So last night both my rear light and bar light handily died as I was preparing to head out on a night ride 😐 The rear light micro USB socket came adrift, and the front light’s battery pack conked out when I plugged it into the head unit.

I appreciate the life of an MTB light is quite hard, and in fairness these were relatively budget models. That said they were bought from established UK companies (not eBay specials), and I feel as though it’s a bit soon for them to be dying: I reckon I’ve had about 30 hours riding from the back light, and about 45 from the front.

What do you reckon? Would it be reasonable to contact the retailer to complain or is this sort of lifetime just par for the course?

contact the retailer.

I’d contact the retailer, 45 hours isn’t much for a decent front light.

Seems poor, but it might depend on whether those 30/45hrs are over half a year or 5 years and if the latter, how have the batteries/light been stored?

how long since you bought it?

Seems poor, but it might depend on whether those 30/45hrs are over half a year or 5 years and if the latter, how have the batteries/light been stored?

Fair point. The front light I’ve had about 16 months (didn’t ride much at night last winter due to Life Stuff). The rear light is about 6 months old. When I’m not riding the lights are taken off the bike and stored in the house in a cupboard in the utility room — so fairly even temperatures, and dry.

Stored with some charge in them?

Yes, stored with charge. The usual schedule is something like 1.5 hours of battling through the slop, followed by as much pub time as possible :-), so I don’t usually run the batteries to flat.

BTW, for the rear light I think the battery is probably OK — I ran it last night as it still has some charge. But once it goes flat that’s it since the micro USB port has come away from the PCB inside the housing.

Ok. Sounds like warranty time then. Hope you get them both sorted.

Thanks all for the responses, sounds like I got my answer!