see maybe the 2000 lumen light will be better ? surly you can see that photo right? No editing was done. ISO200, exposure time 1s. That is the same settings you can use when shooting photos indoors. You can everything see that tree that is 65m away. Sadly there is no "magic" in lights as marketing tells us. If you want distance you are correct in saying that you need a very deep reflector or a narrow accumulator. Funny thing is that for most having a wide beam is preferred over having a narrow beam. Just a small increase in width require a lot more light(lumen) to maintain the same brightness(Lux). it is a squired relation. Most people are impressed by laser type lights at first. When someone goes to a cycle shop the first thing they do is turn it on and point it to a well illuminated wall. If it makes a bright dot then they go ooow. What they don't know is that you can have 10x the amount of light in the side spill that is not perceivable in the shop environment. it is impressive if your lights shines all the way to the next farm. Sadly not very useful when cycling but hey it is a cool braai trick. At the moment most manufacturer make use of exactly the same LED, the Cree XML. Therefore to get more light you need more power. higher bins does not really make that much of a deference so lets not go there. More power means more heat and bigger batteries. that is a law of physics. No big brand name can break the law of physics. So then there is the problem of life time. Cree recommend not driving there LEDs above 2/3 the maximum power rating. There are two ways to mitigate the effect of doing so. First is thermal monitoring of the LED. Logic: To hot then reduces the power. The second way is to limit to amount of power to the LED from get go. That is playing it safe. I have had more complaints from people about this Thermal dimming of Pyrolights vs no complaints about the fact the Extreme 1000 and Ryder lights are not as bright as other 1000 lumen lights. How funny is that? Take for example the Magicshine MJ868 or Pyro1100 it cost more to buy from magicshine than the selling price is of the "1200 lumen copies" 3 years ago most lights did not monitor the LED temperature at all. That is no longer the case. High power lights all do for-example Magcishine, Lupine, L&M and many more. there lights are brighter because of only one reason. MORE POWER is used. The Cheap lights require less power therefore lower grade batteries, cheaper electronics because the LED and driver is not over stressed. If you where to open a Magicshine Mj868 and Mj880 and compare it to above mentioned lights I don't think you will be able to say one is better. I like the analog between a paint/light and paint bucket/ power. if you have the same amount of paint to start with then you can ether paint a thin layer and get a larger area covered or a thick layer will cover a smaller area. Need more paint then you need a bigger bucket. Same with light, wider light = less throw, More light = more power = less run time. Like i have said before. there is not magic in lights. well not with everyone using the same LED in any case.
