Why we are better?
Why we believe that Lucifer headlamps will always be better.
1. WE TEST OUR LAMPS EXTENSIVELY & EVERYDAY
We use our lights everyday! We are actively involved in orienteering and multisport racing - we know what is essential to good lighting design and functioning. We put a lot effort into making our lamps the best available for all sports and applications. Our light design is based on our real-world experience. We design and manufacture all of the components and elements piece-by-piece and in-house rather than simply ordering the different elements from China or through other companies. Other manufacturers simply cannot provide the all-important ‘value adding’, integrated and targeted design processes we are able to utilize.
2. WE HAVE DIRECT CONTACT WITH ALL CUSTOMERS
In the beginning we sold our headlamps to friends, fellow members of our outdoors club, and by promoting them to other competitors at race meetings we attended. Early customers reported great success using our lights in demanding competition, and we still have personal contact with many of them. This close relationship and constant refinement has helped us to achieve high reliability and perfect our products as fast as we can. You can send us an email and we will reply directly to all your questions! We know what our customers demand and what accessories they may need and you’ll get your answers from the person who designed your light and knows everything about it. Where else will you find such personalised service? This direct contact has also been important to the service we offer now. We have closely followed how our lights are used, responding to every problem reported! If anything goes wrong today you can still contact us and we’ll resolve the problem.
3. WHAT WE CLAIM IS REAL!
While excessive performance claims characterise many Chinese light manufacturers, we’ve also been surprised at the claims of several well known European companies, especially with regard to runtimes. Most headlamps are unregulated, providing their advertised output when switched on but dropping rapidly to 30% or even lower after a few hours. Although compromised, such performance unfortunately remains compliant with ANSI NEMA FL-1, a standard that doesn’t differentiate between regulated and unregulated lights, and favours those that claiming absurd runtimes despite providing only residual levels of output. Slowly dimming light output over time is unfortunately the norm! Compare such lights with ours, all of which provide constant and much more useful regulation of brightness over time and uniformly bright output from switch-on to the very end of their runtime
The 2nd performance claim frequently exaggerated is luminous output (lumen count). Anyone can claim unrealistically high lumen counts because no customer is likely to measure them – so it’s a common practice to attract potential customers. Commonly a very high lumen count can be achieved for the first second or so (until the LED chip is hot), or manufacturers will just multiply the real lumen count by 2 or some other arbitrary number! This exaggeration is obvious to anyone with a calculator and some knowledge of LEDs and battery performance. Our lumen counts and run-times are real, measured over time and in our own laboratory.
4. WE FOCUS ON WHAT’S IMPORTANT!
You buy your headlamp because you need light – it’s the basic thing. For their size, Lucifer headlamps provide the highest light outputs and longest runtimes possible. When you don’t need the maximum output there are lower modes available - one for every need. When you need more runtime simply choose the appropriate lower mode. And there’s no need to worry you’ll be suddenly left without light - even if you ignore all warning signals the light will never leave you in complete darkness.
Our lamp housings are robust, reliable and made completely from aluminium. We think reliability is important - failure in a long race or in the middle of nowhere is unpleasant and unnecessary. We endeavour to make our lights the most reliable and today our failure rate is virtually zero.
We focus on important things and there are many to consider in making the perfect headlamp. Easily understood and flexible switching to meet your needs. Constant brightness regulation with useful beam patterns, good light temperatures and accurate colour reproduction. A large control button which you’ll find easily by touch. Easy headlamp tilting but secure retention of the position you set. All plastics must be strong and do not break in extreme cold. Connectors must survive thousands of connection cycles without losing contact. Cables must withstand wear, bending and provide reliable and long life with waterproof seals at both battery and lamp housings.
Well OK, what’s not important? We think Bluetooth connectivity, computer or mobile app-controlled outputs, or reactive lighting is less important than the essentials outlined above. That doesn't’ mean we would never incorporate these features - we just don’t see them as priorities. They are ‘icing on the cake’ but not essentials.
5. START USING 21st CENTURY TECHNOLOGY
For serious, up-to-date lighting forget AA and AAA batteries and move up to Li-Ions! They have so many advantages - much higher capacity per weight/volume, high capacity under load and a long, worry-free life. They are proven in industry and widely used in laptops, home appliances, tools and electric vehicles. Take advantage of their safety and ease of use today.
