigger diameters if required.

The longest part of the cable that connects the head unit to the separate lithium-ion battery is attached to the light unit and measures 106cm, and the stubbier battery pack cable is 16cm long. The battery pack has a neoprene pouch and Velcro strap.

Tumble & Fall Halo performance

The power offered by the twin LED lamps is good enough to pick out plenty of detail and I was never wanting for more lumens. The light emitted is white in colour, which isn’t especially harsh on the eyes, and doesn’t cast terrifying shadows where you don’t want them.

The beam is very focussed, channelling all of its 2,000 lumens into quite a tight spotlight that has very little side-to-side spread. The beam’s pattern is round and the cut-off between dark and illuminated is particularly severe, especially at the side.

This makes it quite tricky to pick lines and identify obstacles out of your direction of travel, and when you’re approaching turns it is equally as difficult to see around the corner and down the next straight before you’ve finished turning.

Angle the light either up or down to try and get the beam to spread further side-to-side and you’re greeted with a shadow close to the bike when it’s angled up, or with not enough reach into the trail’s distance when it’s angled down.

But when the light is correctly angled, beyond the focussed spot beam, it does flood light forwards well, which makes it easy to ride straighter, faster trails or less technical, twisty singletracks. Combine this forward illumination with the amount of detail the light picks out and it’s a solid performer.

The angel eye lights aren’t particularly useful at illuminating the ground but they’re a great option to preserve battery life in ‘be seen’ rather than ‘to see’ scenarios.

The light’s buttons work as expected, too, and it doesn’t require hours of studying a manual to work out how to use it.

The lack of continuous battery percentage indicator is a bit of a drawback. The low battery indicator gives you some warning when it’s about to run out of juice, but this isn’t ideal. With a 1 hour 30 minute run time at max, I was a little disappointed by how much go it has compared to the claimed figure of 2 hours 30 minutes.

The light to battery pack cable attaches using a push-fit connector that’s secured in place by a plastic, threaded lock ring. This makes the connection super-secure and weather-proof, and the cable is long enough to attach the battery to even the furthest reaches of your frame.

The battery pack’s Velcro strap is also long enough to secure it to especially bulky bits of frame and I don’t think you’ll ever be scratching your head trying to work out where you can mount it, no matter which bike you're riding. On smaller diameter frames the downside is that the Velcro strap leaves a tail that flaps around.

Except for the focussed light pattern that might not bother some, I struggled with the supplied bar mounting solution. Although the light never shifted position permanently, rough terrain did make it bounce up and down a fair amount which exasperated how little you can see around turns or off to the sides of the trail.

Tumble & Fall Halo bottom line

At this point it’s certainly worth remembering that at £119.99 the Tumble & Fall Halo offers performance that rivals much more expensive units. It's also going to be well-suited to helmet-mounted applications thanks to the supplied lid-mount and the lack of side-to-side illumination.

The Tumble & Fall Halo light kit offers great power and pretty good measured battery life — even though it is shorter than the claimed run time — just don’t rely on it if you’re planning a particularly technical, twisty of gnarly ride, unless you’re using it as a second or helmet-mounted light.

How we tested

Testing lights objectively is a tough task. While it’s entirely possible to measure the number of lumens a light emits, there are a lot more variables that dictate how much of that light illuminates the trail. The colour of the light, its beam pattern and lens type have as much effect as the outright power.

With that in mind, we haven’t measured the number of lumens each light emits for this test. Instead, we’ve assessed how the light performs by describing the beam pattern, its colour and overall performance, while also measuring run time on the most powerful setting.