It's dark and grim out there so be safe and be seen with the best bike lights. In this group test Michelle and James put five brands against each other.
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00:00A good front light is an important part of your riding safety arsenal and not just for winter.
00:17A decent front light can be an excellent partner to keep you visible during the day and of course
00:22helps you to see the way when you're riding at night. We've chosen five front lights here from
00:28some of the market leaders and we're going to showcase and compare them to find out what
00:33are the features you need to be looking at when you're choosing the right bike light for yourself.
00:38We are comparing and contrasting these and we will pick a winner which is the most recommended
00:43product of these five at the end of this video. Now these are all lights for seeing. We generally
00:50break lights into two different categories. There are lights for being seen and lights for seeing.
00:56These all come into that second category. There are more powerful lights that you can use
01:01but these are five that really give you all the features you need. They've got enough
01:07light for you to actually see the way properly and best of all they won't break the bank in terms of
01:13how much they cost. If we look at them from the left to the right what we have here is we have
01:18Lezyne's MicroDrive Pro 800 XL. Next to the Lezyne is Exposure Sirius Mark 9 Daybright. In the middle we
01:28have Nog's Blinder Rode 600. We then have the Cateye Amp 800. Last but not least we have the Kryptonite
01:38Insight X6. So James has been testing all of these five lights for our magazine group test so you've been
01:45putting them through their paces for quite some time and we're going to run through the key features
01:50and I'm hopefully going to ask all the questions the burning questions that you the readers and viewers
01:56have. So if we start with the Lezyne because that's right here in front of me. Yep so first of all it's
02:03got a maximum of 800 lumens that's claimed from the dual front LEDs. There are in total eight different
02:13light modes. So you need eight. Well this is one of my issues with this if we want to talk about
02:19sort of like some of the problems as well as some of the real good things about it there's almost too
02:24many. So and the issue with it is there's five different standard non-flashing sort of light
02:32settings and then three flashing settings. In total it's crazy amounts so you know and the thing is
02:40as well is some of those you can only activate by pressing the button in a certain way. So the way
02:44that it works you've got a single button on the top like so press it once nothing happens but it does
02:51show you a different color on the top and that color indicates how much battery life it's got. So
02:56that's a really neat feature about it so you can see if you need to charge it or not. So press and
03:01hold it and obviously the light turns on. Then cycle through goes one like this and it doesn't tell
03:07you which mode you're in. So that's kind of like the the one slight issue. It does have a memory so when
03:13you turn it off when you turn it back on again it will turn it back on on that mode that you're on.
03:19But what I found when I was using it was I would be putting on a mode going is that the brightest
03:24setting? I can't work out if it's the brightest setting so I click it down and then you kind of
03:27go oh I can't remember so you have to like go through them all and there's so many you have to
03:30go through. In terms of how long it lasts this is one of the areas that it does do very well.
