On September 11th, 2025, from 4:00pm - 7:00pm, N.Y. Roll and I will be holding a bike swap in his yard. I realize many of you are not local to us, but if you are, we will be selling some stuff for pretty sweet deals.
N.Y. Roll says he's got some crank sets to unload, and I do also. But I also have this Origin 8 Scout fat bike, (in the image), and several wheel sets which will be there. More surprises if you come.
Cash or trades only. No holds. No early sales. No shipping. Must be present to purchase/trade. All sales final. No Support After Sales*. N.Y. Roll and I will be at his place located at 237 Arden Street, Waterloo, IA. We will be there from 4:00pm till 7:00pm Thursday, September 11th, 2025.
Thanks for considering this.
The Bookman Volume Light
Nights Are Longer - Here's A Great Light For Night Rides:
With nights getting longer and night riding becoming more likely, I have a recommendation for a light which I think is not well known but is a fantastic option for night riding.
It is the Bookman Volume. This light has a couple standout features which I think separate it from almost every other light choice you can make. If you are wanting to know all the things about this light I reviewed two years ago, check out this post HERE.
The main feature is the knob which allows you to instantly and easily flick to any desired power level on the light without going through multiple pushes of a button. Tired of touch screens and wimpy buttons? This light is for you.
It also mounts to Garmin mounts, and it comes with a nice mount, by the way, but this opens up the options which you may already have for mounting. The 1500 model, linked above, can run up to 5 hours at 750 Lumens, which is half power for the light and likely bright enough for almost any gravel road.
Anyway, I LOVE the one sent to me to review two years ago and it is one of the best lights I have ever used. Check it out.
* I've sold things in the past and had people come back afterward expecting me to do basic maintenance on their purchase, or for other reasons. My point in selling anything is to be rid of it. So, I'm trying to set the expectation that I won't be answering questions, or doing any kind of work on a purchase after the fact from this bike swap.
Note: Bookman sent over the Volume light, (as well as some previously
reviewed products) for test and review to Guitar Ted Productions at no
charge. I am not being paid, nor bribed for this review, and I always
strive to give my honest thoughts and opinions throughout.
Well, now that I've used this light several times I have some impressions to share. All the technical data and specs are found in Part 1 of this review HERE. Click that before you fire off any questions about run times, batteries, etc. This post will mainly deal with how this light is to use and any high or low points I have found in its design and function.
Many of you will be looking for some light beam shots, and I actually have some okay ones to share here. It is difficult to find places in the vicinty of Waterloo that are not really light-polluted at night, but a "tree-tunnel" over one of our cycling paths did prove to be pretty good for what I needed to show here. Especially so since the foilage is still mostly on the branches. So, from "low" to "high", here are four of the five levels of light that the Bookman Volume light has on tap.(The lowest setting is basically a flashlight level) I'm going to show these from dimmest to brightest and the level will be numerically indicated from low to high (2,3,4, and 5)
Setting "2"
Setting "3"
Setting "4"
Setting "5"
In these images I see why my preference was to run only the two brightest settings. I also noted that there is barely any difference between "3" and "4", but to my eyes "4" was significantly easier to ride with. While it is nearly impossible for you, the reader, to see, I did place an object at 25 paces away which I cannot see at level "3" but I can discern it at "4", so there is that. But be that as it may, level "5", the 800 Lumen level, is what I would want for faster riding. The next level "4" is 400 Lumens, so that is a significant drop in "punch" level, but this is something I found to be a curiosity with the Volume light.
Bookman Volume at level "4" on a gravel pathway.
The Volume doesn't have that "throw" that some lights do, and that's going to adversely affect my comfort levels on fast downhill gravel sections. Think something at 25+ miles per hour here. There just is not enough bright light far enough ahead of you to make corrections, or brake, to avoid bad lines, potholes, etc. The front "fill" light is tremendous here. The width of the beam pattern is excellent as well. The color is okay with my eyes. it's just that this light doesn't punch a beam way down the road as I would need it to for faster descending or just plain very fast riding on technical roads.