And of course it’s the ‘LED Century’! With the right colour temperature and quality of light you wouldn’t want to go back to incandescent lights or turn to poor quality lights with their inefficient LEDs producing cold and blue-tinted outputs. We use the best 3mm chips currently available on the Planet - Cree XP-L2 LEDs. These produce a very nice, warm and natural white light and are efficient as hell.
6. NEW IDEAS AND APPROACHES
We are a young company. This can be a disadvantage, but it also brings many positives. We started from the beginning with simple tools and machines but every year we have sought new technologies that help us make our headlamps better, faster, more easily and at lower cost. Today we can take advantage of almost unlimited new technologies. Measuring instruments are cheaper and more precise than ever. Computer programs help speed up the design process and we can even simulate many aspects of new electronic designs without actually building them. We can also sell worldwide via our e-shop and effective online marketing.
Today everything changes very fast – often too fast. I’m not a big fan as it’s quite demanding to keep up, but we do try to take advantage of technological progress, probably much better than larger companies with many employees, large organizational structures and long decision-making processes. We work closely and efficiently as a team and our design processes are cost effective, As designer born in 1984, I’ve grown up with computers and am very open-minded when exploring new ways to use them to make work easier.
We should also consider why so many headlamps still use plastic bodies causing high-power LEDs to overheat with diminished life and efficiency. Yes – CND-milled aluminium headlamp shells are pricey, but they are worth it. We never compromise on materials for our own aluminium light bodies to cut costs or make our headlamps cheaper. Traditional manufacturers do just this - they optimize alone without considering what is lost in performance. Of course customers buy their lights because they are often cheaper. We’ve chosen a different approach and mindset - we optimize our headlamps for the best levels of performance achieved at reasonable costs. Customers buying Lucifer headlamps have found they need this performance for their sporting, recreational or work activities, often after buying cheaper and inferior plastic products and not wanting to repeat the experience!
Classical economic theory says you cannot make a perfect product – but it’s a great goal to work towards! We are graduate economists (University of Prague) and this is exactly what we are doing. As a Lucifer customer you can be part of this.
7. WE ARE FLEXIBLE
We are still a small company which enables us to bring products to market fast and explore and use newly developed LEDs and technologies. We can share information and make decisions quickly, stepping rapidly from initial ideas into experimental and construction phases. Our workshop supports this efficiency and short development times with a CNC milling machine, our own injection moulder, multiple soldering stations and specialised accessories and measuring equipment. When we prototype our electronics we are able to hand-solder everything (even using on copper boards) reliably, consistently and very rapidly. As a consequence we were the first – and for some time the only – headlamp manufacturer using the latest XP-L2 LEDs from Cree. I am convinced that even now (in 2019), some of the larger manufacturers have not even noticed that these revolutionary devices are available!
8. OUR WARRANTY IS INTERNATIONAL
We offer a 3-Year International Warranty on all our products! Ask yourself what other company is able to do this. This is not an empty promise – our international warranty really works. We take care of every customer irrespective of their location. You’ll find that even our upgrades and after-warranty services remain inexpensive and efficient. We can repair every aspect of your light!, anytime and anywhere.
You’ll also find that we support and improve every product we have introduced with most models being ‘backward compatible’ with accessories, batteries etc. Our product line is carefully designed to meet your specific needs. We will not reduce our range simply because a "marketing manager" decides to maximise sales of a particular popular model. Nor do we look to save a few cents when it would reduce the quality of our products. We always strive for the best quality and the best ‘tool for the job’ no matter what.
9. ENVIROMENTAL POLICY
We pay attention to our environment, save resources and minimise contributions to pollution or climate change. We use our glues as infrequently possible and recycle and even re-granulate plastic parts during manufacturing. We conserve or recycle water, paper and other consumables as much as we can. All our products are made locally with many Czech or European parts and we pay attention to careful manufacture to ensure our lights have a long life. It’s better to buy one more expensive, but superb headlamp for use in the long-term than use multiple mediocre lamps that fail over the years!
10. WE LOVE OUR WORK
Its true - we love what we do and our positive customer feedback motivates us to pursue our future. We feel our approach make sense - that we are working everyday on something that’s interesting and fulfilling, and that’s pushing the boundaries of technology and our knowledge further. When you trust and believe in your work, you do it with passion. You do it precisely and the highest standard because you want to - it’s not just about money. We love our work and always try for that ‘something extra’. It’s not just a job - it’s more a pleasure and a mission.
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