03:35So it's got decent electronics inside so even in that highest brightest setting it lasts for nearly
03:41two hours or an hour and 45 minutes is pretty much what they claim and I got it to run for about that
03:47length of time as well so it's pretty decent. All the way up to the femto setting which is the 15
03:52lumen lower setting will last for 80 odd hours and charging wise it's got a standard USBB sort of
04:00charging so it charges about four hours or so to do that which is nice and because it's a standard
04:06sort of cable we've we've got them everyone's got them so that's really neat and the weatherproofing
04:11is brilliant. So I used another Lezyne light when I did like Lanza and John O'Groats last year
04:16and it was on my fork leg the entire time rained every day and I had no issues with water and the
04:23same goes with these they're they're absolutely bomb proof lights and the other good thing as well
04:28the strap so the bracket on here is obviously designed to sort of fit around a round handlebar
04:34but you can use it on aero handlebars and this is one of the things that a lot more people have
04:38got now and it's one of the things that when we tested these we worked out if you use them
04:42and you can take off this little adapter like so and then it means you can actually run it on a much
04:49bigger diameter handlebar and it's still rubber and grippy and so that's that's brilliant so this
04:55is actually the cheapest light on the test so it retails at 60 pounds which is really good for the
05:02the actual the capacity the brightness and everything that we've got so moving next we have
05:07the exposure serious mark 9 day bright i'm going to call it the serious from now on okay i mean
05:12you've got to love an expert who doesn't love an exposure so for those people that don't know
05:16exposure is a british brand they make these in-house so everything's machines um even like the lens
05:23itself they manufacture in-house and it's backed up with a pretty formidable customer service this is
05:29the smallest on set on tests dinky really really little um it weighs just over 90 grams with the
05:37actual bracket itself so it's the lightest on test by some way so exposure it's it's a metal body so
05:43it's machined aluminium it's got some beautiful cooling fins on here as well so it's allowing it to
05:49dissipate the heat it produces up to 850 lumens so it's on paper the most powerful here um but again
05:58it has a few little tricks up its sleeve that kind of sets it apart and i must say at this point this is
06:04also the most expensive light on the test okay so this retails at 100 pounds um it uses a very very
06:10simple bracket so this is just a simple piece of plastic that it clips into which you kind of like
06:16on on the the the the look of it you go that's not going to hold it in place um but it does and
06:24i can testify this because this is the same bracket that exposure have used for over a decade so for over
06:3010 years i've used the same style of bracket it just literally clips in like so and it's solid
06:36absolutely solid on there so you can just leave that on your bike or it's so simple you can just
06:40take it on and off as well so i tend to keep it all together because if you lose that well you can't
06:45really use that it's uses its own charging cable so that's the one thing about the exposure system that
06:53some people might not like is if you don't take your cable with you well you're a bit scuppered really
06:59so you can't just use any normal cable um it uses a little charging port in the back
07:04it's got a real real solid rubber cover on here so it's really waterproof but this is one of my
07:09problems with this light is it doesn't just pop on easily you kind of like you have to like to really
07:14fiddle with it so you can't just pop it on and off the switch there's a big chunky silver one on the
07:19back um but when you turn it on it's a double click to turn it on you can see here you've got different
07:25colors so like the others it has a traffic light system so on the first click it tells you which
07:30mode you're in so it's really simple and really obvious from that point of view so to access the
07:36flashing modes you have to then press and hold it enough until it starts the flash mode so you can't
07:41cycle through to that not so long that it turns it off it's a press and hold it's a fine line
07:46fine line and then if you press it again when you're in the flashing mode it will return back to
07:50the constant but then you have to press and hold it until it doubles flash to turn it off so it has
07:55something called oms optimized mode selector it's user programmable settings so there are actually
08:03seven different program settings you can then choose which basically tells you or it can dictate
08:10how much light each mode sets up or gives out or even how many modes you actually have the technology
08:16and this is insanely good there's like some very very cool features about it what's also then good
08:23is the side visibility now this is something that we kind of often forget about road users is when
08:29you're riding along there's always cars and other people on the side so this has got great cutouts on