2016-ish era Lezyne 1100i on high.
The good news? I can find a helmet mounted torch that will have a long-throw spot beam for that higher speed stuff and that would be a great compliment to this more washed out beam pattern of the Bookman light.
Run times are something to consider as well. The Volume is rated at 3 hours on the highest setting. That's actually pretty impressive. Consider that my late twenty-teens era Lezyne 1100i runs for 1.5 hours on the "high" setting. You might be thinking, "Hey Ted! isn't that Lezyne supposed to be 1100 Lumens on "high"?" You would be correct. But there are "lumens" and then there are Lumens. How these companies measure their light output is not regulated and varies from one tester to another. See my comparison of "high" on the Lezyne to the half power setting on the Volume. Not much difference, eh?
Of course, it could come down to the old battery, or different optics. But it is clear that the Volume is a better light. Better than the Lezyne anyway. Plus, when you factor in that brilliant knob design that the Volume has, which eliminates guesswork and tabbing through a "menu" to get where you want to be in terms of light level, this light begins to look like a much better design.
That button is hard to find in the dark with a gloved hand.
There were a couple of things that bugged me about the Volume light though. One was the On-Off power button. It is oh-so "Apple-like" sleek and it works, but try to find that little depression in the dark with gloves on. Yeah..... Frustrating. Maybe there should be a little ring of LED light there or a raised button. I vote for the raised button myself.
Then there is the mount's band attachment. It is clever, but that one bolt attachment is fiddly and hard to get to. Fahgeddaboudit if you are in the dark and need to tighten it up. I know.....tighten it up enough before you leave. I get it, but a tool-less attachment might be nicer.
I had one curious hiccup with the Volume where I had turned it off and was running the Lezyne light as a comparison. When I went to turn on the Volume light, after I found that durned button, it would not turn on. It would show me the battery status, but that was it. I tried it a few blocks down the trail later and hey! On it came. What?
I couldn't replicate the issue, yet..... But I'm watching for this and I will report back if that becomes an issue again.
So Far... Okay, so this thing will run three hours on high, and the light pattern is pretty okay. The knob thing is really nice. I love that and the Garmin mount. I had a middling experience with the Lezyne 1100i this past Summer on gravel. We will have to get this Volume light out on the gravel next to see how it stacks up. But first, I need it to not be "dead of Winter cold" before I will consider that. Fortunately temperatures are supposed to moderate a bit going into November.
The Bookman Volume light, foreground, and other Bookman products.
Note: Bookman sent over the Volume light, (as well as some previously reviewed products) for test and review to Guitar Ted Productions at no charge. I am not being paid, nor bribed for this review, and I always strive to give my honest thoughts and opinions throughout.
Going back to last February I reviewed some Bookman light products. You can click that link to see what the deal was with those lights. They were pretty much a type of light you'd use as an accessory to your main light set up. A "safety light" for daytime riding, ,maybe, or as a fill light for close up sight in the dark. But there was no mistaking those for a "to see by" head lamp that you could rely on for city or gravel riding. They just did not pack enough punch, nor do they have long enough run times.
So, back in June I got a little more excited about Bookman when word came down from their hired marketing firm that a "serious" torch was on the way with a very unique take on design. I actually put in a request for the light to review but after a couple of months I wrote it off as something that may not happen. Then a box showed up on Monday and what do you know? It was the Volume light along with another set of the lights I had reviewed previously.
What comes in the box.
The Volume light is a unique take on a bicycle light to "see by" with its unusual knob sticking out of the side of it. Typically an LED, self-contained torch will utilize a button that forces you to scroll through all the light modes to get to where you want the light. This is somewhat annoying if, say, you are on the second from the highest setting but you want to toggle to "High". The light may force you to scroll through the lower settings before it will come back around to the highest one. This happens a lot with typical LED based bicycle torches.
