Presumably it's got the same ludicrous battery compartment (with a dozen fatigue-prone spring contacts and a dodgy catch) as the standard Ixon IQ?
I don't know about the previous variant so can't make a comparison. The contacts or ours are formed from a reasonably sturdy looking piece of metal (not springs).
Yeah, that's the problem. Bent stainless steel. Fatigues with use and shears at the bends. The extra four spring contacts connecting the battery compartment to the PCB add more potential points of failure.
I've not had the catch fail, but others have.
Both problems can be mitigated by charging the batteries in situ, which makes the whole thing extremely convenient, and wherever possible not dropping the light. (This means keeping an eye on the self-untapping screw in the top of the handlebar bracket, which will fail and jettison the top half, along with the light, after a couple of years of use. Fortunately the brackets are Smart-compatible, so spares are readily available. The new fork crown bracket is a simple moulded piece of plastic with a bolt through it, and doesn't have this failure mode.)
Yesterday our IXON IQ Premium was mounted on the handlebars and exposed to more than 6 hours of persistent rain. It worked reliably, but condensation formed inside the lens. I looked this morning and found a drip of water between the bottom of the reflector and the lens. The battery compartment looks dry. It still works normally.
This seems consistent with the Ixon IQ. I've had mine through all sorts of appalling weather (including rattling around in a soggy bag), and water ingress only caused a problem once after about 4 hours of constant heavy rain combined with falling temperature, when the switch eventually got wet and caused it to acquire a flashing mode. A quick squirt of IPA restored it to normal, and a day open on a radiator dried it out. Lights, phones and GPSes were dropping like flies on that ride.
I discovered that the IXON IQ Premium on high power produces uncomfortable glare from the top of the lens which is detrimental on dark lanes. When C. tested it on the first ride she said that glare was not a problem, but I disagree. This made it difficult to compare it with the Luxos U. A visor is available for the IXON as an optional accessory and I believe will address this problem. I used the IXON on low power to minimise the glare but in this mode the Luxos U was much brighter.
This seems to be a symptom of handlebar mounting, common to all Ixons. I found that the fork crown bracket avoided the problem (until I put a Cyo there and had to move the Ixon to the handlebars). It's a non-issue when mounted on the boom of a recumbent.