08:34the side so it's actually got very very good visibility from the side so i like that from that point of view
08:39so that's really really decent in terms of runtime well as i said to you like you can program this so
08:47the highest and the 850 lumens will last for an hour and a half which is brilliant um then it will go
08:53all the way down to like sort of 36 hours in the lowest constant modes flashing then for even longer
08:59than that so it's got more than you ever really need it's a bit more expensive it's a bit confusing to
09:05use and the last thing that kind of is a slight issue is if you've got aero handlebars this bracket
09:11won't work as standard because this strap is too short but they do sell a longer one then you're looking
09:19at another five pounds on top so you're looking at 105 pounds compared to 60 pounds so there is a bit
09:25of a difference in terms of price okay so next on test we have a nog blinder 600 um as the name would
09:33suggest 600 lumens right 600 lumens uh nog do things slightly differently they're kind of like a cool
09:39company when it comes to their lights and they aim at like road users and commuters mainly so they're
09:45super simple to use um very very small and that one's great because it's designed to sit on the front of
09:53your handlebars so it means it doesn't take up a lot of space on your handlebars themselves so for like riding
09:59as normal it's pretty brilliant from that point of view and it's a real simple system as well so
10:04it's just like almost like a little cam lock that just clips over the top and it's pretty solid
10:08so 600 lumens max so that is the lowest power setting we have here but it's still a very usable amount
10:14of power and we will compare the beams as well just to see yeah absolutely absolutely um and there's
10:19only four modes which actually is one of the lowest like sort of choices on on the list and also what's quite nice
10:27is that on the top you've got uh it looks exactly like what's on your you know on the inside of your
10:32car you've got that kind of half beam you've got the full beam um so you know if someone is a little
10:36newer to cycling and maybe they've been driving a bit longer you know those are very kind of standard
10:41um standard signs that pretty much anyone would recognize which i think is a quite a nice touch
10:46the real neat thing with this is you can as you're fiddling with at the moment is how you charge it so
10:52underneath the bracket is a little usb plug so you can either plug it into your laptop or plug or it
11:01does come with a little cable yeah there you go it's sort of hanging around right so it is but like
11:07you know most people would be most people don't know where that there's a massive thing sticking
11:11out the side of your laptop so you wouldn't damage it nog do claim that it lasts on the brighter setting
11:16about an hour um up to nine hours on the the the lowest setting like the flashing which less than
11:23all the others but then you can just plug it in every day and then you're all fine price wise this
11:28one isn't as cheap as something else so it's 79.99 wow okay so moving on we have this fairly chunky unit
11:37which is the cat eye amp 800 and cat eye have been making bike lights and bike computers for
11:45as long as i've been going to bike shops they're pretty much they're very often on the shop floor
11:50aren't they they're in the fossil record this so they've been waiting for that but not this light in
11:54itself no as a brand no and that this i think is one of the lights that is showing like a turning
12:02for cat eye i think so it's aluminium so it's decent in terms of like heat dissipation
12:08as well it's got a really really good design to the to the lens and overall it's actually a pretty
12:15decent looking light so yep it's got the original cat eye bracket that's one of the things that
12:24people will either love or hate about it it doesn't look like it's changed for quite i mean it hasn't
12:29generally brands are going towards the kind of elastic band sort of approach and this is this is quite old
12:35school but it doesn't necessarily mean it's bad school no because they don't fatigue us like
12:41rubber can fatigue so i've had likes of rubber band snap those things don't snap but again like
12:47you've got a bit of adjustable adjustability in terms of side by side or side to side movement
12:51which is nice it's easy to move on and off it means you can take the light leave the bracket on
12:56jobs are good and does clip off really easy as well i find sometimes with elastic bands i mean
13:00generally it's my preference i have to admit but with elastic bands when you've got big gloves on
13:04sometimes it's actually quite hard to kind of like operate it whereas this is really easy
13:10and you've got side visibility as well yeah there's a little bit of side visibility so the lens extends
13:14around the side it doesn't have any like windows so it just relies on light being reflected within that
13:20clear plastic but it does have a bit there um when you press the button as well like the first two lights
13:28it does have an indicator as to battery life so it uses a three colored system so blue yellow and red
13:35and then blue is obviously you know more than 50 charge and then going down to wherever you want to
