GROUPTEST TRAIL LIGHTS

The longer nights drawing in needn’t mean your bike gets mothballed for the next six months. Instead, embrace the darkness and see it as an opportunity to make tackling familiar routes a fresh and exciting challenge. Trails appear very different at night, when your light beam emphasises every feature, and in winter proper, the crackle of ice under your tyres on a velvety starlit night is a special experience.

A good front light makes riding gnarly terrain possible, and at faster speeds, but how much power do you need, and how much should you spend to get it? The number of lumens (the measure of a light’s brightness) your light has, the further down the trail you’ll be able to see, and the more clearly defined obstacles will be. Years of riding at night tells us that 1,500 lumens is the minimum needed to safely ride technical trails. Any less and you can feel under-illuminated, so all the lights in this test are advertised as having 1,500 lumens or more.

Often a light’s output is lower than claimed, and although headline lumen numbers are a good metric for indicating how well it should perform, it isn’t the only factor to consider. The most important thing is how those lumens light up the trail, with the beam pattern – including its spread and focus – LED colour and how easy the light is to use all contributing to its performance.

Exactly how the light is projected down the trail is one of the most important factors, and arguably more crucial than just the amount of power on offer. The light emitted can be flooded, diffused or focused thanks to different lens types,