SO has expressed an interest in a light for Christmas in order that she can come on night rides. I have a DX 700 lumen jobby and its great for my needs, but for her I think the ability to use standard AA batteries would be good. She tends to abuse things like batteries (run them down and leave them empty for months on end, knackering them by deep discharge). Also, it would make a much better commuter light than her current cateye 10 quid one. For light singletrack use, nothing fast and furious, would a hope vision be ok, or are they pretty much road only? What’s the clamp like? Sturdy enough to carry the extra weight of the AAs? Could it be bolted onto the bars to prevent theft in the work bike shed?

In the absence of any other light a Vision 1 is fine, but they aren’t bright and are very overpriced, especially if you factor in a spare for when the Hope breaks (they’re unreliable IME).

Don’t agree on the reliability front, I’ve had various visions that have all worked perfectly. I broke my vision 4 in a crash and hope fixed it free of charge, it’s still going strong and is used 5 days a week.

Hope Vision 1 has a narrow beam so helemet mounting would be a must for off-road use. I use it on road and as a helmet mounted light in addition to a wide beam handlebar mounted DX jobby. It would be underpowered on its own unless on easy terrain.

This works fine.

No reliability issues.

I use my Vision 1 in conjunction with a exposure race.

Race on the bars for flood, vision on my helmet as it is a tighter beam. I have no problems doing off road stuff (equiv to marin trail/cwn carm etc) and use it a lot of the time when commuting. It’s been my helmet light since bontrager 24/12 3/4 years ago and never let me down. Newer ones have a battery indicator which is the only downside to the one I have.

It’s fine for off road on it’s own (caught out a few times with the race maxx being out too long), swop out the AA’s and keep going.

Clamp is rock solid, although trickyish on oversized bars to get the right clamping pressure compared to the older diameter – mind you I normally use the helmet mount (some people think it’s too heavy as a helmet light).

It is blown away on a price to luman war compared to the DX/chinese stuff but the runtimes are spot on, it doesn’t get stupid hot and I like it.

Mine is the older 240Luman jobbie too.

Found the new style dx bastid is only 30 quid, 2000 lumen. Possibly overkill? Doubt it will arrive in time. We will see!

It’s not enough light in my opinion.

I think your best bet would be this Solarstorm X2 kit for 55 from ebay :

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Solarstorm-X2-High-quality-UK-upgraded-edition-6100mAh-Keeppower-Panasonic-pack-/121227584924?pt=UK_SportGoods_CyclAcces_RL&var=&hash=item1c39ba259c

with a decent set of batteries in a waterproof box, so you can keep some spare cells charged ready for when she wants to go out and has forgotten to charge them up.

I use a Gloworm X2 and X1 on the head, which are very decent lights.

I bought an X2 head unit just out of idle curiosity and it (supposedly it is the L2 leds) is not quite as bright as the Gloworm X2 (which is 1150 lumens) but is quite decent at full power, which it is supposed to do for 3 hours.