13:41charge it how many modes have i got so you've got in total five modes on that so it's almost the sweet
13:48spot in terms of usability so three constant settings so high medium low and then two flashing modes as we
13:56said it's 800 lumens and it will power that light for 800 lumens to up to an hour and a half so it's
14:03pretty decent all the way down to 30 hours for like the flash mode on there the standard usb charging on
14:09there um i was a bit misky or had misgivings about where the charge port is because it's at the bottom
14:16of the light in the front so it does get covered in water yeah well funny enough you've used these lights
14:21before yeah we so we had these for the red bull time lapse event we did and it did definitely rain
14:27it was very wet um and they worked when we were using them for 24 hours um and they worked
14:33charge them up no issues at all and and actually yeah even though the the little rubber cap feels
14:37quite flimsy when you take it off it pops in place so well cat eye say you can use that as your
14:42helmet light so you they sell a bracket which is about 10 pounds to fit on your helmet and the other
14:48good thing about it is price wise 64.99 so that's it sits right in the middle and i think you know
14:57it's got some great features about it as well so i think cat eye back on the up with that one finally
15:03the last light that james has been putting to the test is the kryptonite insight x6 um now this light
15:11is a little different to the rest isn't it because we're not talking about lumens we're talking about
15:16looks because kryptonite has to be different yes so if we start with that everything else is
15:23measured in lumens which is an easy way for you to work out where things sit in terms of a tier
15:29it's a comparative scale yeah exactly so whereas kryptonite can i go right lumens is great but that
15:37basically measures that the light power the output from the light itself it doesn't actually tell you
15:44what amount of that light lands on an object whereas luxe is a measurement of the light
15:50to hit an object i mean the theory on lumens versus luxe is it looks makes perfect sense it tells you
15:58what what it tells you how much light you're actually going to be able to use right yes usable
16:04light exactly exactly it's 64.99 so it's actually a pretty decent price
16:09um and it's got some great features as well so there are seven modes so it's up there in terms
16:18of how many modes but one of them is auto light sensing oh which is pretty cool so it means that
16:24basically it dicta it measures the ambient light and will adjust the brightness according to how much
16:31light it thinks you need so when you turn it on the great thing on the top is you've got two
16:35different sort of uh displays so it's got a little a little little readout on the top and that tells
16:41you how many hours of battery life you have left in that mode there's four little red leds at the
16:48bottom which then tell you what mode and effective like sort of battery life so it gives you like
16:53different ways of actually quickly reading or properly reading how much battery life is left i'm
16:57gonna say it doesn't weigh as much as the cat eye one it's actually the it's actually the heaviest is
17:02is it really yeah yeah different material not by much it's like 162 grams so it's it's heavier it
17:10takes up a bit more space on the bars and it doesn't feel it's not very solid it's plastic
17:17it's plastic yeah so when you turn it on it's got two windows on the side so it's good from that point
17:22of view and the other real cool thing is that bracket it's almost like a double safety system so
17:27you've got like a zipped a reasonable zip tie like that yeah and then you clip it up with the cam i
17:34don't feel like it works as well as the cat eye one because i'm just thinking if this is on my handlebar
17:39i've got limited space in here to flip this off actually it works fine off the bar but as soon as
17:44i put on a handlebar i don't actually have that much space to get to that button no it's it's a little
17:49bit tricky but you can do it like with practice like anything else with practice you can get there
17:55yeah standard usb charging yeah so pretty decent one thing i do have to say before we go to the beam
18:02test is this one here is probably the one that's going to make you the best friends with oncoming
18:09drivers so the way that the beam is designed is designed to throw the light into a point that's usable
18:18for the rider and not to have any light escape upwards so it means that you can angle the light
18:24exactly as you want it without fear that it's going to blind drivers so it's now time for lights out
18:32we're going to switch off the lights in here and we're going to run through each of the lights
18:36individually and have a look at the beam pattern and see how much of this room is illuminated and by
18:42what distance and what kind of spread the light has so we've set the lights up all on one handlebar
18:49they're in exactly the same position in the room and we'll run through each one so looking at the
18:55design i turn this on so i mean the entire back wall is illuminated yeah i can stand here i've got a
