After some cheap but as powerful as I can for under £30, Its an Xmas present for a friend but is new into biking so don't want to spends loads so under £30 would be perfect
https://www.halfords.com/cycling/bike-lights/bike-lights/bikehut-1000-lumen-front-bike-light
Heard good things about these, there's a thread on the 1600 lumen version somewhere. Should be a good commuter light, maybe spend a bit extra for the more powerful one if they're going to ride in completely unlit areas much.
For off road and only £5 over budget I’d get the 1600 lumen one. Not sure if it still works but ‘light10’ was giving another 10% off a week or so ago which gets you within £1.50 of your max budget.
The moon ones on Merlin black Friday deals cost half that and very good.
I can’t see any decent moon front lights for that budget if we’re talking ones with enough power for off road night riding?
Probably going to get plenty of naysayers but I've never had a problem with the Chinese origin Solarstorm lights off eBay .
£15 (ISH) gets you plenty of light for decent pace night riding. Yeah you need to make sure you don't leave the battery charging unnatended in case it goes pop (never happened to me yet in over 10 years) but for the price I don't think you can go wrong.
Carlosg, just to add a bit of balance, i have had one of the Chinese ones go pop whilst charging.
The light and battery were fine, but the charger melted.
Had a couple of others that were fine tho.
the halfords 1600 light is way better than anything I’ve seen for the £35, and my lights range from really cheap ebay jobs to exposure six pack.
Also balance on the Solarstorm X2, the head itself can be good but can suffer from assembly. Some are better than others (including for beam pattern not just sealing). They were certainly mightily popular in this parish around 2015. Personally if getting one I’d budget for a uk sourced battery and charger ideally (at least charger as these seem to be the majority of failures and can lead to a battery explosion too) rather than trust the OE though which does make them less bargainous.