Supernova E3 Pro 2

Without a doubt, you can get a cheaper hub dynamo light. The Supernova E3 is, however, far superior to my cheaper Busch & Müller light. The Mercedes Benz of lighting options. It is the one to go for if you really mean business.

Excellent construction. No annoying artifacts. Weak illumination of the road at longer distances (25-45 m). Beam diverges too much. Wastes light where you don’t need it. Very weak standlight. Expensive.

The Supernova E3 Pro is my favorite. It’s much more expensive than the lights above. It is a thing of beauty, feels solid, and comes with either a handlebar mount or a “multimount”. I like the beam pattern.

How would the Supernova stack up against Schmidt’s Edelux? Both mark a technological advance from the E6 lights that randonneurs have been using for years. The Edelux is the way to go. It’s lighter, it’s brighter – and it’s watertight.

The Supernova is very bright, but I don’t like the narrow beam shape. One downside of using the Supernova front lights is that you can only use their matching taillights.

You can see that this beam is very tall, illuminating the road close as well as at a distance. The beam is also very wide.

The E3 Pro 2 has a horizontal cut-off. The advantage is twofold: 1) it prevents you from blinding oncoming traffic, and 2) distributes that extra light to the side. It is intended for road use. I have ridden with it and I did not like the beam pattern.

Nice beam, but only for low speed riding (say 20km/h at night, not 30 km/h) as throw is not far. I doubt any claims made by Supernova because of their behavior and nonsense claims about light output of their lamps. I don’t deal with this immoral company.

Good strong light beam to about 25 m. Weak at longer distances, so only good for low speed cycling. Very weak standlight, no automatic on/off, the multimount is good. Expensive. The housing is really what you pay for.

2014-02-05: Made a note of why I don’t want to do Supernova reviews. This is just in case it wasn’t clear from the various places where I mention their immoral behaviour (which hasn’t changed up to now).

To date, I’ve never had any problems with the light cone of the E3 Pro 2. But at higher speeds of 25 km/h, an obstacle is in front of you faster than I thought. I would estimate the headlight range to be around 10 to 13 meters.

Wonderful light cone, just mega. A really wonderful-looking lamp. The Supernova E3 Pro 2 is for people on extremely long tours where lights really suffer. If I went for half a year on a world trip, I would maybe grab the Supernova.

Very robust metal housing. E3 Pro 2 has a switch. The E3 Pure 3 is a bit smaller but has no switch, so it’s always on.