19:05pretty big shadow now um you've got a very wide and round light pattern there haven't you yeah so
19:11obviously when we look at it from this point of view it's always difficult to sort of see the exact
19:15beam pattern of it um but if you think about where you actually want to angle your light when you're
19:21actually out on your bike you want it to be positioned at the point where the brightness is
19:25around about sort of 30 feet ahead of you so it gives you enough time to be able to anticipate
19:30anything that's coming and then obviously means that you can see everything around it first thing
19:36you notice is there is more of like a spotlight so you've got a bright central part on here so that's
19:43kind of like very characteristic of this type of light then there's quite a diffuse light so even though
19:49we're stood at the side here we're still illuminated here as well so the good thing here is when you're
19:54riding it means it's going to create an area of visibility that covers all aspects of the
20:00road but if we look at it on the the side here you can see there that you can see that classic
20:05sort of almost spotlight on there so that bright central setting so that's the design so if we move
20:12to the exposure light next so i'm just going to turn this off okay so this is not dissimilar i would
20:19say but maybe it's slightly brighter spotlight so that key that kind of pivotal key point so if i was to
20:29turn this on and then turn the design on so if i close that off turn the design on there's the
20:35design yeah and then definitely that spotlight is brighter the exposure is very very good at putting
20:43the light where you need it so it's a very very bright spotlight on here so and you can see that you
20:50have that same sort of visibility on the outside as well the area around though is still well illuminated
20:57huge huge amount there um it is a brighter white light so they use a different type of led
21:03on their light so you can see it's quite bright so it's not as nice in the eyes but it does pick
21:09things out properly when you're actually out and about so that's the one noticeable difference there
21:16because it is so being focused so it's so central being focused the one thing you need to be aware of
21:21on this light is even though it's got a cap on the top it's still going to be dazzling people just
21:27turn the nog on so this is in the brightest setting so you've got both the leds working on here
21:32and you can see straight away we don't have that bright central section it's it's still more of like
21:38what we call a flood light than a spotlight so whereas the first two were more of a concentrated sort
21:45of bright setting this is more sort of an even spread of light so i mean it gives you a good
21:50amount of light there is there is a good amount of visibility but i think if you're on unlit country
21:55lanes you're less likely to have good visibility of things like potholes debris that you want to avoid
22:00i think you would not feel quite so confident using this on unlit lanes as as the former two
22:06yeah one of the things that you get on a slightly lower power setting like this is
22:10it actually creates bigger shadows so when you when you're creating big shadows what it can then
22:15do is it gives you um just almost like a false perspective of what's coming up in front of you
22:20so you have to be a bit aware of that whereas a brighter light almost burns through that riding on
22:24your own riding on lit roads or at sort of like gentler speeds and commuting this works really well
22:30it's a good bright light so let's move on to the cat eye amp 800 that again is a very very similar beam
22:42not quite as wide though no so if we go back so the the the closest comparative light to this one
22:51is the exposure light so i'm going to blank that off and turn on the exposure
22:56let's go back to the brighter setting so that's the exposure
23:03then blank that off go to that one you can see is it doesn't quite have that same bright point look
23:10at that when i turn that on top of it you can see we've got that so if i turn that exposure off
23:17it's almost similar to the nog it's good but it's not brilliant i think that that would be my conclusion
23:25there it it it will do the job you've got that bright central section so you're kind of well
23:31covered for potholes debris things you want to watch out for i can see a good amount of of um
23:37kind of spread around the room so you know there is good illumination but clearly it's not as bright as
23:44those first two pretty decent side visibility though even though there's no windows it actually does
23:49light up quite well so moving on to the kryptonite we turn this one off so the kryptonite should be
23:57very different shouldn't it because it has uh it's it's wonderful looks measurement so let's see how
24:03that compares let's move that up to the brightest setting this looks a bit like a candle really doesn't
24:10it in that kind of shape it's completely different to the others it's really really interesting to
24:15point out so what we've got here is we've got kind of quite a large bright rectangular type area if i
24:21move it up a little bit so we can actually see it on we oh yeah oh so we've got a few things going on
