Boasting an 8000 lumen output, the Magicshine Monteer 8000 gives you the power to really both nocturnal animals on your winter night rides.
Probably the most powerful light we’ve ever had through the Wideopenmag test machine, Pete has been putting the Magicshine Monteer 8000 through its paces.
Key features:
- 8000 lumens max output
- Flood light – 4800 lumens max
- Spot light – 3200 lumens max
- 10,000mAh battery
- USB Type-C battery charging and discharging
- 100 – 50 – 25 – 10% and Flash modes
- 2hr 10min to 32 hour runtime
- £369.99 RRP
- Magicshineuk.com
Magicshine certainly won’t be the first brand that comes to mind when you think of MTB lights, but they’ve a hefty range from commuter options to the light we’re discussing here, the Monteer 8000. As the name suggests, it sports a max 8000 lumens output, and with the 10,000mAh battery supplied, you can get over two hours run time at full power. Impressive stuff.
Mounting the light is straightforward enough. The Garmin-style alloy mount fits to the bars easily, with spacers supplied to fit 31.8 or 35mm bars. The split clamp design is certainly an improvement on something like you get with a Hope light. Snap the light onto the bars and plug the fixed light cable into the cable that attaches to the battery. The battery has two silicon-back Velcro straps to attach it to your top tube.
Charging the battery couldn’t be easier, with the unit charging via a USB-C cable which everyone will have pretty much all around the house, and even in the car. With the capacity being so large, it does take a while to get to capacity, but then the burn time makes it worth it. With it also discharging USB-C too, you can, in effect, use this as a battery pack should you need to.
The light cycles up through spot and flood in the modes you’d expect, before going to flashing. You definitely don’t want to be looking over the front of the light when you’re doing this as man, it is bright. I have a smaller Exposure light that I use as my head torch for night riding, so the Monteer went on the bars for my ventures back into night riding.
I’d opt to climb on the lower flood modes, with even the lower outputs offering decent coverage of the trail ahead, at the top of the trail I’d bump it to full power and use the head torch to look out of the turns before the bars caught up. In honesty, at full power, the spread and power of this light is such that the head torch wasn’t all that useful unless it was a tighter turn.
Over drops that you’d want to be squashing, I did catch the odd glimpse of full beam but thankfully I didn’t need any night sight as the light is just so bright at full power. A slight overhang of the upper portion of the light hood might stop this from happening, especially as it is a dedicated MTB light.
My only minor gripe was that the cable is perhaps a touch too long when you run the battery on the top tube, a coil cable light on the Hope batteries would help package the cable better without running the risk of disconnecting the various parts. On skinnier top tubes as well, the supplied straps are a little long unless you’re running a fatter top tube. The bikes I have on test don’t have room to mount it on the top side of the downtube, and this would mean the straps would get covered in mud from the trail.
Despite being my go-to autumn night ride light, the Monteer has shown no signs of complaint during some seriously inclement outings into the woods. The cables have stayed put and I haven’t had the time to run the battery out yet.
What do we think?
The Monteer 8000 provides massive illumination even in the lower modes, and impressive burn time even on full power. Whether you’re going for an through the night winter mission or going for power laps around the woods, this would be hard to beat. It just needs some fine tuning to get the cables out of the way and the battery secure.
We love:
- Small, light and powerful
- Battery can also be used as a battery pack
Could do better:
- Cable and straps need some fine tuning