Lupine Piko TL MiniMax Review

 

Lupine Piko TL MiniMax
 

Build quality and handlebar mount
 

It’s hard not to be impressed; even the packaging, with its matt black finish and striking white Lupine wolf logo has a quality feel. The light itself is constructed out of CNC milled aluminium, with a separately fixed, shot-peened, aluminium ‘front ring’ face and 2 LED bulbs. At 87mm by 42mm by 24mm it is one of the smallest lights I have come across, similar in size to a Cateye EL 130 commuting light. Weight without the handlebar mount is 145g. For the weight weenies among us that equates to within a few grams off an iphone 4…
 

 

The build quality and attention to detail are impressive. Every detail has been clearly thought through and designed with effective ergonomics in mind. For example, held as a flashlight, which is how the Pliko MiniMaxi is marketed, the ridges on the front provide a natural grip position for the forefinger whilst your thumb rests on the single rubber on/off button. There is an angled cut away section on the back of the light to enable the light to be attached to a strap or cable. The charging point is covered with a rubber stop which opens at a usable 45 degree angle due to a groove cut into the back of the rubber. These are small details, but combined they do demonstrate the high level of design and quality construction evident in the Piko.
 

 

As mentioned, the Piko Mini Maxi is marketed primarily as a compact flash light, and is therefore supplied as standard without a fixing mount. Fortunately my sample was supplied with the optional Piko TL tool free mount. This sports a cast aluminium profile, designed to sit on the top side of the handlebar, and a thick rubber O-ring that stretches round the bar and reconnects to the fitting. Two different sized O-rings are supplied, though I found that initially even the larger of the two was a very tight fit on my ITM bars, which are 31mm Diameter at widest point. This issue did ease as the rubber stretched over time, but there was a period of mild irritation with the first few attachments.
 

 
The light itself is attached to the mount by way of a threaded insert that fixes into the main body and is tightened by turning a larger ‘fly wheel’. Whilst cleverly engineered to minimise the size of the mount, and also undeniably beautiful looking with the simple red anodized wheel, here I did encounter an issue. Over time, and as a result of lifting and lowering the angle of the light so as not to blind oncoming traffic, the fitting did on more than one occasion loosen itself. The threaded insert is under 3mm long, so it does not take many turns before the light can be completely removed. Having encountered this problem I made sure to tighten the wheel and then leave the light at a fixed angle which did solve the problem, though when every detail has clearly been so well engineered it was odd to encounter a gremlin like this.
 
Continued overleaf…
 

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