24:29here so that's that brightest point now if we put it to where we'd have it on the bike that illuminates
24:37that large area there in front of you which is great that bit there is that 60 lux so that's all of
24:44that bright light and then we have an area in front of it which is darker but still we've got a bit
24:51of light so we can see however there's something missing yeah as long as everything you want to see
24:58is within this area yeah you are sorted everything's great right but what if there is a bunny rabbit that's
25:06going to run out from a hedge and it's here this is the one thing that i found using this light
25:12light at night on unlit roads is it concentrates your world into such a small area that you have
25:19no awareness of what's going on around it and that can be pretty frightening and when we then look at
25:26the front section so kryptonite will say that there's no wasted light it's all usable light however
25:32if we go above michelle's ankles that area there is coming at you at speed so there are obstacles
25:40coming towards you and you're on your bike and if you go more than walking speeds your reaction time
25:45is actually quite minimal but trying to use this light and ride at a speed that's normal so 15 miles
25:53hour or plus than that is almost impossible so you know perhaps this light might work well in town
26:01centres in cities if you want a good amount of bright light but you're you're commuting in a town
26:08it's lit or there are car lights going back and forward probably a good choice i think i think exactly
26:13right you know this is a light that is of the five the only one that i would say is only for commuting
26:19we've shown you all the different beam patterns and effectively what we look what they're looking
26:26at let's turn the lights back on yeah get on and then find out our verdict yeah okay so james you've
26:33put these through some pretty heavy testing over the last few weeks we've talked about each of the kind
26:38of features of each of them and we've also looked at the beam patterns there can only be one winner
26:45uh so what is the verdict it's quite tricky to choose between the exposure serious and the
26:51lezyme microdrive 800xl so they're both really really good lights and it was difficult to fault them
26:58but each of them isn't perfect if we look at the exposure light it's expensive yeah um the the button
27:07and then the programmability is great but it also means makes it a bit sort of like confusing to use
27:13um and the fact that you have to buy another additional strap if you want to run it on aero
27:19bars boost that price up a bit too much yeah but obviously the exposure does be everything in terms
27:25of brightness so the the actual the beam pattern everything is spot on so and longevity from
27:32experience although we've not had this one for eight years or 12 years in your case we have had exposure
27:38lights for that duration and been very happy i think that's it it's like you know the the fact that they
27:43build everything in-house they they've got like that customer customer service is so brilliant you take
27:48your serious light that you bought this year and send it back to them and they will be able to either
27:53repair it or offer you a replacement and it's just great you know you've got a light for life really
28:00from that point of view but there's a big initial outlay or more so than that yes and that's kind of
28:05like the difference between the two so the design is 60 pounds compared to 100 pounds so that initial
28:11outlay is that's a big chunk so you could buy a really decent rear light and have the full set for
28:18the price of that front exposure light um brightness is brilliant you know the the beam pattern was spot
28:24on it's very very similar to the to the exposure light i really like the way that you've got like the
28:30battery indicator and the fact it uses a standard usb charging port as well which has been really really
28:36nice and reliable and the fact you can put that remote switch on is a real good option i look quite
28:42like it so they did send one to me um but obviously for this sake of this test i've already used it
28:47without but it's super simple extra 15 quid um the bracket works it's not perfect so the back bracket
28:57isn't perfect in terms of like the the strap isn't i would like it to have been a bit longer
29:03um and the difference in terms of the modes the fact you've got to cycle through so many different
29:08modes there's too much choice there so that's why that kind of like doesn't win out so personally i
29:16think these two are both winners if i was to buy it and like myself it probably would be the exposure
29:23purely for that sort of longevity but from a value for money point of view for people that just want
29:29the best bike light for or bang for buck as we say the zion microdrive pro 800 xl gets a win in that
29:37respect so yeah out of the five those are the two that i certainly would recommend i hope you've enjoyed
29:45this uh lights group test i hope you've enjoyed this video please let us know what you thought in the
29:50comments ask any questions and we'll do our best to answer them do like this video if you enjoyed it
29:56and subscribe to the channel if you'd like to see more of us in the future