****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
I've had this bicycle headlight for about a year. I am a year-round bike commuter in Portland, OR. The first thing I can say about this headlight is that it is a genuinely solid piece of equipment. I've taken this light camping, hiking, used it while working on the underside of my car, and anything else I'd need a flashlight for. It takes extreme heat, extreme cold, and driving rain with an equal amount of fortitude. I'd hammer nails in to a wall with this if I had to, in a pinch. Its brightest setting is truly, blindingly bright and the pulsing lowest setting is still bright enough to illuminate street signs a hundred feet away. I'm not worried about front-side visibility with this light; although maybe you will be if you're the kind of person who feels the need to ride around the city with a fast-pulsing nighttime trail riding headlight on your bike. It's physically held up fine for the past year and the battery still holds a champion of a charge.There are a few negatives about this headlight I'd like to point out, though. First off, the holder it comes with is fine at holding it steady on the handlebars, but it has an exposed screw in the rubberized part that has, over time, scratched a solid line on the underside of the headlight. It's purely a cosmetic thing, but if that exposed screw wasn't there this light would still be physically flawless after twelve months.More crucially, and this might just be an individual defect with my light, is that if I hit a bump in just the right way, the light will totally turn off. I don't know if it jostles the battery or what, but probably once every 2 or 3 rides with this light I'll have to turn it back on after a rough segment in the road.I'd also like for this light to have a low battery warning. As it is, the light just starts shutting off at smaller and smaller intervals as the battery drains, and that has to be your clue that the battery needs to be charged. If you plug it in every night you won't have to worry about this, but I don't, and sometimes I'll be blindsided by a dead battery because of it.Overall I like this light a lot, but I'd preferably get it when it's on sale. If you're looking for a solid rechargeable flashlight to keep around, this is great, and the hit-a-bump thing may be an individual thing with my particular unit. I'd give it a solid 3.5/5, rounded up to a 4.
