The Magicshine Allty 800 / Seemee 50 Combo light set leads with a powerful 800-lumen front light output – the joint most powerful of the light sets I've tested this year.
It makes this set a strong option as a compact set for night riding.
The beam spread is good and even, and it delivers a decent flood of light for the power, with a reasonable £69.99 / $79.99 / €84.90 price for the set.
It’s more than good enough to ride at 25km/h on unlit roads, and this was one of the few front lights on test I was tempted to ride even quicker with.
The cut-off and top lip mean you don’t get much canopy flooding, but that’s not really the point of an 800-lumen front light, and the benefit is you won’t be dazzling yourself or other road users quite so much.
The front light is a little heavier than most of the lights I tested, but that’s because Magicshine has packed in a 4,000mAh battery – this in turn yields a strong 3hrs 45mins total burn time, including its final power-down mode, which is still quite usefully bright.
The aluminium body can get hot when the Allty 800 is used on full power, but that’s arguably to be expected.
By comparison, the Seemee 50 rear light feels a little underpowered – 50 lumens wouldn’t be my first choice in a soup-like fog, but it stands out enough in the dark and in urban street-lit settings.
It’s very light at 28g, and the lens covering the strip of LEDs makes the most of them.
I recorded a 2hrs 50mins total burn time on the most powerful static setting, only powering down for the final 30 minutes.
The little bonus here is the ‘Peloton Sync’ flash mode, which enables the Seemee 50 to sense other lights with the function nearby and then flash in unison.
I like this feature – it’s a clever way or drawing more attention to a group without necessarily going for distracting high-power outputs. That said, like most group tech, it only really works when everyone has the same system running.
How we tested
I tested these bike light sets using two local test loops over the course of nearly two months – one largely street-lit, criss-crossing through a local urban area, and another almost exclusively un-lit on country back lanes. Both were ridden at night (meaning some late starts and early mornings), while I also used each light set for local rides during the day.
I also ran a battery burn-down test – discharging the lights from empty on their most powerful setting. This gives a good indication of the minimum battery life you can expect and flags when power-save modes kick in.
In my experience of testing over 100 lights, there’s usually a small discrepancy in burn times from one unit of the same light to the next, so my figures are intended as indications, rather than guarantees.
All front lights featured at least a 500-lumen maximum output and each set costs under £100.
Light sets tested
- Lezyne Fusion Drive 500+ / KTV Drive Pro+
- Magicshine Allty 800 v2 / Seemee 50 v2
- BBB NanoStrike 700i / Signal 80
- Ravemen FR500 / CL01 Pro (LS07)
- Moon Rigel Lite / Helix Lite
- Giant Recon HL 600 / Recon TL 200
- Cateye AMPP 500S / Viz 150
- Sigma Buster 800 / RL 150
- Knog Blinder Pro 700 / Plus
The lights are easy to use with the common on/off and cycle single-button functionality, and both remember what mode you were in when you switched them off.
The rear light fits via a simple band-on bracket, but the front employs a swivel clamp, which requires the use of a hex key to fasten it. It’s fiddly to set up initially, albeit the light clips on and off with ease once it’s in place.
You can also ‘force’ the light up and down by tilting it, assuming you don’t have it clamped on too tight.
Magicshine Allty 800 / Seemee 50 Combo light set bottom line
It’s hard to criticise this Magicshine light set for much.
The rear light could be a little more powerful and the front clamp is slightly annoying to set up.
That aside, it’s a good-value light set with a particularly good front light, and if your whole group has a set, even better.
Product
| Brand | Magicshine |
| Price | €84.90, £69.99, $79.99 |
| Weight | 185g |
Features
| Light type | front_and_rear |
| Remote switch | no |
| Integrated battery | yes |
| Features | Magicshine Allty 800 v2 (front) ● Weight: 157g ● Material: Aluminium ● IP rating: IPX7 ● Lumens: 800 ● Runtime: 3:30-17hrs Magicshine Seemee 50 v2 (rear) |