The Volume dispenses with that allowing you to simply twist the knob, (like a stereo volume knob, thus the name), to go directly to the setting you want. One motion. Boom. Done.
You also will find that the Bookman Volume dispenses with silly, proprietary mounts and instead utilizes a Garmin mount. This is a great idea. I've seen a few lights that utilize the Go Pro mount, and that is nice too, but the amount of cyclists that have Garmin mounts probably outweighs those who might have a Go Pro mount by what I would wager is a fair amount. So, kudos to Bookman for that smart idea.
What It Is: Besides those two innovative features, the Volume light comes in two versions and three colors. The maximum power varies from the range-topping 1500 Lumen model to the (tested) 800 Lumen model. Colors are Orange, Black, or White (tested).
The Volume 800 has five levels of steady light output and five levels of flashing light. The flashing light levels are reached by a short push on the power button on the top/front of the Volume and another short push of that same button takes you back to steady light modes. In either mode, different power levels are adjusted by the knob. A long push of the power button turns the light on or off.
Other features include a replaceable LI-ION 18650 power cell, (UPDATE 12/04/23: NOTE: It is not the standard 18650 battery as this Bookman variant has both the negative and positive ends on one end of the battery. Bookman says it will offer replacements/extra batteries in the near future.), side indicator lights, a series of 4 small LED's to indicate power level in reserve, and a USB C charging port on the left side of the light. The Volume comes with handlebar compatible Garmin style mount, a Go Pro Garmin style mount, and two different length straps to cover most handle bar situations. A USB-C charging cord rounds out the contents of the box.
The use of a Garmin style mount is a really smart choice.
Run Times:
Flashing Modes
Runtime (hours)**
1
6
2
11
3
12
4
35
5
120
Steady Modes
Runtime (hours)**
100%
3
50%
5
25%
11
10%
17
5%
35
*True Lumens: measured according to the ANSI / NEMA FL1 standard
** Modes are subject to change
Price: $107.00USD
The Volume has a replaceable Li-Ion battery cell.
Impressions: I received the white model and out of the box it reminded me a whole lot of an Apple product. I imagine had I received the orange one it may not have been quite so "Apple-like" but it was with the white light body. The design is smaller than I was thinking from promotional materials I had seen. It is well done and feels like a quality product in the hand.
The Garmin type handlebar mount looks smartly done. You have a pretty sturdy plastic strap with an attached rubber strip to help it grip slippery metal or carbon handle bars. This has one end anchored into the base of the mount with an Allen bolt. The other end has a loop with a barrel that has a threaded hole in it which accepts a single 3mm Allen head bolt that runs through the base and attaches the mount to the bar.
I mounted the light on my Black Mountain Cycles Monstercross rig for now and the mounting went smoothly. The Garmin type mount is simple to use and quite secure.
A long push and the light comes alive. The Volume's knob has a satisfying detent at each level of light. There is no doubt about where you are at in regards to the knob's positioning. Bookman could easily have flubbed this point up. However; I feel the detents are spot on and reassuring.
That said, it is easy to twist the knob quickly right where you want it. That's a great thing, but on my initial test ride, I also noted that you can get your hand to the knob and back without even thinking about it. A button to scroll takes longer, and so in trickier situations, the Volume is going to be so much easier to use without worrying about having your hand off the bar too long.
That mount is also a thing of beauty. Rock solid. And you can tweak the position of the light off-axis slightly to accommodate a swept bar or a off-centerline mounting position. The side light indicators are cool, and the power level LED's glow a nice green color on top to let you know where you are at with reserve power.
I have to do more night rides and grab some good images of the beam pattern, etc, before I can really say much more. That said, so far this light is impressive. The mount, the knob, and the entire design overall is really well done and looks killer. Time will tell how things wear and how things will do after I have this for a bit. Stay tuned for an update to come.
