TRAIL LIGHTS

Night riding is the perfect way to freshen up well-ridden routes with a new element of excitement. Corners come from nowhere, roots and rocks feel bigger, and shadow-shrouded obstacles loom out of the darkness. A good light will help mitigate some of these perils, but how many lumens do you require to stay safe, and how much do you need to spend?

The more lumens (a measure of the amount of light emitted) your light puts out, the further down the trail you’ll be able to spot obstacles and the more clearly defined they’ll be, with fewer shadows. Our experience tells us that 1,500 lumens is the minimum you need to safely ride most technical trails without feeling under-illuminated, so all the lights in this test are advertised as being at least that powerful.

However, not only are manufacturers’ claimed lumen counts often higher than figures achieved in real-world testing, but this number isn’t the most important ingredient for the perfect light recipe anyway. The most crucial factor is on-trail performance, which is generally defined by the beam’s spread and focal point, the colour of the LEDs, and overall ease of operation. There are two types of beam, spot and flood. Spot lights illuminate a small area intensely, at the expense of wider, peripheral coverage. Flood lights do the opposite – they don’t have a specific focal point, instead their power is spread broadly over the trail. There are lights that combine both beam patterns, and many riders recommend using a helmet-mounted spot light with a bar-mounted flood light to get the best of both worlds.

For bar-mounted lights, a flood beam pattern will generally be better, because it’ll help you see around corners and off to the periphery of the trails. This is important if you can only afford one light. Like lumen counts, run times can also be lower than brands claim. We timed each light on max power to see how long it lasted; all the models on test can run at full